Chair’s message for SEN, May 2025
Dear SE Community,
It was a pleasure to see so many of you in Ottawa for ICSE. Conference organizers have done an amazing job, making all of us feel comfortable, welcome and inspired. A huge thanks to the entire organizing team, but especially to the General Co-Chairs Timothy Lethbridge and Lionel Briand, Program Chairs Corina Pasareanu and David Lo, Finance Chair Mehrdad Sabetzadeh, Local Arrangements Co-Chairs Shiva Neati and Nafiseh Kahani, and Student Volunteer Co-Chairs Maleknaz Nayebi, Reyhaeh Kalantari and Shurui Zhou.
Together with the TCSE Chair Federica Sarro from University College London and ICSE Steering Committee Co-Chairs Arie van Deursen (Delft) and Peggy Storey (U. Victoria), we organized and ran the TCSE/SIGSOFT Townhall. Check out the presented slides at https://conf.researchr.org/details/icse-2025/icse-2025-meetings-and-bofs/14/TCSE-and-SIGSoft-Town-Hall-Meeting. In what follows, I summarize some of the information from the SIGSOFT/TCSE presentation, followed by updates on the ACM Open initiative. The final part of the Townhall included presentations from ICSE Steering Committee chairs and SE3 chair Massimiliano Di Penta followed by a Q&A. We will write about that event separately.
Highlights from the townhall.
We said thank you to Sol Greenspan who retired from the US National Science Foundation where he served as Program Director in charge of Software Engineering (and through this role funded foundational research, educational and community events, travel grants and lots more!). We also said thanks to Hausi Muller who served on the ICSE Steering Committee for over 25 years (first as ICSE’01 General Chair and then as IEEE TCSE Chair 2010–2014) and to Neno Medvidovic who served on the ICSE Steering committee for 17 years (first as ICSE’11 PC Chair, then as ICSE SC Chair 2013–15, and finally as SIGSOFT Chair 2015–18).
The two societies presented their conference organization, community, mentorship and awards programs. The important date to keep in mind is October 6, 2025 (intention to submit) and October 20, 2025 (submission deadline) for TCSE awards (Service, Education, Synergy, WISE Leadership, Rising Star, Lifetime Achievement, and New Direction) and SIGSOFT awards (Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation, Early Career Researcher, Distinguished Service, Influential Educator, Impact Paper, Frank Anger Memorial award). We look forward to your nominations!!! For more information, please look at TCSE and SIGSOFT web sites and/or reach out to Atif Memon and Laura Dillon (TCSE) or Claire Le Goues (SIGSOFT).
ICSE’25 hosted Software Engineering Mentoring Workshop (SMeW@ICSE), aimed to encourage and support students entering research programs and to offer first-hand perspectives on the graduate study from recent Ph.D. graduates, young scholars, and senior researchers. This year’s workshop was coordinated by Jonathan Bell and Yuxie Zhao. SIGSOFT supported participant travel.
Of special interest this year is the SIGSOFT Africa Initiative@ICSE’25. Thanks to the efforts of Mariam Barry and Yuxie Zhao, 5 students and editors (from Mali, Niger Guinee, Central Africa Republic and Rwanda) were able to travel to ICSE and network with the community.
The CAPS program, chaired by Nan Niu, Zhiyuan Wan and Fabio Palomba, provided 120 travel grants to support ICSE’25 attendees with the total award amount of approximately $70,000 US. SIGSOFT CAPS even provided childcare support!
The two societies have also announced the new mentorship program for TCSE and SIGSOFT members “Ask Me Anything”, launching in Fall 2025. The idea is to enable self-bookable online mentoring slots with senior members of the community. If you would like to become a mentor, please contact myself or Federica Sarro.
Another initiative we told the community about is the SIGSOFT Software Engineering Summer/Winter Schools. The deadline for this year was April 16, 2025. The program is coordinated by Yuan Tian and Christoph Treude. This year SIGSOFT provided full or partial support to 12 schools, for the total amount of $80,000 USD.
An important update on ACM’s new open access publishing model for 2026 ACM Conferences!
Starting January 1, 2026, ACM will fully transition to Open Access. All ACM publications, including those from ACM-sponsored conferences, will be 100% Open Access. Authors will have two primary options for publishing Open Access articles with ACM: the ACM Open institutional model or by paying Article Processing Charges (APCs). With over 1,800 institutions already part of ACM Open, the majority of ACM-sponsored conference papers will not require APCs from authors or conferences (currently, around 70–75%).
Authors from institutions not participating in ACM Open will need to pay an APC to publish their papers, unless they qualify for a financial or discretionary waiver. To find out whether an APC applies to your article, please consult the list of participating institutions in ACM Open and review the APC Waivers and Discounts Policy. Interestingly, for the ICSE’26 research track, 71% of submissions not covered by ACM Open reported that they can afford to pay APC.
Of course not every paper requires an APC (also called “APC-Eligible”). APC-eligible contributions include research and review articles, short papers, survey articles, tutorials, and interviews. Non-APC-eligible types (free to publish for everyone) include demos, abstracts, extended abstracts, panels, posters, keynotes and introductions.
Understanding that this change could present financial challenges, ACM has approved a temporary subsidy for 2026 to ease the transition and allow more time for institutions to join ACM Open. The subsidy will offer:
- $250 APC for ACM/SIG members
- $350 for non-members
This represents a 65% discount, funded directly by ACM. Authors are encouraged to help advocate for their institutions to join ACM Open during this transition period. This temporary subsidized pricing will apply to all conferences scheduled for 2026.
ACM waivers will be on top of subsidized rates. For example, an author based in a lower-middle income country can get a 50% discount on their APC rate, which, for ACM/SIGSOFT members, will be $125 US.
In 2026, SIGSOFT, with the help of ACM, will further subsidize its conferences. It will be free to publish for everyone (no APC required) all short papers published in all SIGSOFT events (conferences, workshops, co-located events).
ACM Open or APC will be required for regular papers which are 6 pages or longer (not including references) in any track of all conferences, workshops, and co-located events.
Marsha Chechik
Chair, ACM Special Interest Group on Software Engineering
