Call for Papers


17th International Workshop on Software Clones (IWSC 2023)

Co-located with the 39th IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME 2023)

October 1, 2023, Bogota, Colombia

Software clones are often a result of copying and pasting as an act of ad-hoc reuse by programmers. This was often seen at the project-level, however, due to emerging technology stacks, developers and researchers are paying attention to the ecosystem-level. Hence, the software cloning community is extending target topics to include various types of software clones at the ecosystem level, with examples such as project cloning, clones in ecosystems, project similarity and so on.

Clones are not limited to only source code, and can occur at the software system (from simple statement sequences to blocks, methods, classes, source files, subsystems, models, architectures, etc) to the entire software ecosystem (inter-dependent software systems, libraries), and occur in all software artifacts (source code, binaries, configuration build files, models, requirements or architecture documentation, etc ). Software clone research is of high relevance for software engineering research and practice today.

IWSC series of events has provided a common forum for this important research area as it continues to grow in application breadth and technical depth. IWSC aims to bring researchers and practitioners to evaluate the current state of research, discuss common problems and emerging directions. Also, we are interested in discussing and spreading practical applications of clone technologies. Further details about IWSC 2023 are here on this website (https://iwsc2023.github.io).

TOPICS OF INTEREST:

A partial list of the topics is as follows (this list is by no means exhaustive, and it is a goal of the workshop to further extend it):

  • Techniques and studies of clone detection, search, analysis, and management
  • Cloning at the ecosystem-level
  • Role of clones in software system evolution
  • Tools and systems for detecting software clones
  • Use cases for clones and clone management in the software lifecycle
  • Experiences with clones and clone management in practice
  • Types and nature of clones in software systems
  • Clone evolution and variation
  • Causes and effects of clones
  • Clone and clone pattern visualization
  • System architecture and clones
  • Effect of clones to system complexity and quality
  • Clone analysis in families of similar systems
  • Measures of clone similarity
  • Economic and trade-off models for clone management
  • Evaluation and benchmarking of detection methods
  • Licensing and plagiarism issues
  • Clone-aware software design and development
  • Refactoring through clone analysis
  • Other applications of clone detection and analysis

Papers

IWSC 2023 will go through a single-blind reviewing process. The following types of papers are sought:

  • Full papers are expected to present novel research ideas and open issues, significant empirical studies, or important viewpoints of the field. These papers must not exceed 7 pages including figures, appendices, and references [Note: We will allow papers up to 10 pages in length for the review. However, if accepted, it MUST be shortened to 7 pages, or it will not be put in the proceedings.]
  • Position papers should raise new ideas and issues or describe early research achievements, emphasizing originality and potential to stimulate active discussion at the workshop. These papers can be of maximum 2 pages including figures, appendices, and references.
  • Tool demonstration papers (4 pages maximum) should describe clone-related tools and their applications. Tool papers must not exceed 4 pages including figures, appendices, and references.

How to Submit

If the paper is accepted, at least one author must attend the workshop and present the paper. Accepted papers will appear in the IEEE Digital Library.

IMPORTANT DATES:

**All submission dates are at 23:59 AoE (Anywhere on Earth, UTC-12)**

  • Abstract submission deadline: Aug 12 (Sat), 2023 (extended!)
  • Paper submission deadline: Aug 12 (Sat), 2023 (extended!)
  • Notifications: Aug 22 (Tue), 2023
  • Camera Ready deadline: Aug 26 (Sat), 2023
  • Workshop day: October 1, 2023