[Hcitaly] 19th European Conference on Software Architecture (ECSA 2025): Fourth Call for Papers (Research/Industry), Tools & Demos and Workshop Proposals

*** Fourth Call for Papers (Research/Industry), Tools & Demos, and Workshop Proposals *** 19th European Conference on Software Architecture (ECSA 2025) September 15-19, 2025, 5* St. Raphael Resort and Marina, Limassol, Cyprus https://conf.researchr.org/home/ecsa-2025 (*** Proceedings to be published by Springer in LNCS ***) The European Conference on Software Architecture (ECSA) is the premier European software architecture conference, providing researchers, practitioners, and educators with a platform to present and discuss the most recent, innovative, and significant findings and experiences in the field of software architecture research and practice. The 19th European Conference on Software Architecture (ECSA 2025) will be held from September 15 to 19, 2025. ECSA 2025 is planned as an in-person conference taking place in the beautiful city of Limassol (Cyprus). SCOPE The theme for ECSA 2025 is “impactful software architecture”. The software architecture discipline has had a critical role in shaping robust, scalable, and maintainable systems. We are interested in learning about software architecture principles and practices, emergence trends and case studies highlighting strategic architectural choices that can lead to enhanced performance, improved collaboration, and long-term sustainability. The overarching question is how these architectural principles and practices, both well-established and emerging, are making an impact in real-world systems, and how that impact is being felt across various domains, from enterprise systems to more novel areas like, e.g., AI-driven or autonomous applications? The Program Committee of the 19th European Conference on Software Architecture seeks submissions of original and unpublished high-quality papers describing fundamental and applied research; new methods, approaches, and processes; novel applications; education and training in software architecture; and experience reports on all topics related to software architecture. We particularly encourage papers that demonstrate that diversity in gender, culture, religion, country, etc. are key factors for success and innovation in software architecture. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: • Foundational principles of software architecture • Relationship of requirements engineering and software architecture • Quality attributes and software architectures • Architecture practices for secure, explainable, and trustworthy software • Architecture design and analysis • Architecture description languages and meta-models • Architecture verification and validation • Management of architectural knowledge, decisions, and rationale • Architecture patterns, styles, and tactics; reference architectures • Architecture viewpoints and views • Architecture conformance • Software architecture virtualization and visualization • Architecture-centric process models and frameworks • Software architecture and agile, incremental, iterative, and continuous development • Component-based models and deployment; middleware • Software architecture and system architecture • Software tools and environments for architecture-centric software engineering • Ethics, cultural, economic, business, social, human, and managerial aspects of software architecture • Architecture and technical debt • Architecting for sustainable and environment friendly systems • Applying AI and LLMs in software architecture and architecting for AI and LLM intensive systems • Software architecture education • Cross-disciplinary approaches to software architecture • Architectures for reconfigurable and self-adaptive systems • Architectural concerns of autonomic systems • Software architecture applied to new and emerging areas, such as the cloud/edge, big data, blockchain, cyber-physical systems, IoT, autonomous systems, systems-of-systems, energy- aware software, quantum computing, AI-enabled systems • Empirical studies, systematic literature reviews, and mapping studies in software architecture • Diversity, equity, and inclusion in activities related to software architecture RESEARCH PAPERS ECSA 2025 seeks four types of papers for the research track: • Research papers (max. 16 pages in LNCS style) which describe novel contributions to software architecture research (submissions should cover work that has a sound scientific/technological basis and has been validated) • Education and training papers (max. 16 pages in LNCS style) that address methodologies, experiences and best practices for teaching and training software architecture • Experience reports (max. 16 pages in LNCS style) that cover innovative implementations, novel applications, insightful performance results and experience in applying software architecture research advances to practical situations and systems • Short papers (max. 8 pages in LNCS style) that present novel and preliminary work-in- progress or challenges in a topic of software architecture research, education, and training. Submissions must have a sound basis, but not necessarily be validated in full. All submitted papers will undergo a rigorous double-blind peer review process. Papers will be selected based on originality, quality, soundness, and relevance. All contributions must be original, not published, accepted, or submitted for publication elsewhere. Contravention of this concurrent submission policy will be deemed a serious breach of ethics, and appropriate action will be taken in all such cases. Plagiarism checking will be conducted and any paper reporting more than a 20% match with published work will be desk-rejected. To note is that research papers, education and training papers, and experience reports that are rejected in their categories may be re-evaluated as short papers only if the committee decides on rejection of the full paper on the basis that it presents preliminary work. The research track of ECSA 2025 supports an Open Science policy. We encourage all contributing authors to disclose (anonymized and curated) data/artifacts to increase reproducibility. Note that sharing research artifacts is not mandatory for submission or acceptance. Upon submission to the research track, authors are required: • To make their artifacts available to the program committee (via a link to an anonymous repository) and provide instructions on how to access this data in the paper; or • To include in the paper an explanation as to why this is not possible or desirable; and • To indicate why they do not intend to make their data or study materials publicly available upon acceptance, if that is the case While sharing research artifacts is not mandatory for submission or acceptance, authors are required to include a Data Availability statement after the Conclusions section in a section named "Data Availability". This statement should explain whether or not data and/or artifacts are available or how they could be accessed (or not). Upon acceptance, papers with Open Science artifacts (e.g., data, tools, etc.) will be invited to upload their artifacts into the ECSA Zenodo community (https://zenodo.org/communities/ecsa/) to make them accessible and visible to the ECSA community. Sharing artifacts via the ECSA Zenodo community is required for authors to be eligible for the best Open Artifact award. All contributions must be formatted according to the Springer LNCS style (https://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-gu…). Page limits include figures and references. Contributions need to be submitted in PDF format via EasyChair to the ECSA 2025 Research Track: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ecsa2025. Please select the “Research Track” in EasyChair for your submission and click "Continue". The proceedings will be published by Springer as part of the LNCS series. We also plan to organize a Journal Special Issue on the theme of ECSA 2025 and to invite authors of selected papers to submit an extended version of their research. INDUSTRY PAPERS The Industry Track at ECSA 2025 brings together practicing software architects and software architecture researchers from regional, European, and worldwide communities. We are seeking contributions from industry that share challenges, practical solutions, successful practices, failures, and lessons learned while analyzing, designing, implementing, evaluating, and evolving software architectures. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to the following themes: • Experience with architectures for emerging technologies, like LLM, and Agent-based system • Domain-specific challenges for software architects and architectures • Architecture specification and documentation • Architectural patterns, tactics, and tools • Practices and methods supporting architecture design, evaluation and evolution • Integration of architectural practices and methods with other software engineering approaches/practices/methods (e.g. Agile) • Social and organizational aspects, like human-machine, human-AI interactions, human-in-the-loop The ECSA 2025 Industry track aims to contribute to bridging the gap between academia and industrial practice by establishing an open communication and discussion environment. It will offer researchers and practitioners the opportunity to interact with fellow professionals and develop new ideas and skills for addressing industrial problems and collaborations. There are three ways to contribute: Full Papers (up to 16 pages in Springer LNCS style) describing best practices and experience from applying novel approaches to large-scale industrial projects in the context of software architecture. Submissions will be selected based on originality, quality, soundness, practical relevance, and potential for discussion. Short Papers and Presentations (6-10 pages in Springer LNCS style) outlining presentations on practices and experience related to software architecture from the industry. Submissions will be selected based on originality, practical relevance, and potential for discussion. Software Architecture Showcases (6 pages in Springer LNCS style) demonstrating a specific real-world architecture (including its flaws) together with a discussion of the context, challenges, and/or process that led to its present form. It can be formulated as an abstract outlining the architecture to be presented, preferably together with links to externally available work products. Submissions will be selected based on the offered insights into real architectural work, work products, and learnings related to architecture. All contributions need to be written in English, must be original, not published, accepted, or submitted for publication elsewhere. If accepted, each contribution needs to be presented by one of the authors who is registered at the conference. All contributions must be formatted according to the Springer LNCS style (https://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-gu…). Page limits include figures and references. Contributions need to be submitted in PDF format via EasyChair to the ECSA 2025 Research Track: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ecsa2025. Please select the “Industry Track” in EasyChair for your submission and click "Continue". TOOLS AND DEMOS The Tools and Demonstrations (Tools & Demos) Track provides an opportunity for both researchers and practitioners to present and discuss the most recent advances, ideas, experiences, and challenges in the field of Software Architecture by means of Tools & Demos presentations. Tools & Demos papers are intended to address any aspect of: (i) tool support for software architectures, or (ii) demonstrate results about the application of architectural approaches. Papers submitted to this track can belong to two distinct categories: • Tool papers: These papers deal with the development and evaluation of tools to support software architecture. They may present new tools, extensions to existing tools, or evaluations of the effectiveness of tools. The aim is to provide a platform for the exchange of innovative tools and techniques that help design, implement and analyze software architectures. • Demo papers: These papers will demonstrate concepts, techniques or systems related to software architectures. The focus is on presenting practical applications and implementations of architectural approaches. Demo papers may include live demonstrations, prototypes or simulations that emphasize the benefits and potential of specific architecture solutions. Both Tool Papers and Demo Papers contribute to the advancement of the field by providing insights, experiences and practical solutions related to software architectures. Tools and Demos should not be used as a means for commercial advertisement. We will strive to keep ECSA’s tradition to select the Best Tools & Demo Paper, awarded during the conference. The selection of the best tool and demo paper will be made based on the votes of the attendants of the conference. Submissions of Tools & Demos papers should describe the work, how it relates to other industrial or research efforts, including references, what the expected benefits are, a video of the tool or demo (if one exists), and the web-page and/or open-source repository for the tool (if one exists). All submissions must conform to the LNCS template and must not exceed 8 pages. Tools & Demos submissions should provide a link to a video, with audio commentary, of a maximum of ten minutes in length, with high resolution (e.g., details of the tool’s functionality should be clearly visible). The video must be uploaded on a server (e.g., YouTube, Google Drive, Dropbox), and the link must be included in the submission for its evaluation (as a footnote on the first page of the submission or as links after the abstract of the submission). In addition, it is possible to provide open material, e.g., source code and/or a running instance of the tool. The links to the video and (if applicable) the additional material should be included in the contribution after the abstract and before the introduction sections. Paper submissions must be made electronically via the online EasyChair submission site for the ECSA 2024 conference, selecting the “Tools & Demos Track”: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ecsa2025 . The selection criteria of Tools & Demos papers will consider their originality, relevance for the ECSA audience, technical soundness, and presentation quality. Each submission will be evaluated by at least two PC members, in a single-step review process. The accepted papers will be included in the ECSA 2025 companion volume to be published in Springer LNCS series. WORKSHOP PROPOSAL SUBMISSIONS Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit proposals for workshops and tutorials held in conjunction with ECSA 2025. Workshops and tutorials will be held on September 15-16, 2025 (right before the main conference on September 17-19, 2025). ECSA workshops allow researchers and practitioners to exchange and explore innovative software architecture (scientific or engineering) ideas and challenges at an early stage. Topics of interest are, but are not limited to: • Software Architecture challenges for AI- and ML-based Systems • Software Architecture challenges for Self-Adaptive Systems • Software Architecture challenges for Cyber-Physical Systems • Software Architecture challenges in Big Data and Cloud Computing • Software Architecture challenges in IoT-based Systems • Software Architecture challenges in DevOps and MLOps • Software Architecture challenges in Blockchain Engineering • Software Architecture challenges in Quantum Software • Quality-of-service (QoS) measurements of Software Architectures • Privacy and Security in Software Architectural Design • Context-aware, Autonomous, and Smart Architectures • Sustainability in Software Architectures • Software Architecture Erosion and Architectural Consistency • Technical Debt in Software Architecture Design • Architecting the Digital Twin • Continuous Architecting • Agile Software Architecting • Human Aspects of Software Architecting • Software Architecture Assessment • AI assisted Software Architecting • Agile Modeling All proposals must conform to a maximum of 8 pages following the LNCS format (see below), including references, appendices, and figures. The proposal must include the following information in the order specified: • Workshop title and acronym • Contact information for the workshop organizers (name, affiliation, email) and the main contact • Abstract (up to 200 words) for the ECSA 2025 website (if the workshop is accepted) • Motivation and Objectives ○ Relevance of the workshop to the field of software architecture ○ Anticipated goals and outcomes (e.g., open research problems to pursue, validation objectives, empirical studies) • Format ○ Workshop format (e.g., paper presentations, keynotes, breakout sessions, panel-like discussions) and plans for generating discussions ○ Duration - half day, one day or two days ○ Preliminary workshop schedule ○ Special services, logistic and/or equipment constraints • Participation ○ Target Audience and expected background ○ Plans regarding the mix of industry and research participation ○ Expected minimum and maximum number of workshop participants ○ Plans for participant solicitation and dissemination • Submission ○ Types of contributions (e.g., extended abstracts, position papers, research papers, etc.) and their estimated number. ○ Review and evaluation process deciding about the acceptance of submissions ○ Program committee, including tentative and already committed members ○ Strategy for the proceedings • Organizers ○ Brief description of each organizer’s background, including relevant past experience in organizing conferences and workshops ○ Brief organizers’ bios • Previous editions ○ Where and when the workshop has been offered previously, the past numbers of submitted and accepted papers, numbers of attendees ○ Number of registered attendees and websites of previous editions (if any) • Draft Call-for-Papers (1 page) Submissions must follow the LNCS style (https://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-gu…). All proposals should be submitted before the submission deadline (see below) using the online submission site: EasyChair ECSA 2025 Workshop track (https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ecsa2025). ECSA 2025 will use a single review process for workshop proceedings. For accepted papers, the minimum number of pages for each workshop paper is 8 and the maximum is 16 pages in the LNCS format. The proceedings of the workshops will be published by Springer in the LNCS series. IMPORTANT DATES Main Conference (Research and Industry Papers) • Abstract submission: March 14, 2025 • Paper submission: March 21, 2025 • Notification: May 9, 2025 • Camera-ready paper: June 23, 2025 Tools & Demos • Abstract submission: May 16, 2025 • Paper submission: May 23, 2025 • Notification: June 20, 2025 • Camera-ready paper: June 27, 2025 Workshops • Workshop proposals: February 15, 2025 • Workshop proposals notification: March 7, 2025 • Workshop papers abstracts: May 12, 2025 • Workshop papers submission: May 19, 2025 • Workshop papers notification: June 20, 2025 • Workshop papers camera-ready: June 27, 2025 • Workshop dates: September 15-16, 2025 Early/Author registration for all accepted contributions: June 27, 2025 All dates are 23:59h AoE (Anywhere on Earth). ORGANISATION General Chairs • Cesare Pautasso, University of Lugano, Switzerland • Vasilios Andrikopoulos, University of Groeningen, The Netherlands Program Co-Chairs • Nour Ali, Brunel University London, UK • Jacopo Soldani, University of Pisa, Pisa Tools & Demos Co-Chairs • Mohamed Soliman, Heinz Nixdorf Institut, Paderborn University, Germany • Use Zdun, University of Vienna, Austria Workshop Co-Chairs • Tommi Mikkonen, University of Jyvaskyla, Finland • Jennifer Perez, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain