Software Section

The aim of the Software Section is to incentivise and reward the maturing of model-based software engineering tools with a research pedigree by providing a forum for papers describing such tools, and which focus on the capabilities of the tools themselves rather than on the underpinning theory or their experimental evaluation.

The motivation behind the Section is that while the practical value of usable and robust software engineering tools is universally acknowledged, software engineering researchers often only produce proof-of-concept prototypes which are hardly usable outside of the lab/team that developed them. This hinders knowledge transfer between researchers and practitioners, and limits the impact of the underpinning research.

Unlike a more traditional journal paper, Software Section papers are not expected to include results of experimental evaluation. However, it is required that the underpinning technologies of the tools they describe either

(1) have an established user community, or
(2) have been already validated through peer review.

The latter needs to be clearly demonstrated by the authors by providing references to supporting papers already published in reputable peer-review outlets.

For example, if a paper describes an editor for a model transformation language with a research pedigree, the authors will need to cite at least one publication in a reputable conference/journal that discusses the novel aspects of the said transformation language. On the other hand, if the paper describes an editor for a standard transformation language (e.g. OMG’s QVTr), or a port of a widely-used framework such as the Eclipse Modeling Framework to a different programming language (e.g. Python, Swift), no such evidence is required.

To qualify for publication in the Software Section of JOT, papers need to provide

A link to an easy-to-install binary distribution of the tool (users should not need to obtain/compile the source code to run the tool). The link should be hosted in a stable location, preferably in a recognised research artifact repository (e.g. Zenodo from CERN, or a university's institutional artifact repository).
Instructions for installing the tool and any prerequisites.
At least two examples that demonstrate the use of the tool, with accompanying screenshots where applicable.
A link to an issue tracker for bug reports and enhancement requests.

During the peer-review process, reviewers will be asked to download the binary distribution and reproduce the examples described in the paper. In their reviews, beyond enhancements to the paper itself, reviewers can also request minor enhancements that improve the user experience offered by the tool.

Software related manuscript can be submitted via email to the Software Section Editors (Dimitris Kolovos, Antonio Garcia-Dominguez)