| name | fse-review-process |
| description | Use when reasoning about how an ESEC/FSE research submission is evaluated, covering double-anonymous "heavy" review, the at-least-three-reviewer PC model, the Accept / Major Revision / Reject decision categories, the journal-style revise-and-resubmit round of PACMSE, and how FSE's process differs from ICSE's cycles and ISSTA's rounds. |
FSE Review Process
Model the pipeline before interpreting any single review. FSE's process is journal-style:
papers are PACMSE articles, and Major Revision is a first-class decision, not a soft rejection.
The most consequential mental shift for authors arriving from a plain accept/reject conference is
that a Major Revision is a genuine revise-and-resubmit round with the same reviewers, closer to a
journal R&R than to a rebuttal.
Process model
- Submission and review run on HotCRP with heavy double-anonymity: identities are hidden
through all reviewing and discussion, and any Major Revision response must itself be anonymous.
- Each paper is read by at least three program-committee members (FSE 2027 call), who weigh
the significance of the SE contribution, soundness of the method, quality and honesty of the
empirical evidence, threats-to-validity reasoning, clarity, and open-science support.
- First decisions fall into Accept, Major Revision, or Reject. A Major Revision is
re-reviewed — generally by the original reviewers — against the revision and its response letter.
- Accepted papers publish in PACMSE, so final metadata, camera-ready compliance, and artifact
follow-through matter as much as the initial verdict.
Reading a decision against the categories
| Decision | What it means | Author move |
|---|
| Accept | Contribution and evidence hold; minor polish only | Camera-ready + artifact; do not reopen scope |
| Major Revision | Repairable gaps: missing analysis, unclear construct, a needed baseline | Treat as an R&R: make or explicitly decline every request, evidenced |
| Reject | Structural: wrong population, no credible baseline, thin contribution | Reframe or reroute (ICSE/ASE/ISSTA or a journal), do not lightly resubmit unchanged |
The strategic reading: write the initial submission so that whatever is weakest is revisable in
a revision round (an analysis you can add, a threat you can bound) rather than structural (a
study design you cannot redo in weeks). The process is built to reward repairable papers.
How FSE differs from its siblings
- vs. ICSE: ICSE has run its own cycle structure (a two-cycle model in some years, single in
others) with an Accept/Major-Revision/Reject flavor too, but on the IEEE side. FSE's identity is
the PACMSE journal framing and the SIGSOFT open-science defaults. Never assume the two share
a calendar or template.
- vs. ISSTA: ISSTA has used multi-round reviewing within a cycle; FSE's revise-and-resubmit is
a decision-driven round (you revise because you were told to), not a scheduled second read of
every paper.
- vs. the FSE 2024 dual-deadline year: FSE once let a Major Revision resubmit to a later
deadline within the same review year. Recent calls advertise a single annual deadline with the
revision round inside it — confirm the current cadence rather than carrying either forward.
Who reads you
Expect three SE-empiricist reviewers. They look for the threats-to-validity section, check whether
claims outrun evidence, ask whether subjects and baselines are real and fair, and often open the
artifact. Because FSE spans techniques, empirical studies, and human factors, a paper is usually
matched to reviewers from its own subarea — vague method descriptions get caught, not skimmed.
Where author leverage actually exists
[Before submission] topic tags -> reviewer pool (largest lever)
[Initial reviews] factual corrections, targeted evidence, clarifying misreadings
[Major Revision] the strongest lever: a tracked-change revision + point-by-point,
anonymous response letter re-read by the same reviewers
[After reject] no appeal; reroute to a sibling flagship or an SE journal
A response moves borderline papers when it corrects a factual misreading or supplies a number a
reviewer said was missing; it does not move papers when it argues taste. In a Major Revision,
silent omissions — a requested change neither made nor explicitly declined with a reason — are
what turn the second read into a rejection.
Reading a review packet
Weight reviews before answering. A review that cites your section numbers, tables, and threats was
read closely and will be read closely again in the revision round — its author is your likely
advocate if the response holds. A review that discusses only novelty has left soundness and
verifiability to the others; answer each reviewer on the axis they raised. Reviewers often end with
an explicit question list; the revision is scored heavily on whether each question got a direct,
evidenced answer.
Misreadings to avoid
- Treating Major Revision as a guaranteed accept — the second read is real; budget the
revision window like a deadline.
- Treating the response as a debate — the PC discussion decides; your text is evidence for an
advocate, not a closing argument.
- Assuming unanimity is required — a champion with answers to the other reviews can carry a
paper through the discussion.
- Projecting last year's cadence — deadline count and revision timing are decided per edition.
Output format
[Process stage] pre-submission / awaiting reviews / major revision / final / accepted
[Decision category] accept / major revision / reject, with the criterion driving it
[Criterion map] each review point -> significance | soundness | evidence | threats | clarity | open-science
[Leverage plan] the next-stage action that can actually change the outcome
[Forbidden moves] identity leak (incl. in the response letter) / unsupported new claims
