The relevant topics include, but are not restricted to, the following:

• New ideas pertaining to empirical evaluation of software engineering technologies, methods, and tools, e.g., transferring and applying empirical methods from other disciplines to empirical software engineering

• Infrastructures and novel techniques/tools for supporting any phase of empirical studies

• Empirical studies using qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods

• Cross- and multi-disciplinary methods and studies

• Experiments and quasi-experiments

• Case studies, action-research, and field studies

• Survey research

• Systematic literature reviews and mapping studies

• Meta-analysis, qualitative and quantitative synthesis of studies

• Replication of empirical studies and families of studies

• Empirically-based decision making

• Evaluation and comparison of techniques and models

• Development and evaluation of empirical prediction systems or software estimation models

• Mining software engineering repositories

• Modeling, measuring, and assessing product and/or process quality

• Simulation-based studies in software engineering

• Assessing the benefits / costs associated with using certain development technologies

• Industrial experience, Software project experience, and knowledge management

• Software technology transfer to the industry