Call for Papers ― EMSE Special Issue on “Software Security Testing (SECUTE)”

A special issue of the Empirical Software Engineering Journal. http://www.springer.com/computer/swe/journal/10664

Editors of the Special Issue

• Valeria Pontillo, Gran Sasso Science Institute, L’Aquila, Italy
• Emanuele Iannone, Hamburg University of Technology, Hamburg, Germany
• Coen De Roover, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Bruxelles, Belgium
• Riccardo Scandariato, Hamburg University of Technology, Hamburg, Germany

Contacts

• Valeria Pontillo. valeria.pontillo@gssi.it
• Emanuele Iannone, emanuele.iannone@tuhh.de
• Coen De Roover, coen.de.roover@vub.be
• Riccardo Scandariato, scandariato@tuhh.de

Description of the Special Issue

This special issue of Empirical Software Engineering provides researchers and practitioners with a venue to present insights, innovations, and empirical advances in software security testing. As software systems become increasingly complex and interconnected, ensuring their security throughout the software lifecycle has become a fundamental challenge. The special issue aims to advance the state of the art by (1) improving the understanding of software security testing through the identification of key concepts, challenges, and research opportunities; (2) fostering the development of novel techniques and methods for creating, managing, automating, and evolving security test cases; and (3) providing rigorous empirical evidence on the applicability and effectiveness of existing security testing techniques, methods, tools, and practices.

Submitted papers must have a strong empirical basis/component to be eligible for this special issue. Empirical Software Engineering (http://link.springer.com/journal/10664) provides a forum for applied software engineering research with a strong empirical component and a venue for publishing empirical results relevant to researchers and practitioners. In addition to the open call for papers, authors with an accepted paper to SECUTE 2026 (https://conf.researchr.org/home/ase-2026/secute-2026) are invited to submit extended versions of their work. To comply with the goals of a journal publication, we are asking to revise and substantially extend original SECUTE 2026 papers. Some possible extensions can include additional practical applications determined through case studies or experiments, additional empirical validation, systematic comparisons with other approaches, or a sound theoretical foundation. Revised papers should explicitly explain how they extend the original SECUTE 2026 papers.

All submissions will be reviewed using the Empirical Software Engineering Journal standards and undergo a rigorous review process. Reviews of extended papers may include reviewers of the SECUTE 2026 paper and new reviewers. The guest editors of the special issue are not permitted to submit.

Submitted papers should present original, unpublished work relevant to one of the topics of the Special Issue. All submitted papers will be evaluated on the basis of relevance, significance of contribution, technical quality, scholarship, and quality of presentation, by at least two independent reviewers. The journal’s policy is that no submission, or substantially overlapping submission, be published or under review at another journal or conference at any time during the review process.

Submission Topics

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Automated generation of security test cases.
• Maintenance and evolution of security test cases.
• Dynamic vulnerability reproduction and exploitation.
• Benchmarking and empirical evaluation of security testing approaches.
• Creation and curation of datasets, benchmarks, and repositories for security testing.
• Documentation, summarization, and comprehension of security test cases.
• Integration of security testing into development workflows and CI/CD pipelines.
• Security testing for third-party vulnerabilities and software supply chain security.
• Security testing of non-source artifacts, such as Infrastructure-as-Code scripts.
• Empirical studies on the effectiveness and adoption of security testing in practice.
• User studies investigating the experiences of software engineers performing security testing activities.
• Case studies conducted in industrial and real-world software development contexts.
• Lessons learned, challenges, and best practices related to software security testing.
• Novel automated tools, techniques, and frameworks supporting software security testing.

Schedule

Submission Deadline: November 30, 2026 (AoE)

Submission Instructions

Papers should be submitted through the Empirical Software Engineering editorial manager website (http://www.editorialmanager.com/emse/) as follows (1) select “Research Papers” and (2) later on the Additional Information page: Answer “Yes” to “Does this paper belong to a special issue?” and select “SECUTE 2024” for “Please select the issue your manuscript belongs to”. For formatting guidelines as well as submission instructions, visit http://www.springer.com/computer/swe/journal/10664?detailsPage=pltci_2530593