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A Closer Look into Collaborative Publishing at Software-Engineering Conferences

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Book cover Linking Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries (TPDL 2022)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 13541))

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Abstract

Computer science and particularly software engineering is a rapidly evolving research discipline increasingly conducted by large, collaborative teams. Unfortunately, there is little research on the underlying publication activity and collaboration patterns in software engineering. To address this gap, we study two properties of research collaborations in software engineering: the number of collaborators (i.e., authors of a paper) and their academic age (i.e., their experience of working in research). More precisely, we investigate collaborations for papers published at all main tracks of three top-level software-engineering conferences (i.e., ASE, ESEC/FSE, ICSE) and one top-level reference conference (i.e., JCDL), including a total of 5,188 papers and the corresponding 8,730 unique authors. Our results indicate that collaboration is more prevalent now than ever before, with a decline in the proportion of researchers who contribute single-author papers. Moreover, our analysis revealed that the ideal team size seems to range from two to four researchers, and that junior researchers seem to need the support of more experienced co-authors to get published at such top-level conferences. Ultimately, our goal is to understand how collaborations in software engineering have evolved and impact different researchers (e.g., newcomers, juniors), helping to highlight potential impediments and consequent improvements regarding the quality of research, collaborations, and mentoring.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6824306.

  2. 2.

    https://dblp.uni-trier.de/.

  3. 3.

    https://dl.acm.org/proceedings.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Otto-von-Guericke University, Magdeburg, Germany

    Rand Alchokr, Yusra Shakeel & Gunter Saake

  2. Ruhr-University, Bochum, Germany

    Jacob Krüger

  3. Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Yusra Shakeel

  4. Harz University and METOP GmbH, Wernigerode, Germany

    Thomas Leich

Authors
  1. Rand Alchokr
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  2. Jacob Krüger
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  3. Yusra Shakeel
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  4. Gunter Saake
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  5. Thomas Leich
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rand Alchokr .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Padua, Padua, Italy

    Gianmaria Silvello

  2. Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Oscar Corcho

  3. CNR-ISTI – National Research Council, Pisa, Italy

    Paolo Manghi

  4. University of Padua, Padua, Italy

    Giorgio Maria Di Nunzio

  5. Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden

    Koraljka Golub

  6. University of Padua, Padua, Italy

    Nicola Ferro

  7. Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy

    Antonella Poggi

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Alchokr, R., Krüger, J., Shakeel, Y., Saake, G., Leich, T. (2022). A Closer Look into Collaborative Publishing at Software-Engineering Conferences. In: Silvello, G., et al. Linking Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries. TPDL 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13541. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16802-4_38

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16802-4_38

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-16801-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-16802-4

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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