Scholarly Communication

Listen to this interview of Ionut Predoaia, Research Fellow, and also, Antonio García-Domínguez, Senior Lecturer — both at the University of York, UK. We talk about their coauthored paper Streamlining the Development of Hybrid Graphical-Textual Model Editors for Domain-Specific Languages (ECMFA 2023). Antonio García-Domínguez : "I think that the limitations in any work are really opportunities for follow-up research. I mean, essentially, you are identifying for the reader, 'Look, these are the bits that we've not handled just yet — and obviously, we will likely be the first ones to try to tackle that' — but, you know, there's no reason why really any other researcher in the community wouldn't attempt to tackle that from their angle or for their research purposes. They may have the better idea even, right." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Zejun Zhang, Research Scientist, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. We talk about her coauthored paper Hard to Read and Understand Pythonic Idioms? DeIdiom and Explain Them in Non-Idiomatic Equivalent Code (ICSE 2024). Zejun Zhang : "Following my presentation of the paper at ICSE, it was interesting. I mean, there was, first off, a lot of positive response, but then some people in the audience were asking why we would research the readability of Pythonic idioms, and also, why we would translate those idioms into non-idiomatic code. Now, these questions were coming in relation to our previous work on idiomatic code. Nonetheless, the effect for me was that, for future work, we need to further explore this line of the research and really explain Pythonic idioms so that developers can deeply understand them." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Roberto Verdecchia, Assistant Professor, University of Florence, Italy; and also, Per Runeson, Professor, Lund University, Sweden. We talk about their coauthored papers Threats to Validity in Software Engineering Research: A Critical Reflection (IST 2023) and Threats to Validity in Software Engineering — hypocritical paper section or essential analysis? (ESEM 2024). Per Runeson : "I think what we've seen in our work here on threats to validity — and it was certainly our intention in conducting it in the first place — is, to have the researcher take the initiative and really adopt a reflective attitude. Because, research is not only about investigating facts and testing hypotheses. It's also about reflecting on the learning process, and it's about the extent to which you can trust what you've learned in doing that research, but also it's about the way forward from there, that is, how do we take the work forward into the future." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Nan Jiang, PhD candidate, and Lin Tan, Professor — both at Purdue University. We talk about their coauthored paper Impact of Code Language Models on Automated Program Repair (ICSE 2023). Lin Tan : "In my research group, the procedure in every project is to write the Introduction early — very early, in fact. It's the first section I have my researchers think about, actually. Because, you know, a lot of people will imagine that the approach section is where you begin — basically, to write exactly what it is that you did. But the advantage of beginning at the Introduction is that you clarify the contributions, you define the problem and also understand well your reason for tackling it. So, typically some three months before the deadline, I have my researchers really start sketching the Introduction in the manuscript." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Jenny Liang, PhD student, Carnegie Mellon University. We talk about her coauthored paper A Qualitative Study on the Implementation Design Decisions of Developers (ICSE 2023). Jenny Liang : "When it comes to selecting specific results or codes, I like to think about it in terms of what was surprising. So, maybe it's not so surprising that people think about requirements when making these implementation design decisions — and that's why we didn't talk about that. But what will be interesting, for example, is the fact that they think about future requirements that might come down the pipeline — and so, that's why we selected that. So, that is one heuristic, for me, basically: know what the prior literature is, know what the relevant community believe — and then cater to that." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Yun Peng, Research Associate, Chinese University of Hong Kong, China; and also, Cuiyun Gao, Associate Professor, Harbin Institute of Technology, China. We talk about their coauthored paper Static Inference Meets Deep Learning: A Hybrid Type Inference Approach for Python (ICSE 2022). Yun Peng : "And I remember the reviewers at ICSE commenting how they never imagined solving the type-inference problem in just this way. So, for me, the takeaway here, is: When we are conducting research or writing a paper or solving a technical problem, we do well to look into life and draw inspiration from there to do the work — because I know we can be greatly inspired by the things just around us in our everyday lives." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Sterre van Breukelen, engineer, Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands; and Ann Barcomb, Assistant Professor, University of Calgary, Canada; and Sebastian Baltes, Full Professor, University of Bayreuth, Germany; and Alexander Serebrenik, Full Professor, Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands. We talk about their coauthored paper "STILL AROUND": Experiences and Survival Strategies of Veteran Women Software Developers (ICSE 2023). Alexander Serebrenik : "It's a typical criticism of any human-factors study in software engineering, namely: What makes software engineers any different than any other human being — could a study have been conducted, say, with nurses or judges or whichever other professional category you can imagine. Therefore, in this paper "STILL AROUND" it was crucial for us to present clearly in the Introduction what it is that makes software engineers somehow special with respect to gender and age. Because otherwise, we would have struggled to convince researchers to devote any attention to the topic." Link to paper that Alexander and Sebastian refer to as one of the seeds for this paper, "STILL AROUND" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Roberto Verdecchia, Assistant Professor, University of Florence, Italy; and also, Luís Cruz, Assistant Professor, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands. We talk about their coauthored paper A systematic review of Green AI (WIREs Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery 2023). Luís Cruz : "Sometimes, especially in systematic studies, we are so worried about the process that we forget about the goals of why we're doing this. That means, we can end up reporting things just because they are part of the process — you know, we feel a need to say something about all that — but really, that way of reporting just produces a review that's a big bulk of highly systematic outputs, but not necessarily a review with relevant and useful findings." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Nicholas Boucher, PhD, Department of Computer Science and Technology, Cambridge University, UK. We talk about his coauthored paper Bad Characters: Imperceptible NLP Attacks (SP 2022) — and check out, too, Nicholas's presentation of the paper here. Nicholas Boucher: "Maybe what is interesting about the security domain is that, oftentimes, in these attack papers, you start with a hypothesis, but it's an hypothesis already informed by some result you've observed in the wild — so, you've seen some sort of system — or, to be concrete, in our case, we saw people switching between alphabets on keyboards, and that enabled us to notice how such an action could interact with the language models quickly growing in popularity — and it is at that point that a security researcher will say, 'Wow, I have something here. I know that this is a vulnerability.' But then the questioning begins, like, how to frame the vulnerability, that is, how to turn one specific example (which the researcher has a strong feeling really is a vulnerability) and uplevel it to something larger. Because that is when, in my opinion, the researcher's starting to ask very fruitful questions." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Floris Gorter, PhD student, and Cristiano Giuffrida, Associate Professor — both at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands. We talk about their coauthored paper Sticky Tags: Efficient and Deterministic Spatial Memory Error Mitigation using Persistent Memory Tags (SP 2024). Cristiano Giuffrida : "But apart from applying for positions on PCs, early-career researchers can also learn the linguistic norms of their community by reading. Good researchers just read a lot of papers — papers from across their broader communities, and especially papers from the top venues where the communities publish. Because by doing that, you learn the language — you start seeing and understanding the patterns in communication. Like, 'Oh, people write the Introduction like this' — you know, there's a problem statement, and there's emphasis placed on this and that, and there are certain keywords that convey certain drifts. So, you begin picking up the language." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Alfonso de la Vega, Assistant Professor, Software Engineering and Real-Time Group, University of Cantabria, Spain. We talk about his coauthored paper FLEXMI: a generic and modular textual syntax for domain-specific modelling (SOSYM 2023). Alfonso de la Vega : "Yeah, we never really get the whole story in just the paper that presents the tool. There is so much work behind that — getting software that's good enough and also valid, so that it supports a research article, and then from there, to get to the point where the software is used in industry (as Epsilon is used) — that takes a lot of added work, a lot of cross-institute collaboration, a lot of dedication." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Amir Mir, PhD candidate, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands; and of Sebastian Proksch, Assistant Professor, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands; and also of Georgios Gousios, Head of Research, Endor Labs. We talk about their coauthored paper Type4Py: Practical Deep Similarity Learning-Based Type Inference for Python (ICSE 2022). Georgios Gousios : "Yes, we submitted and resubmitted this paper many times, but before people think this is a case of paper engineering — you know, increasing publication chances by satisfying reviewers — the truth of the matter is that the actual core content of this paper was and is topnotch — and that's not something you see with all papers. I mean, I myself have written papers that were good, sure, but not near as novel as this one, Type4Py. So, in order to get to ICSE, like we have here, the core content needs to be great, and only then, on top of that, can you begin to massage the message and so on." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Mathé Hertogh, PhD student, and Cristiano Giuffrida, Associate Professor — both in the Department of Computer Science, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands. We talk about their coauthored paper Leaky Address Masking: Exploiting Unmasked Spectre Gadgets with Noncanonical Address Translation (SP 2024). Cristiano Giuffrida : "In security research and AI research — in fact, in AI it's happening even more — there are so many groups, so many researchers working on similar problems, that as a result, we have a lot of papers — a lot of papers being submitting and published at the venues, a lot of papers being constantly put online, for example, on arXiv — so that, all in all, the pressure on researchers to keep up is very high — we just need to read more and more and more papers. So, in answer to this, there is also a growing trend in the writing in papers, and this is, to ensure that the reader can get the maximum amount of information in as little time as possible." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Bran Selic, President and Founder, Malina Software Corporation, Canada. We talk about publishing at ECMFA — that is, at the European Conference on Modelling Foundations and Applications. Bran Selic : "My experience in both industry and academia has taught me that most innovation actually comes from industry, because industry practitioners live in a competitive environment: it's, advance the state-of-the-art, or die. This forces practitioners to innovate in very pragmatic ways, meaning, to innovate with their products and in their domains. So, that is why I see the role of conferences like ECMFA as serving as a place where researchers can explore how innovations might be generalized, systematized, and ultimately, more clearly understood." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Tim Menzies, Editor in Chief, Automated Software Engineering, and also, Full Professor, Computer Science, North Carolina State University. We talk about academic venues that target an industry audience, and we talk about one of his papers at just such a venue, Shockingly Simple: "Keys" for Better AI for SE (SW 2021). Tim Menzies : "Researchers in SE should study their profession and their venues as much as they study their research. There are linguistic conventions in how we represent ideas — and you can present the same ideas, the same challenges, the same results in different formats so that these are acceptable to different audiences. The point is, you’re allowed to say what you want to say — only, you need to pay that forum the courtesy of studying how they speak and understand things." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Soheil Khodayari, researcher at CISPA, and Giancarlo Pellegrino, faculty also at CISPA — the Helmholtz Center for Information Security, Germany. We talk about their coauthored paper The Great Request Robbery: An Empirical Study of Client-side Request Hijacking Vulnerabilities on the Web (SP 2024). Giancarlo Pellegrino : "One the challenges here we certainly discussed a lot was, How do we tell our reader what's new in this work? And so, for example, in section 9, our discussion and conclusion — we begin at the current state, that is, at the things our reader knows right now, before our paper has become part of common knowledge. Well, in our case, that knowledge was client-side CSFR, because it was that only instance of request hijacking really known of, and so we begin there." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Christof Ebert, managing director, Vector Consulting Services, Germany; and also, member on the Editorial Boards of IEEE Software and Journal of Systems and Software. We talk about the gap between academia and industry — and we talk, too, about how to bridge that gap. Christof Ebert : "As in all scientific research, we software engineers need, too, the basic research. But I'd say a distinguishing feature of our field is the trigger point. For example, the trigger point for search algorithms becoming a discipline — well, that was the outcome, really, of Google. It wasn't, primarily, a phenomenon of any university — of course, the inventors of Google came from university backgrounds, but it was the founding of the company that actually innovated the whole search discipline. And this sort of this just happens again and again in computing and computer science." This interview is a collaboration between the NBN and the Journal of Systems and Software. Link to IEEE Software From Idea to Impact Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Jiaxun Cao, PhD Student, Department of Computer Science, Duke University. We talk about her coauthored paper Understanding Parents’ Perceptions and Practices Toward Children’s Security and Privacy in Virtual Reality (SP 2024). Download this screenshot and this screenshot of the paper. In the screenshots, you see red highlighting that shows the purposes for citing a particular work. For example, in Related Work, the authors aim to lead their reader to the relevant background knowledge (e.g., by saying, “Previous studies have collectively pointed out that…). On the other hand, in the Discussion, the authors aim at drawing together all of that knowledge and the knowledge this study now creates (e.g., by saying, “We believe this phenomenon may be attributed to…”). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this first episode of a three-part series called Voices, we’re listening to the sound of American football—specifically the role of voices in the NFL. We start with a rather quirky story from NFL history that speaks to how the voice intersects with our ideologies around both disability and gender. It’s about a player whose voice stopped working the way it once did, revealing that football isn’t just a competition between teams on the gridiron—it’s a competition of audibility and vocal toughness. And like the rest of our Voices series, it opens up fascinating questions about what a voice actually is, what it does, and what it means, to us and to those around us. Our guest is Travis Vogan, a prolific sports media scholar at the University of Iowa. Vogan has written books on ABC Sports, ESPN, boxing movies, and those “voice of God” NFL Films. We also hear briefly from sound scholar Jonathan Sterne, who will feature prominently in an upcoming episode of this Voices series. Some of this episode is based on the article “The 12th Man: Fan Noise in the Contemporary NFL,” published in Popular Communication by Mack Hagood and Travis Vogan in 2016. If you don’t have institutional access, you can also find the PDF here. Other things heard or mentioned in this episode: “The Wild Story of the 49ers, Steve DeBerg, and a Shoulder-Pad Speaker System,” by Eric Branch, San Francisco Chronicle, September 29, 2020. “The UNBELIEVABLE Story of Steve DeBerg’s Loudspeaker Shoulder Pads,” by the Pick Six Podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Rashina Hoda, Professor of Software Engineering, Monash University, Australia. We talk about Rashina's pioneering work in the methodology called socio-technical grounded theory. Rashina Hoda : "In terms of selecting reviewers, it's important to talk not just about topic alignment but also crucially, about methodology alignment as well. Because that is just so important for any reviewer to be able to do justice to the work in front of them." Link to Rashina's book — the place to start if you want to do STGT in your own research Link to Rashina's TSE paper — the source to cite if your research uses STGT Link to Rashina's Alt+Pubs — alternative publications beyond the peer-reviewed research paper Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Christoph Treude, Open Science Editor at the Journal of Systems and Software, and also Associate Professor of Computer Science, Singapore Management University, Singapore. Christoph Treude : "One good heuristic for deciding whether the research is reproducible is this: Have the authors given others a fair chance at reproducing the results? Because, for me now, particularly in my role as Open Science Editor, I feel that the papers I push back on are the ones where the authors don't even given others a chance to reproduce the results. So, I am not saying that reproducibility has to happen at the push of a button. Of course that would be great. But I also acknowledge that the incentives we have in place now in research publishing and in the academic career do not really favor that approach. On the other hand, if researchers aren't even being given a chance at reproducing something because the data simply aren't available or the algorithm isn't available or there's absolutely no documentation — well then, that is just no good, and it is the kind of scenario where I, as Open Science Editor, will push back on the paper." This interview is a collaboration between the NBN and the Journal of Systems and Software. Link to FSE-C paper about Reproducibility Debt Link to JJS paper about paper links to GitHub Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Keila Lima, PhD candidate, Department of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering and Mathematical Sciences at the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Norway. We talk about her coauthored paper A Data-Flow Oriented Software Architecture for Heterogeneous Marine Data Streams (ICSA 2024). Download this screenshot of the paper. In the screenshot, you see green highlighting that picks out the function word which divides the two parts of this work: one, the architecture developed, and two, the environment where it's been developed. But why in that order? Why not: Heterogeneous marine data steams using a data-flow oriented software architecture? The answer here is audience, because ICSA is a conference for software architecture, and this team of authors have the contribution of a new architecture here. Therefore, the Title puts the topic first (data-flow oriented software architecture), then adding more about that topic after (heterogeneous marine data streams). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Omer Akgul, postdoctoral researcher, CyLab, Carnegie Mellon University. We talk about his coauthored paper Investigating Influencer VPN Ads on YouTube (SP 2022). Download this screenshot of the paper. In the screenshot, you see yellow highlighting that continues the meso-level argumentation of the Introduction. We, the readers, are now brought inside of one particular kind of ad on YouTube — and crucially, as well, we are told explicitly why those ads in particular. After reading this, we have no further doubt or concern as to the authors' selection of data. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Justus Bogner, Assistant Professor, Software and Sustainability Group, Vrije Universiteit, Netherlands. We talk about his coauthored papers Do RESTful API design rules have an impact on the understandability of Web APIs? (EMSE 2023) and RESTRuler: Towards Automatically Identifying Violations of RESTful Design Rules in Web APIs (ICSA 2024). Download this screenshot of the ICSA paper. In the screenshot, you see blue highlighting that matches content portrayed by Figure 1 as it's presented in the running text. There is definitely a lot to see, but even more that the writing goes into describing and explaining. For that reason, Justus and his coauthors have chosen to do that work using both figure and text. It is the interaction here between the two that makes their study design palpable and visual — a huge help to the reader trying to appreciate just how they have arrived at these three RQs! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Gilles Perrouin, FNRS Research Associate, University of Namur, Belgium. We talk about the community focused around research in systems variability. Gilles Perrouin : "If a community want a research topic to live — even thrive — over time, then it's a must that new PhD students be attracted to that research.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Markus Funke, PhD Candidate in the Software and Sustainability Group, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands. We talk about his coauthored paper Carving Sustainability into Architecture Knowledge Practice (ECSA 2023). Markus Funke : "I find that one excellent way for avoiding unnecessary repetition in the text is to use the opening of each section or subsection to state plainly what you're going to do and why you’re going to do it that way — because then you can just get going and do that, without reexplaining and restating things again and again." Link here to the Digital Sustainability Center Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Association of University Presses (AUPresses), a global organization of 161 mission-driven publishers, is proud to announce a collection of 123 books, journals, and projects that embody the #StepUP theme of this year’s University Press Week, happening Nov. 11 to 15. The featured publications, curated by AUPresses members in 12 countries, present thought-provoking concepts, new points of view, and inspiring ideas, many of which advocate for social change. For a complete list of UP Week events, see here For the gallery of 103 publications, see here To work at a university press, see here Anthony Cond is director of Liverpool University Press and president of the Association of University Presses Caleb Zakarin is editor at the New Books Network Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Michael Felderer, Director of the Institute of Software Technology, German Aerospace Center; and also, Professor of Computer Science, University of Cologne, Germany. We talk about those interdependencies between science and engineering which make the base of software research. Michael Felderer : "When preparing your manuscript for submission, try to imagine reviewers’ expectations — really imagine, for example, what you would expect if you were the reviewer. So ask, what will help you understand this work, what will increase your appreciation of the results or interpretation. Consider, too, your own busy schedule — because your reviewers will be at least as busy as you are. Make the job easier of understanding key ideas, contributions, technical content. It’s not about changing the work, but instead, about framing it all in a clear and usable way.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Javier Cámara and Lola Burgueño — both Associate Professors, ITIS Software, University of Málaga, Spain. We talk about their coauthored paper On the assessment of generative AI in modeling tasks: an experience report with ChatGPT and UML (SoSyM 2023). Lola Burgueño : "Yes, we're definitely pleased that we went for a timely piece like the Expert Voice at SoSyM — because after seeing how we've reached people and seeing, too, how people are citing the paper, we think we chose the right type of text, the right tone in the writing — because in these ways, we were enabled to help people to understand a little bit more about how to use and about when to use LLMs in modeling tasks." Link to other Expert Voice mentioned in the interview: Towards standardized benchmarks of LLMs in software modeling tasks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Georgios Bouloukakis, Associate Professor at Télécom SudParis / Institut Polytechnique de Paris, France. We talk about the community in middleware systems research, and in particular, about the distinguishing marks of a top contribution in that field. Georgios Bouloukakis : "You know, what’s so impressive about the PerCom conference and all such high-quality conferences — it’s this whole set of people, the PC members and the organizing committee — everyone working collectively for the best result. And for me, personally, I find this hugely motivating, you know, to participate in conference committees.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Paul Gazzillo, Associate Professor of Computer Science, University of Central Florida. We talk about peer reviewing at conferences versus journals, and we talk about how different venues define research problems differently. Paul Gazzillo : "One important purpose of scientific publication is novel contributions. And so, applying logic to that, you can disprove that something's a contribution by demonstrating that it's unsound. But as to novelty — well, it's very hard to make a quantifiable measure of that. But you can, to some extent, qualitatively measure novelty, because if you know there's a whole bunch of work in that area, well then, from there you can estimate a qualitative distance between that work and the contribution the authors are claiming to make. That should allow you to decide the amount of real novelty in a manuscript." Link to talk by Simon Peyton-Jones about writing papers Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Gabriela Michelon, Software Engineer and Project Manager for AI-driven Product Development at Marquardt Group, Germany. We talk about the career path for software engineers, and we talk, too, about how the gap might be closed between research and practice. Gabriela Michelon : "When a company has a research program for PhDs, it’s an empowered way of showing just how the company values the research and as well, researcher efforts. That way, the company really shows how they care about society and about the advancement of research, perhaps even beyond their own market interest and goals.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Who controls what is taught in American universities – professors or politicians? The answer is far from clear but suddenly urgent. Unprecedented efforts are now underway to restrict what ideas can be promoted and discussed in university classrooms. Professors at public universities have long assumed that their freedom to teach is unassailable and that there were firm constitutional protections shielding them from political interventions. Those assumptions might always have been more hopeful than sound. A battle over the control of the university classroom is now brewing, and the courts will be called upon to establish clearer guidelines as to what – if any – limits legislatures might have in dictating what is taught in public universities. In You Can't Teach That!: The Battle over University Classrooms (Polity Press, 2024), Keith Whittington argues that the First Amendment imposes meaningful limits on how government officials can restrict the ideas discussed on university campuses. In clear and accessible prose, he illuminates the legal status of academic freedom in the United States and shows how existing constitutional doctrine can be deployed to protect unbridled free inquiry. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Alessio Bucaioni, Associate Professor, Mälardalen University, Sweden. We talk about his coauthored paper Continuous Conformance of Software Architectures (ICSA 2024). Alessio Bucaioni : "Yeah, I agree: A plethora of definitions for the same thing or concept may very well slow down progress in the research. And actually, I think that this issue is peculiar to software engineering, perhaps computer science more generally — because if you think about the branches of science, say, mathematics or physics, there it is not very common that you have plethora of definitions. You typically have things that are very well defined, with theorems and the definitions proven.” Writing guide which Alessio refers to during our conversation: They Say / I Say Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Alessio Bucaioni, Associate Professor, Mälardalen University, Sweden. We talk about his coauthored paper Technical Architectures for Automotive Systems (ICSA 2020). Alessio Bucaioni : "For Conclusion sections, I like to cater to a reader approaching our paper who’s pressed for time. So, that means, I want to enable this reader to understand our work just by reading the Abstract, the Introduction, and the Conclusion. So, I try to get the Conclusion to bond well with the Abstract and the Introduction while at the same time adding extra information to the content in the Conclusion, for example, emphasizing even further the relevance of a particular contribution.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Enxhi Ferko, PhD student, and Alessio Bucaioni, Associate Professor — both at Mälardalen University, Sweden. We talk about their coauthored paper Standardisation in Digital Twin Architectures in Manufacturing (ICSA 2023). Enxhi Ferko : "What really pleases me about this study is, sure, our contributions have proven interesting and useful to both academics and practitioners. But we were happy to reach, as well, even a third group of stakeholders, namely, the people involved in this particular standardization body. And that’s because this ISO standard is quite new, and so, it’s expected to evolve in an iterative feedback process, of which now our work is forming a constructive part!” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Dimitrios Tsoukalas, Postdoctoral Researcher at the Information Technologies Institute of the Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH), Greece; and Alexander Chatzigeorgiou, Professor and Vice Rector, University of Macedonia, Greece. We talk about their two coauthored papers, Machine Learning for Technical Debt Identification, and Local and Global Explainability for Technical Debt Identification. Alexander Chatzigeorgiou : "I think that it is important in every research endeavor — regardless of whether or not the outcome is what you expected at the start — to outline all steps of the journey for the reader. Because, you can’t know, there might be something in there that’s intriguing for someone, something that inspires further research in some other domain — what I mean to say is, the problem which you (the authors) have decided is unfeasible may actually have an answer which some reader can provide from their own area of expertise.” Link to Tsoukalas et al. Machine Learning for Technical Debt Identification (TSE 2022) Link to Tsoukalas et al. Local and Global Explainability for Technical Debt Identification (TSE 2024) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Subatomic Writing: Six Fundamental Lessons to Make Language Matter (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023), by Johns Hopkins University instructor Jamie Zvirzdin, is a guide for writing about science—from the subatomic level up! Subatomic Writing teaches that the building blocks of language are like particles in physics. These particles, combined and arranged, form something greater than their parts: all matter in the literary universe. This interdisciplinary approach helps scientists, science writers, and editors improve their writing in fundamental areas as they build from the sounds in a word to the pacing of a paragraph. These areas include: sound and sense; word classes; grammar and syntax; punctuation; rhythm and emphasis; and pacing and coherence. Equally helpful for students needing to learn to write clearly about science and for scientists hoping to create more effective course material, papers, and grant applications, this guide builds confidence in writing abilities. Each lesson provides exercises that build on each other, strengthening readers’ capacity to communicate ideas and data, all while learning basic particle physics along the way. Our guest is: Jamie Zvirzdin, who teaches science writing at Johns Hopkins University and researches ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays for the University of Utah. Her writing has been featured in The Atlantic, Kenyon Review, and Issues in Science and Technology. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, the producer of the Academic Life podcast. She holds a PhD in history, which she uses to explore what stories we tell and what happens to those we never tell. Playlist about unpacking hidden curriculum of writing books: Before and After the Book Deal Writing Your Book Proposal The Dissertation to Book Workbook A Guide to Getting Unstuck Finding Your Argument Top Ten Struggles in Writing a Book Manuscript and What to Do About It Open Access Publishing Explained Stylish Academic Writing Tips University Press Submissions and the Peer Review Process Do You Need To Hire A Developmental Editor? Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by posting, assigning or sharing episodes. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 200+ Academic Life episodes? You’ll find them all archived here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Jacob Krüger, Assistant Professor for Software Engineering, Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands. We talk about peer review in software engineering — what it is, and what it might be. Jacob Krüger : "When you submit to broad-themed conferences like ICSE or FSE, you cannot assume much background knowledge on individual tools or techniques which are really, let’s say, the standard in your home community. Because, to succeed as such conferences as those, your really need to communicate explicitly to your reviewers what you have done, which steps you have taken, the techniques you have used and for which reasons — so, basically, you have to explain each design decision of your study. Of course, at a small domain conference, many of these things will be obvious — but not to all reviewers at a large conference, because, remember, these are the conferences where many communities gather — here your reviewers are likely to be very diverse in their research. So, it is the authors’ job to explain and justify every move in the study.” Link to the paper where Jacob talks about the process of review Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Carolyn Seaman, Professor of Information Systems, and also, Director of the Center for Women in Technology, at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. We talk about how peer review is conducted at the venues of software engineering. Carolyn Seaman : "English language skills is one thing — but really, the English is just the final layer on your research, because you also need the ability to organize your thoughts, the ability to collaborate with a group of people on a research team — these are all also communication skills that people, of course, have a differing levels — but this communication, and especially in the written form, is just so important and really a key factor for success.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Klaus Schmid, Professor of Software Engineering, Research Group Software Systems Engineering, University of Hildesheim, Germany. We talk about how research cultures influence and shape research outcomes. Klaus Schmid : "Research writing is an act of communication. This means, the writer is responsible for the mental model that the reader develops as a result of what the text provides. It is, of course, true that no writer can entirely predict the mental model being formed in any reader’s mind — and yet, it remains every writer’s responsibility to work toward influencing and steering that formation in a direction which will ultimately enable the picture in the reader’s mind to achieve high commensurability with the picture in the writer’s mind.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Tim Menzies, Editor in Chief, Automated Software Engineering, and also, Full Professor, Computer Science, North Carolina State University. We talk about how disagreement in research brings advancement. Tim Menzies : "In writing your research, you can't belligerently say, 'I want to say something.' The thing that goes wrong with newbies writing papers is that they write, 'I did. I did. I did.' Because, the people who publish very well, they write, 'They did. They did. They did.' So, you have to say something someone else can hear, otherwise there's no point in saying it. And to say something someone else can hear, you have to say it in the patterns they appreciate. You have to study the discourse and the norms of the forums you're targeting, and you have to match to them." Link to Automated Software Engineering, An International Journal Link to stats package Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Academic writing isn’t known for its clarity. While graduate students might see reading and writing turgid academic prose as a badge of honor—a sign of membership in an exclusive community of experts—many readers are left feeling utterly defeated. In his latest book, Academic Writing as if Readers Matter (Princeton University Press, 2024), Fordham University Professor Leonard Cassuto prompts us to think more about the reader. For Cassuto, the key to better academic prose is to anticipate and respect the needs of the reader. Throughout the volume, Cassuto offers a range of advice on how to structure arguments, use metaphor, and integrate narrative. He also provides a thoughtful reflection on the value of academic knowledge for the broader public and how to square a rules-based approach to teaching writing with the inevitable evolution of language. This book will be of interest to graduate students, writing instructors, editors, and anyone who wants to learn how to make their writing clearer and more sympathetic to the needs of the reader. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Guilherme Horta Travassos, Systems Engineering and Computer Science Graduate Program, Coppe, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. We talk about the review process, both at Information and Software Technology and also more broadly throughout the software-engineering community. Guilherme Horta Travassos : "The review process is hard, because there is the author’s perspective, and there is the reviewer’s perspective, and these perspectives must become a match. It’s like software inspection: There is the author of the document, and there is the inspector. So, if they do not have the same viewpoint or the same perspectives on working with that artifact, it is going to be hard. And this is true, too, of the reviewing process.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Jo Van Bulck, Assistant Professor in the DistriNet Research Unit, KU Leuven, Belgium. We talk about the paper LVI: Hijacking Transient Execution through Microarchitectural Load Value Injection (S&P 2020). Jo Van Bulck : "For me, this paper is a good example of how just by thinking, we researchers can attain to insights. This is not a paper where we came across something by doing it. No, it was really about thinking, and then coming up with an idea, and then evaluating that idea.” LVI: Hijacking Transient Execution through Microarchitectural Load Value Injection About LVI Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Filling a gap in the literature, Inclusive Cataloging: Histories, Context, and Reparative Approaches (ALA Editions and Core, 2024) provides librarians and catalogers with practical approaches to reparative cataloging as well as a broader understanding of the topic and its place in the technical services landscape. As part of the profession's ongoing EDISJ efforts to redress librarianship’s problematic past, practitioners from across the field are questioning long-held library authorities and standards. They’re undertaking a critical and rigorous re-examination of so-called “best” practices and the decisionmakers behind them, pointing out heretofore unscrutinized injustices within our library systems of organization and making concrete steps towards progressive change. In this conversation, co-editors Billey Albina (Amber Billey), Elizabeth Nelson, and Rebecca Uhl discuss their work to bring together chapters that detail the efforts of librarians who are working to improve our systems and collections, in the process inspiring those who have yet to enact change by demonstrating that this work is scalable, possible, and necessary. From this book, readers will gain an understanding of the theoretical underpinning for the actions that create our history and be challenged to reconsider their perspectives; learn about the important role of the library catalog in real-world EDISJ initiatives through examples ranging from accessibility metadata and gendered information to inclusive comics cataloging and revising LC call numbers for Black people and Indigenous people; discover more than a dozen case studies drawn from a variety of contexts including archives, academic and public libraries, and research institutions; and see ways to incorporate these ideas into their own work, with a variety of sample policies, “how to” documents, and other helpful tools provided in the text. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Paul Ralph, Professor, Dalhousie University, Canada. We talk about what's wrong with peer review — and how to fix it! Paul Ralph : "We don't want reviewers micromanaging style, complaining about the way the study is written. No, what we want — and need — is for reviewers to focus on the methodological details of the study: Was it done well? Are the results likely to be true?" For more, see Empirical Standards. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Princeton University Press publishes some of the best books every year, racking up accolades and launching the careers of thousands of scholars. As an editor at the New Books Network and a frequent host, I love speaking with Princeton UP authors. A striking feature of many PUP books is the quality of writing. Their books are simultaneously detailed and highly readable. No wonder PUP books have found so much success in the past couple years with their push into audio production. One of the key people involved in the creation of these books is Danielle D’Orlando. Danielle has the enviable title of “Curator of Audio,” a strategic and creative role fit for a voracious reader and audiobook listener with a knack for picking scholarly books with a crossover appeal. Danielle began her career at Tantor Media, an audiobook company that helped pioneer and popularize the medium. She cut her teeth turning manuscripts into audio scripts, managing rights and licenses, all while getting a graduate degree in publishing. Soon after, Danielle moved to Yale University Press where she worked for nearly a decade, launching Yale Press Audio in 2020. In 2022, Danielle moved Princeton UP to bring her expertise and experience to another university press. As curator of audio, Danielle selects the books and casts the voice actors. We discuss a new audio recording of Capital, how PUP picks narrators, the changing market for audiobooks, and Spotify’s move to compete with Audible in the audiobook space. Give this interview a listen to learn more about Danielle’s work and the future for university press audiobooks. …Also why The Power Broker by Robert Caro is best read as an audiobook. Find Princeton UP’s audiobooks here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Darja Smite, Professor, and Eriks Klotins, Senior Researcher — both at Software Engineering Research Lab (SERL), Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden. We talk about the paper From Collaboration to Solitude and Back: Remote Pair Programming During COVID-19 (Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming 2021). Eriks Klotins : "In research paper publishing, it’s been my experience that especially junior researchers will misunderstand what is expected and what is required. And I can say personally, I enjoy reading papers where the authors have stepped away, in a good direction, from the accepted practice in paper writing — certainly much more than when reading a paper where someone has just tried to fill in a template of sorts, but the product of that effort makes no good sense.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Clemens Dubslaff, Assistant Professor, Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands. We talk about the cultural dividing lines between researcher communities, and of course, how to cross those lines into whole new areas of research. Clemens Dubslaff : "One particular thing I would like to see eXplainable Formal Methods (XFM) do is to revisit the many papers from the early 1990s and so on — papers from logic and programming, where we have many things ready already. I mean, these papers have, in many cases, already discussed explanation, even from the standpoint of philosophy. So, these are just really good papers, but unfortunately more on the forgotten side. That’s why I think that connecting that knowledge from the past — say, about causality, for instance — to this new field of XFM will certainly help and advance the research." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices