Editor's corner: An analysis of research topics in software engineering - 2006

  • Authors:

  • Kai-Yuan Cai;David Card

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Automatic Control, Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Beijing 100083, China and State Key Laboratory of Virtual Reality Technology, Beijing 100083, China;Det Norske Veritas, Melbourne, FL, USA

  • Venue:
  • Journal of Systems and Software
  • Year:
  • 2008

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

This paper is the first in a new annual series whose goal is to answer the following question: what are the active research focuses within the field of software engineering? We considered 7 top journals and 7 top international conferences in software engineering and examined all the 691 papers published in these journals or presented at these conferences in 2006. Consequently, we have a number of findings.(1)Seventy-three percent of journal papers focus on 20% of subject indexes in software engineering, including Testing and Debugging (D.2.5), Management (D.2.9), and Software/Program Verification (D.2.4). (2)Eighty-nine percent of conference papers focus on 20% of subject indexes in software engineering, including Software/Program Verification (D.2.4), Testing and Debugging (D.2.5), and Design Tools and Techniques (D.2.2). (3)Seventy-seven percent of journal/conference papers focus on 20% of subject indexes in software engineering, including Testing and Debugging (D.2.5), Software/Program Verification (D.2.4), and Management (D.2.9). (4)The average number of references cited by a journal paper is about 33, whereas this number becomes around 24 for a conference paper.