Call for Papers: Research Track

The Research Track of the 33rd IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution, and Reengineering (SANER 2026) invites high-quality submissions of original and unpublished research. We encourage submissions describing various types of research, e.g., empirical, theoretical, and tool-oriented work. The topics of the submissions should be of direct interest to the software analysis, evolution, and reengineering community.

Topics of Interest

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• AI for Software Engineering and Software Engineering for AI
• Generative AI and LLM applied to analysis, evolution and reengineering of software
• Software Analysis, Parsing, and Fact Extraction
• Software Maintenance and Evolution, Evolution Analysis
• Software Reverse Engineering and Reengineering
• Program Comprehension
• Software Architecture Recovery and Reverse Architecting
• Program Transformation and Refactoring
• Mining Software Repositories and Software Analytics
• Software Visualization
• Software Reconstruction and Migration
• Program Repair
• Software Release Engineering, Continuous Integration and Delivery
• Software Tools for Software Evolution and Maintenance
• Human factors and legal aspects in the context of Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering
• Empirical studies on all the above topics
• Education related to all of the above topics

Note on AI papers: Papers involving AI must either (a) concern a software system as a whole, or a subsystem, and not simply its AI or ML component, (b) consider software engineering artifacts, (c) target a novel context for a software engineering task, or (d) study human, social, socio-technical, and organizational aspects in the development of AI-intensive software systems.

Submission Types

All papers must be full papers.

Special Issue

We are planning to organize a Special Issue with a reputable journal for selected papers of SANER 2026. Details will be announced later.

Evaluation Criteria

Research papers will be evaluated based on originality, importance, soundness, open science and verifiability, and presentation quality.

Submission Guidelines

• Format: Submitted papers must be in PDF format and conform to the IEEE Conference Proceedings Formatting Guidelines. LaTeX users must use \documentclass[10pt,conference]{IEEEtran}.
• Length: Submissions should not exceed 10 pages (with 2 additional pages for references only). Papers that do not adhere to these limits or violate formatting guidelines will be desk-rejected.
• Originality: Submitted papers must have been neither previously accepted for publication nor concurrently submitted for review in another journal, book, conference, or workshop.
• AI Usage: Submissions must follow the latest IEEE and ACM policies regarding the use of generative AI tools and technologies.

Double-blind Review

SANER 2026 follows a full double-anonymous review process. To ensure anonymity:

• Omit author names and affiliations.
• Reference authors' own related work in the third person (e.g., "We build on the work of...").
• Avoid acknowledgments that would reveal identity.
• Use generic naming conventions for projects or organizations if they could reveal identity.
• Avoid linking directly to identifiable code repositories or tool deployments; use anonymized links or state that they will be provided in the camera-ready version.
• Submissions that do not adhere to these guidelines will be desk-rejected.

Open Science

SANER 2026 supports an Open Science policy. Authors are encouraged to disclose (anonymized and curated) data/artifacts to increase reproducibility. A "Data Availability" statement should be included after the Conclusions section.

Accepted Papers

All accepted papers will be included in the IEEE Digital Library, provided at least one author registers for SANER 2026 and presents the paper at the conference. Papers not presented will be removed from the proceedings. The author list and paper title cannot be changed after acceptance without explicit approval.

Important Dates (AoE - UTC-12h)

1. Abstract submission (mandatory): Thu 9 Oct 2025
2. Paper submission deadline: Thu 16 Oct 2025
3. Notifications: Tue 9 Dec 2025
4. Camera Ready: Fri 9 Jan 2026

Submission Link

Submit your papers via EasyChair: https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=saner2026

Program Committee Co-Chairs

• Eunjong Choi (Kyoto Institute of Technology, Japan)
• Matthias Galster (University of Canterbury, New Zealand)