Call for Papers



Mutation is acknowledged as an important way to assess the fault-finding effectiveness of test sets. Mutation testing has mostly been applied at the source code level, but more recently, related ideas have also been used to test artefacts described in a considerable variety of notations and at different levels of abstraction. Mutation ideas are used with requirements, formal specifications, architectural design notations, informal descriptions (e.g. use cases) and hardware. Mutation is now established as a major concept in software and systems V&V and uses of mutation are increasing. The goal of the Mutation workshop is to provide a forum for researchers and practitioners to discuss new and emerging trends in mutation analysis. We invite submissions of both full-length and short-length research papers as well as industry practice papers.

Topics of Interest

Topics include, but are not limited to:
  • Mutation-based test adequacy criteria (theoretical analyses and practical applications).
  • Mutation-based test data generation.
  • Higher order mutation testing.
  • Novel mutation testing paradigms and applications.
  • Empirical studies of mutation testing.
  • Formal theoretical analysis of mutation testing.
  • Comparative studies (i.e., studies that compare mutation testing with other testing techniques).
  • Mutation testing tools.
  • Industrial experience with mutation testing.
  • New mutation systems for yet unaddressed programming languages and for higher-level descriptive.
  • Mutation for mobile, internet, and cloud based systems (e.g., addressing QoS, power consumption, stress testing, performance, etc).
  • Mutation for security and reliability.

Types of Submissions

Three types of papers can be submitted to the workshop:

  • Full papers (10 pages): Research, case studies.
  • Short papers (6 pages): Research in progress, tools, experience reports, new ideas.
  • Industrial papers (6 pages).

Each paper will be reviewed by three reviewers, and accepted papers will be published as part of the ICST proceedings.

Special Issue on Mutation Testing

Authors of selected papers will be invited to submit extended versions of their papers to a special issue on mutation testing, published by the journal of Software Testing, Verification and Reliability (STVR). The extended papers will go through the regular review process but will be assigned at least one reviewer from the Mutation 2016 Program Committee.