Call For Papers

The Journal of Software Testing, Verification & Reliability (STVR) invites authors to submit papers to a Special Issue on Mutation Analysis and Its Industrial Applications

Background

Mutation is widely acknowledged as one of the most important techniques to assess the fault-revealing ability of tests. In recent years, mutation has gained popularity both in academia and industry, with several companies and research projects attempting to incorporate mutation to the development life cycle. Mutation analysis has traditionally targeted the source code but has also been successfully applied to various artefacts at different levels of abstraction. Examples of such artefacts include: database schemas, finite state machines, various model notations, security policies, software product lines, machine learning models, etc. Mutation has also been employed to solve various research problems including the Test Oracle Problem, Fault Localisation and Debugging, Defect Prediction, etc. To this day, the mutation field continues to expand with an increasing trend of high quality publications.

This special issue on the Industrial Applications of Mutation Analysis aims to document recent advances in the area and novel research directions and serves as a platform for researchers and practitioners to present theory, results, experience and advances in the area.

Topics

The special issue invites submissions on all topics relevant to mutation analysis. Including, but not limited to, the following:

• Industrial experience and application of mutation testing.
• 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.
• Novel solutions to mutation’s problems.
• Empirical studies using and/or evaluating mutation.
• Theoretical analysis of mutation testing.
• Mutation testing tools.
• Mutation for mobile, internet, and cloud-based systems (QoS, power consumption, etc.)
• Mutation for non-functional properties, including security, reliability, performance, etc.
• Mutation for artificial intelligence (e.g., data mutation, model mutation, mutation-based test data generation, etc.)
• Analysis of fuzzers and test generators using mutation analysis.

Submission Information

Extended versions of conference papers should explain clearly the additional contribution. Such papers should also have a different abstract, should cite the original conference paper, and should explain how this previous work has been extended.

Please submit your paper electronically using the Software Testing, Verification & Reliability manuscript submission site. Select “Special Issue Paper” and select “Mutation Analysis and Its Industrial Applications” as the special issue title.

Important dates

The special issue features a rolling submission period starting from 1st of July to 30th of September, with the aim of 3 months of review period after an article’s submission.

• Rolling submission period: 2020.07.01 - 2020.09.30 (AoE)

Intended timeline:

1. First round of reviews:

   Paper review period: <2020.10.01>–<2021.01.01> (91 days)

2. Second round of reviews:

   Major revisions

   • 3 months of author revision period (e.g. <2021.01.01>–<2021.04.01>)
   • 2 months of review period (e.g. <2021.04.01>–<2021.06.01>)

   Minor revisions

   • 1.5 months of author revision period
   • 1.5 months of review period

3. Final decisions: <2021.04.01>–<2021.09.01>

Guest Editors

• Dr. Rahul Gopinath Postdoctoral Researcher CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security, Germany

• Dr. Marinos Kintis Design Engineer ASML, The Netherlands

• Dr. Mike Papadakis Research Scientist, University of Luxembourg

• Dr. Jie M. Zhang Research Fellow, University College London