Message from the General Chair, Program Co-Chairs, and Local Chair

SANER 2019, the 26th IEEE International IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering. SANER is the premier research conference on the theory and practice of recovering information from existing software and systems. It explores innovative methods of extracting the many kinds of information that can be recovered from software, software engineering documents, and systems artifacts, and examines innovative ways of using this information in system renovation and program understanding. SANER 2019 has a rich and diverse program on the latest innovations and visions in software analysis, evolution and reengineering. The research track received 151 submissions, of which 2 were desk-rejected and 1 was withdrawn by the authors during the review period. The remaining 148 papers each received at least three reviews. We adopted a double-blind reviewing process to the research track based on the success of double-blind reviewing adopted last year. Following an extensive online discussion, 45 papers were accepted (5 of them being conditionally accepted in a first stage), yielding an acceptance rate of 30.4%. No specific acceptance rate was communicated as a guideline to the reviewers. The PC were free to accept any paper deemed strong and novel enough and were encouraged to look for reasons to accept papers rather than to just point out flaws. The accepted papers will be published in the official conference proceedings. Up to top 10% of accepted papers would be awarded the IEEE TCSE Distinguished Paper Awards. The award papers will be announced at the conference. As in previous years, authors of selected papers from the research track will be invited to submit extended versions of their work to a special issue of the Springer international journal of Empirical Software Engineering (EMSE).