fse-topic-selection
Use when deciding whether a software-engineering project belongs at ESEC/FSE or should be routed to ICSE, ASE, ISSTA, MSR, ICSME, or an SE journal (EMSE/TSE/TOSEM), and when distinguishing FSE from its sibling general-SE flagship ICSE by contribution shape, evidence maturity, and the PACMSE journal-style fit.
Profile →npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill fse-topic-selection --agent claude-code
Same command for any agent — swap --agent for codex, cursor, copilot.
Weekly change comes from our own snapshots, not the repository page — it measures attention, not adoption.
# FSE Topic Selection Decide the venue before drafting. FSE — the ACM International Conference on the Foundations of Software Engineering, historically **ESEC/FSE** on its European rotation — is one of the *two* general software-engineering flagships, alongside ICSE, and the ACM SIGSOFT home for foundational and empirical SE. Its research papers are PACMSE journal articles, so reviewers read for a **durable software-engineering contribution**, not a one-conference result. A technically strong paper whose real lesson is about compilers, PL semantics, or pure ML is respected and then rejected as out of scope. ## The routing question that matters most FSE and ICSE overlap heavily in scope and reviewer pool, so the decisive question is rarely "is this SE?" but **"which SE community and calendar fits this paper now?"** Both welcome techniques, empirical studies, and human-factors work. Use the finer signals below and the live deadlines to choose — a strong paper is publishable at either, and the nearer honest deadline usually wins. ## Sibling-venue routing table | Signal in your project | Better home | Why | |---|---|---| | Broad SE contribution, empirical or conceptual, ready now, and
- The routing question that matters most
- Sibling-venue routing table
- Contribution shapes FSE rewards
- The model-swap and re-label tests
- Evidence maturity, without the ladder cliché
- Cheap reconnaissance before committing
- Decision procedure
What does the fse-topic-selection skill do?
Use when deciding whether a software-engineering project belongs at ESEC/FSE or should be routed to ICSE, ASE, ISSTA, MSR, ICSME, or an SE journal (EMSE/TSE/TOSEM), and when distinguishing FSE from its sibling general-SE flagship ICSE by contribution shape, evidence maturity, and the PACMSE journal-style fit.
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill fse-topic-selection --agent claude-code` — it drops the skill into your project so the agent can pick it up. Swap the --agent value for codex, cursor or copilot if you use one of those.
Where does this skill come from?
From brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills, a repository with 984 stars. We read it straight from the repository tree rather than a submitted listing, so what you see here is what is actually published.
Is a popular skill a good skill?
Not necessarily. Stars measure attention, not adoption — a repository can trend for a week and be abandoned. That is why we show the weekly change from our own snapshots next to the total, instead of a single flattering number.