icse-topic-selection
Use when deciding whether a software-engineering project belongs in the ICSE research track or should be routed to FSE, ASE, ISSTA, MSR, ICSME, EMSE/TSE/TOSEM, or an ICSE co-located track such as NIER, SEIP, SEIS, or Demonstrations, based on contribution type, evidence maturity, and audience.
Profile →npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill icse-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.
# ICSE Topic Selection Decide venue before writing a single section. ICSE — the IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering — is the flagship of the SE research community, which means its reviewer pool expects a contribution *to software engineering knowledge*, evaluated against the four posted criteria of the research track: novelty, rigor, relevance, and verifiability/transparency (ICSE 2027 CFP wording, checked 2026-07-08). A technically excellent paper whose lesson is about databases, PL semantics, or pure ML will be respected and then rejected as out of scope. ## The two-question fit test 1. **Who changes their behavior if this paper is right?** If the answer names software developers, testers, maintainers, reviewers, build engineers, or SE researchers studying them, ICSE is plausible. If the answer names compiler writers, DB implementers, or ML-architecture designers, route elsewhere. 2. **Would an SE empiricist accept the evidence?** ICSE's culture demands evidence proportional to the claim: real subject programs or projects, credible baselines, a threats-to-validity analysis, and (by the open-science policy) an inspectable artifact. A motivating anecdote plus
- The two-question fit test
- Contribution shapes ICSE rewards
- Routing table
- Timing reality for the current cycle
- Evidence-maturity ladder
- Anti-patterns that predict rejection
- Reading the room before committing
- Decision procedure
What does the icse-topic-selection skill do?
Use when deciding whether a software-engineering project belongs in the ICSE research track or should be routed to FSE, ASE, ISSTA, MSR, ICSME, EMSE/TSE/TOSEM, or an ICSE co-located track such as NIER, SEIP, SEIS, or Demonstrations, based on contribution type, evidence maturity, and audience.
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill icse-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.