Mining Software Repositories (MSR)

Mining Software Repositories (MSR)

Conference positioning

Mining Software Repositories (MSR) is a top computer-science conference venue for software repository mining, developer behavior, empirical methods, datasets, and mining tools. It rewards an MSR paper with careful dataset construction, validity threats, and reproducible mining workflow. Treat this skill as a fit / venue-selection / re-framing tool for conference submission strategy, not as a substitute for the current year's CFP, author kit, ethics policy, or submission portal.

Because CS conferences change deadlines, templates, page limits, review workflow, artifact rules, AI-use policy, and rebuttal formats every cycle, always verify the live official instructions before making a submission-ready recommendation. Start from the official source anchor recorded for this venue in ../../resources/conference-roster.md and ../../resources/official-source-map.md.

When to trigger

• The author names MSR / Mining Software Repositories as the target venue.
• A manuscript in software repository mining needs a conference-fit read before being formatted or submitted.
• The paper must be re-framed from journal style or arXiv style into a selective CS conference narrative.
• The author needs an evidence-gap, anonymity, artifact, rebuttal, or re-routing diagnosis for this venue.

Scope & topic fit

• Core fit: software repository mining, developer behavior, empirical methods, datasets, and mining tools.
• Best submissions make a precise contribution type visible: algorithm, theorem, system, dataset, benchmark, empirical finding, design artifact, tool, or socio-technical analysis.
• The paper should explain why the result matters to MSR's reviewers, not just why it is interesting to the authors' lab or product context.
• Position related work against the most recent conference-cycle papers in this venue and its closest siblings; stale comparisons are a common early-review weakness.
• If the contribution is interdisciplinary, state which part is CS research and which part is domain evidence.

Venue-specific calibration

• Reviewer lens: Treat MSR as a software analytics venue whose reviewers expect the scope and evidence to match its own community. Do not submit a generic CS paper until the introduction names the exact subcommunity, contribution type, and proof or empirical standard.
• Contribution hook to foreground: the venue-specific contribution bar.
• Scope vocabulary to use naturally in the abstract and introduction: software repository mining, developer behavior, empirical methods, datasets, and mining tools.
• Distinctive fingerprint for reviewer calibration: software, repository, mining, developer, behavior, empirical, methods, datasets, tools, venue-specific, contribution, analytics, msrconf.
• Official anchor domain: www.msrconf.org. Quote annual rules only after opening that source and the current-year CFP/author kit.

Close-neighbor routing guardrail

• Use this profile only when the manuscript's central contribution is genuinely in software analytics and the author can say why MSR reviewers are the primary audience, not merely a convenient deadline.
• Closest roster neighbors to compare before final routing: ieee-acm-international-conference- on-automated-software-engineering (ASE), acm-sigsoft-international-symposium-on-software- testing-and-analysis (ISSTA), ieee-international-conference-on-software-analysis- evolution-and-reengineering (SANER), `international-symposium-on-empirical-software-