FSE Review Process

Model the pipeline before interpreting any single review. FSE's process is journal-style: papers are PACMSE articles, and Major Revision is a first-class decision, not a soft rejection. The most consequential mental shift for authors arriving from a plain accept/reject conference is that a Major Revision is a genuine revise-and-resubmit round with the same reviewers, closer to a journal R&R than to a rebuttal.

Process model

• Submission and review run on HotCRP with heavy double-anonymity: identities are hidden through all reviewing and discussion, and any Major Revision response must itself be anonymous.
• Each paper is read by at least three program-committee members (FSE 2027 call), who weigh the significance of the SE contribution, soundness of the method, quality and honesty of the empirical evidence, threats-to-validity reasoning, clarity, and open-science support.
• First decisions fall into Accept, Major Revision, or Reject. A Major Revision is re-reviewed — generally by the original reviewers — against the revision and its response letter.
• Accepted papers publish in PACMSE, so final metadata, camera-ready compliance, and artifact follow-through matter as much as the initial verdict.