Empirical Software Engineering provides a forum for applied software engineering research with a strong empirical component.
Over the last decade, it has become clear that empirical studies are a fundamental component of software engineering research and practice: Software development practices and technologies must be investigated by empirical means in order to be understood, evaluated, and deployed in proper contexts. This stems from the observation that higher software quality and productivity is more likely to be achieved if well-understood, tested practices and technologies are introduced in software development.
Reported empirical studies usually involve the collection and analysis of data and experience that can be used to characterize, evaluate and reveal relationships between software development deliverables, practices, and technologies. Over time, it is expected that such empirical results will form a body of knowledge leading to widely accepted and well-formed theories.
Empirical Software Engineering aims at promoting the publication of industry-relevant research since one of its goals is to address the significant gap between research and practice.
Research Articles
Both original and replicated studies can be reported, varying from controlled experiments to field studies, from data intensive to qualitative. Preference is given to studies that can be replicated or expanded upon. Papers on the infrastructure for supporting empirical research are also of interest.

Specific topics relevant to the journal include the following:
Analysis and design 
Model-driven development 
Requirements engineering 
Verification and validation
Maintenance and evolution
Quality assurance
Dependability analysis 
Project management
Organization models for software development
Predictive models for software dependability
Software engineering economics 
Applications of artificial intelligence techniques to software engineering 
Qualitative analysis
Industrial Experience Reports
The Empirical Software Engineering journal also seeks the submission of industrial experience reports. Their goal is to report results regarding the application of software technologies (such as processes, methods, or tools) and their effectiveness in industrial settings. This interest stems from the increasing realization that the journal needs to provide insights resulting from the industrial experience of software development to the software engineering community at large. These experience reports would not only be useful for researchers to identify relevant research questions, but they would also be useful for software development organizations to share relevant information.
An industrial experience report would be expected to address the following items at a minimum:
Describe the context from which results are reported: organization, problem domain, projects, products, processes
Describe the software technologies (such as processes, methods, or tools) that are assessed and why they are important
Provide effectiveness and efficiency data leading to the assessment of the technologies
Interpret the results, explain their consequences, and draw conclusions
Discuss the limitations of the results and conclusions
Industrial experience reports may be as concise as an author wishes, provided that they cover the above items. They will be clearly labeled as industrial experience reports to indicate that different criteria are used to review them. Note that the journal encourages the submission of both positive and negative experiences.
As opposed to regular research papers, industrial experience reports do not need to necessarily:
Discuss novel ideas
Discuss related published work in the literature

Editors-in-Chief:
Robert Feldt
Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden
Thomas Zimmermann
Microsoft Research, USA
Editors-in-Chief Emeritus:
Victor R. Basili
Dept. of Computer Science, University of Maryland, College Park, USA
Lionel C. Briand
The Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT), University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg
Editorial Board:

Bram Adams, Polytechnique Montréal, Canada
Sven Apel, Saarland University, Germany
Daniel Amyot, University of Ottawa, Canada 
Gabriele Bavota, Software Institute, Università della Svizzera Italiana (USI), 
Lugano, Switzerland
Daniel M. Berry, University of Waterloo, Canada
Antonia Bertolino, ISTI-CNR, Pisa, Italy
Kelly Blincoe, University of Auckland, New Zealand 
Eric Bodden, Heinz Nixdorf Institut at Paderborn University & Fraunhofer IEM, Germany
Barry Boehm, USC Center for Software Engineering, USA 
Barbora Buhnova, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Jeff Carver, University of Alabama, USA
Michel R. V. Chaudron, Chalmers & Gothenburg University, Sweden
Vittorio Cortellessa, Università dell'Aquila, Italy
Daniela Damian,University of Victoria, Canada
Andrea De Lucia,University of Salerno, Italy
Massimiliano Di Penta,University of Sannio, Italy
Hakan Erdogmus, Carnegie Mellon University, USA
Harald Gall, University of Zurich, Switzerland 
Alessandro Garcia, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Mark Grechanik, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA
Paul Grünbacher, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria
Tony Gorschek, Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden
Mark Harman, University College London, UK
Ahmed Hassan, Queen's University, Canada 
Hadi Hemmati, University of Calgary, Canada 
Natalia Juristo, Universidad Politecnico de Madrid, Spain
Yasutaka Kamei, Kyushu University, Japan
Miryung Kim, University of California, Los Angeles, USA
Sung Kim, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong
Filippo Lanubile, University of Bari, Italy
David Lo, Singapore Management University, Singapore
Andrian Marcus,University of Texas at Dallas, USA
Atif Memon, University of Maryland, USA
Daniel Méndez (Open Science Chair), Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden
Tim Menzies,North Carolina State University, USA
Audris Mockus, Avaya Labs, USA
Martin Monperrus (Open Science Chair),KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
Maurizio Morisio, Politecnico di Torino, Italy
Emerson Murphy-Hill, North Carolina State University, USA 
Sarah Nadi, University of Alberta, Canada
Mei Nagappan, University of Waterloo, Canada 
Nachi Nagappan,Microsoft Research, USA
Jeff Offutt, George Mason University, USA
Richard Paige, University of York, UK 
Xin Peng, Fudan University, China 
Denys Poshyvanyk,College of William and Mary, USA
Romain Robbes,University of Chile, Chile
Martin Robillard,McGill University, Canada
Brian P. Robinson, ABB Corp. Research, USA 
Dieter Rombach, University of Kaiserslautern & Fraunhofer IESE, Germany
Gregg Rothermel, University of Nebraska, USA
Per Runeson, Lund University, Sweden
Federica Sarro, University College London, UK
Alexander Serebrenik, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands
Helen Sharp, The Open University, UK
Martin Shepperd,Brunel University, UK
Forrest Shull, Software Engineering Institute, USA
Saurabh Sinha, IBM Research, India
Lin Tan, University of Waterloo, Canada
Paolo Tonella, FBK, Italy
Christoph Treude, University of Adelaide, Australia
Burak Turhan, Monash University, Australia
Arie van Deursen,Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
Hélène Waeselynck, LAAS-CNRS, France
Elaine Weyuker, AT&T Labs - Research, USA
Jon Whittle,Monash University, Australia
Shin Yoo,Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Republic of Korea
Tao Yue, Simula Research Laboratory, Norway 
Andy Zaidman, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
Andreas Zeller, Saarland University, Germany 

Open Science Review Board: 

Neil Ernst, University of Victoria, Canada 
Daniel Graziotin, University of Stuttgart, Germany 
René Just, University of Washington, USA 
Chakkrit Tantithamthavorn, Monash University, Australia 
Sira Vegas, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain