Trends in topics at SE conferences (1993--2013)

Using topic modeling, we analyse the titles and abstracts of nearly 10,000 papers from 20 years published in 11 top-ranked Software Engineering(SE) conferences between 1993 to 2013. Seven topics are identified as the dominant themes in modern software engineering. We show that these topics are not static; rather, some of them are becoming decidedly less prominent over time (modeling) while others are become very prominent indeed (defect analysis). By clustering conferences according to the topics they publish, we identify four large groups of SE conferences; e.g. ASE, FSE and ICSE publish mostly the same work (exceptions: there are more program analysis results in FSE than in ASE or ICSE). Using these results, we offer numerous recommendations including how to plan an individuals research program; when to make or merge conferences; and how to encourage a broader range of topics at SE conferences. An extended version of this paper, that analyzes more conferences and papers, is available on https://goo.gl/mVdyfj