For 50 years, the IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (TSE) has published influential research on the field of software engineering, and in celebration of its 50 years of excellence, IEEE CS is honoring the journal with a special issue this March.
Designed to be both retrospective and forward-looking, the TSE anniversary issue includes reflections from past TSE Editors in Chief (EiCs), providing insights into the field and how it has evolved over the years. Notable contributors include Nancy Leveson, Jeff Kramer, Bashar Nuseibeh, Matt Dwyer, and Nenad Medvidović.
In addition, the special issue also highlights the most influential papers of the journal’s first four decades. The TSE board selected 44 impactful papers, and solicited retrospective reviews from their authors on each individual paper’s impact. The chosen papers had a hand in shaping today’s software engineering environment and cover many of the field’s most significant topics, including software complexity metrics, software design and architecture, fault tolerance, source control, slicing, object-oriented development, modelling, adaptive systems, testing and program analysis, requirements, verification, empirical methods, traceability, debugging, software repair, and more.
“IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering has held a prominent role in publishing research that has shaped the field of software engineering,” said Hironori Washizaki, 2025 IEEE Computer Society President. “The papers published in TSE over the years have greatly benefitted humanity in the advancement of software engineering and have propelled the field to where it is today. We are proud to celebrate TSE’s milestone accomplishments and tremendous impact with this special issue.”
Read the TSE 50th anniversary issue
