Evaluation and assessment in software engineering [Editorial]

Software engineers find that experiments are difficult to perform. Furthermore, no experiment can be considered flawless no matter how well conducted. In this Special Issue the authors have addressed this problem as well as emphasising the need to undertake more empirical studies with discussing practical and methodological issues associated with evaluation. As so, all the papers in this Special Issue address software engineering aspects and evaluate them through various types of empirical studies ranging from experiments, replications of empirical studies, case studies, surveys, observational studies, field studies, systematic reviews.