Writing good software engineering research papers

Software engineering researchers solve problems of several different kinds. To do so, they produce several different kinds of results, and they should develop appropriate evidence to validate these results. They often report their research in conference papers. I analyzed the abstracts of research papers submitted to XSE 2002 in order to identify the types of research reported in the submitted and accepted papers, and I observed the program committee discussions about which papers to accept. This report presents the research paradigms of the papers, common concerns of the program committee, and statistics on success rates. This information should help researchers design better research projects and write papers that present their results to best advantage.