Notes On Writing Effective Empirical Software Engineering Papers: An Opinionated Primer

TL;DR

This paper offers practical, opinionated guidance on writing effective empirical software engineering papers, aiming to help students and researchers improve their scientific writing skills in this field.

Contribution

It provides a subjective, experience-based collection of advice on writing ESE papers, addressing common challenges and sharing best practices.

Findings

Clearer understanding of effective writing practices for ESE papers

Practical tips tailored for students and early-career researchers

Improved quality and clarity in empirical software engineering publications

Abstract

While mastered by some, good scientific writing practices within Empirical Software Engineering (ESE) research appear to be seldom discussed and documented. Despite this, these practices are implicit or even explicit evaluation criteria of typical software engineering conferences and journals. In this pragmatic, educational-first document, we want to provide guidance to those who may feel overwhelmed or confused by writing ESE papers, but also those more experienced who still might find an opinionated collection of writing advice useful. The primary audience we had in mind for this paper were our own BSc, MSc, and PhD students, but also students of others. Our documented advice therefore reflects a subjective and personal vision of writing ESE papers. By no means do we claim to be fully objective, generalizable, or representative of the whole discipline. With that being said, writing papers in this way has worked pretty well for us so far. We hope that this guide can at least partially do the same for others.