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Editorial: How Special Should Issues Be?

SOFTWARE testing and analysis continue to be areas in which IEEE Transaction on Software Engineering (TSE) receives many submissions. In this issue, Barbara Ryder and Andreas Zeller guest edit a special section of selected papers from ISSTA 2008, the original papers having undergone signifi cant revision, extension, and substantive peer review. I would like to thank Barbara and Andreas for all their work in putting this special section together over a long period of time, and to the authors for their contributions and their patience while waiting for their papers to be published. Special issues are a prominent feature of TSE and other journals, and there are a number of forthcoming issues in the TSE publication pipeline. I’d be interested to hear readers’ views about the usefulness of such special issues. I understand that they can provide a useful thematic resource for researchers and practitioners working in particular areas, but the inevitable consequence is that they limit the number of regular papers that can be published in any one issue or volume. This can affect the diversity of topics covered by the journal. Since starting as Editor-in-Chief back in January, I have not approved any new proposals for special issues. This will not be felt by readers till many more months down the line as the current queue of special issue papers gets published. I hope this will eventually allow the many regular papers awaiting publication to appear in print much more quickly. Of course, “in print” is only one way the papers are available. As soon as any paper is accepted for publication in TSE, it is available to subscribers electronically for download. I hope readers are making use of this facility on the TSE website (http://www.computer. org/portal/web/tse/), found under “PrePrints” and “RapidPosts.” Last but not least, I’d like to welcome two new distinguished additions to the TSE Editorial Board: Dr. Jane ClelandHuang and Dr. Dag Sjoberg. I am very grateful to both of them for agreeing to serve as Associate Editors, bringing to TSE their considerable expertise in empirical software engineering and the applications of software engineering research in practice. Both Dag and Jane have immediately found themselves loaded with a number of papers to manage—a consequence of the popularity of the areas in which they work.