New Editor-in-Chief of Software

I would like to introduce myself as the new Editor-in-Chief of Software. I received a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2003 from University of Bologna and then carried on my academic career there—I became Full Professor in Computer Engineering in 2017. Currently, I am the head of the Cesena Campus, one of the five campuses of the University of Bologna.

My research has always focused on two topics of computer science, which were initially somewhat rather distinct, and which are now increasingly being combined: programming languages (development and engineering), and AI-oriented software engineering (especially agent-oriented and self-organization). In these areas, I have authored more than 300 papers, of which more than 80 are in journals, with a Google Scholar h-index >50 with >9500 citations. For more details, feel free to visit my institutional website at https://www.unibo.it/sitoweb/mirko.viroli/.

The field of software engineering is witnessing a turning point; recognizing of this led me to accept the invitation to be editor-in-chief of MDPI’s software engineering journal.

Tools like Generative AI are rapidly creating new opportunities in several areas of software engineering, as well as speeding up software development, and hence the evolution of software technologies and methodologies altogether.

Especially at this critical moment, it is vital for the research community to have a solid and agile forum for the dissemination of the vast variety of contributions that are continually emerging worldwide. As such, MDPI’s Software, with its rapid and open access model of publication, seeks to sustain the publication of the most significant and relevant results, following international peer review research standards.

In particular, MDPI’s Software calls for papers covering the following topics:

• Software requirements, design, architecture, development, testing, verification, validation, defect prediction, debugging, maintenance, and evolution;
• Software security, privacy, quality, and malware analysis;
• Software metrics, analytics, and data repository;
• Continuous software engineering; agile, model-driven, and service-oriented software development methods and tools;
• DevOps;
• Public sector software systems, software procurement, open-source software platforms;
• Requirements engineering;
• Programming languages, code assessment, and tools;
• Artificial intelligence in software engineering;
• Fog/edge/cloud computing in software engineering;
• Software engineering for education, business, and society;
• Empirical software engineering;
• Software business, ecosystems, software startups, software startup engineering;
• Software product management, software engineering economics;
• Software platforms;
• Behavioral software engineering, human factors of software engineering;
• Ethical aspects of software engineering;
• Emerging trends and research areas.

It is important to note that Software discourages submissions that barely cover software engineering concerns, and merely describe software applications or algorithms for specific domains.

I would like to conclude by remarking that the success of the journal is largely due to the commitment of our Editorial Board, comprising many very important researchers in the software engineering field, and who I would like to thank; their work has been extremely valuable in the past, and will hopefully continue becoming even stronger in the future.

I will always be open to interact with Editorial Board members, reviewers, authors, and readers of the journal, in order to help Software improve even further —feel free to contact me with suggestions or if you would like to get involved.