CALL FOR PAPERS:

Information and Software Technology Special Issue on Mutation Testing

Background:

Mutation is acknowledged as an important way to assess the fault-finding effectiveness of tests sets. Mutation testing has mostly been applied at the source code level, but more recently, related ideas have also been used to test artefacts described in a considerable variety of notations and at different levels of abstraction. Mutation ideas are now used in requirements validation (where distinguishing test cases can be used to challenge users about what they really want), with formal specifications (to assess resilience of specification properties to deviations), architectural design notations, and informal descriptions such as use cases. Data mutation has also been investigated for critical systems and web services. Mutation is now established as a major concept in software and systems V&V and uses of mutation are increasing.

This special issue serves as a platform for researchers and practitioners to present theory, results, experience and advances in mutation testing.

Topics of interest:

This special issue focuses on all topics relevant to mutation analysis. In particular, the topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Efficient strategies to apply mutation analysis on large systems
• Mutation analysis for abstract models
• Using results of mutation analysis for test planning
• Mutation-based test adequacy criteria (theory or practical application)
• Comparison of mutation with other testing techniques
• Empirical studies using mutation
• Industrial experience with mutation
• New mutation systems for programming languages
• Mutation systems for higher-level descriptive notations
• Increasing the efficiency of mutation
• Mutation for QoS properties (security, performance, etc.).
• Novel applications of mutation.

Submission information:

All submissions must contain original unpublished work not being considered for publication elsewhere. The submission deadline is October 30, 2009. Submissions will be refereed according to standard procedures for IST. Initial submissions should be formatted according to the Elsevier guidelines using single column style with double spacing.

Please submit your papers in PDF format by email to mutation_se@ist.tugraz.at.

Guest editors:

• Benoit Baudry, INRIA, France
• Jeremy Bradbury, University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Canada
• Gordon Fraser, Graz University of Technology, Austria

-- Gordon Fraser - 01 Apr 2009