The ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE) is an internationally renowned forum for researchers and practitioners from academia and industry to present and discuss the most recent innovations, trends, experiences, and challenges in software engineering.

The theme of FSE-18 is "Digital engine driving social creativity." Our economy, and indeed our society at large, is virtually entirely driven by software. Creativity plays a role both in software production, and in how the software that is produced is ultimately put to use.

FSE-18 invites high-quality submissions describing original research results, including theoretical, empirical, experimental, and tool-based work. Experience papers that report lessons learned of interest and benefit to the broader FSE audience are also welcome.

As a conference focusing on foundations, we encourage papers describing perspectives on the current state of the art in the field, its research trajectory, and core assumptions that may or may not hold in the future. A healthy research community carefully integrates self-assessment as part of its discourse, and experience shows that periodic shifts in foundations are an essential part of progress.

We solicit submissions relating to all aspects of software engineering, especially on topics of emerging interest. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

* Analysis and Testing
* Architecture and Design
* Case Studies and Experience Reports
* Collaboration and Coordination
* Components, Services, and Middleware
* Configuration Management and Deployment
* Dependability (Safety, Security, Reliability)
* Distributed, Web-based, and Internet-Scale Software Engineering
* Economics
* Empirical Studies
* Feature Interaction and Crosscutting Concerns
* Generative Programming and Model-Driven Development
* Maintenance and Evolution
* Metrics
* Mobile and Pervasive Computing Systems
* Process and Workflow
* Quality and Performance
* Requirements Engineering
* Reverse Engineering and Re-engineering
* Software Reuse and Product Lines
* Specification and Verification
* Tools and Environments
* Visualization

FSE is a very selective conference, but it is still a conference. It welcomes innovative ideas that are well presented, timely, and have high likely impact, even if the findings are preliminary or not yet fully evaluated. Naturally, all submissions must position themselves within the existing literature, describe the relevance of the results to certain software engineering goals, and include a clear motivation and presentation of the validation methodology used.