To address the ’novelty-vicious cycle’ and the ‘replicability crisis’ of the field (both discussed in the survey) we propose abolishing the “ICSE paper” as we know it and replacing it with a two-tier system that also evolves the existing notion of ‘Registered Report’. Authors proposing a new idea, experiment, or analysis would submit a “Registered [Proposal]” of their idea and the proposed experimental methodology to undergo peer review. The following year, anyone can submit (shorter) “[Results] Reports” on the realization of the empirical work based on the registered proposals of the previous ICSE (or FSE or ISSTA or ASE etc.). Both works should be first class citizens of the mainstream events. We argue that such a disruptive (heretical?) idea is supported and based on the responses of the community of the Future of Software Engineering pre-survey.

@inproceedings{abs-2601-18566,
  title = {On the Abolition of the “ICSE Paper’ and the Adoption of the “Registered [Proposal]’ and the “[Results] Report’},
  author = {Fabio Massacci and Winnie Bahati Mbaka},
  booktitle = {ICSE},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.1145/3793657.3793905}
}