CSC News
Rothermel, Menzies Recognized by IEEE’s TSE for Best Papers of the Past Four Decades
Papers from Department of Computer Science (CS) Head Gregg Rothermel and Professor Tim Menzies have been recognized in the 50th anniversary edition of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Transactions on Software Engineering (TSE) journal. This TSE issue features some of the most influential papers published in the journal’s first four decades, plus a retrospective from each paper’s author.
Rothermel’s paper, “Prioritizing Test Cases for Regression Testing” has been cited 1,827 times as of January 2025. At its peak in 2016, Menzies’ paper, “Data Mining Static Code Attributes to Learn Defect Predictors”, was the most cited (per month) paper in software engineering.
“To have a journal paper recognized as one of the most influential papers of TSE's four decades is a humbling experience, given the prestige of the journal in software engineering and the plethora of other impactful research papers it has published,” said Rothermel. “It's very satisfying to know that my own work (which was done in collaboration with Roland Untch, Mary Jean Harrold and Chengyun Chu) on test case prioritization has been recognized for its seminal contributions to and impact on the field.”
This recognition by TSE highlights the strength of the department’s leadership, research and teaching talent, especially in software engineering. In 2024, CSRankings, a metrics-based ranking of top computer science institutions, placed the department 3rd among U.S. institutions when it comes to software engineering. For more on the department's rankings, click here.
“It is exciting to be part of this TSE retrospective,” said Menzies. “This eclectic collection of papers can teach us much about problems that have been solved, and those that remain. For a good time, go to the journal's page and look for papers from the 50th anniversary issue with titles like ‘influence, towards, impact, retrospective, years, trends, election, future and more’. Of all of them, my personal favorite is Andes Zeller's "Simplifying and Isolating Failure-Inducing Input: A Retrospective on Delta Debugging" (in particular the "war" story of section III).”
Click here to read Rothermel’s paper and retrospective, “Prioritizing Test Cases for Regression Testing”.
Click here to read Menzies’ paper and retrospective, “Data Mining Static Code Attributes to Learn Defect Predictors”.
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Note to Editors: The study abstracts follow.
“Prioritizing Test Cases for Regression Testing”
Authors: Gregg Rothermel, Roland Untch, Mary Jean Harrold and Chengyun Chu
Abstract: The paper “Prioritizing Test Cases for Regression Testing”, by Rothermel, Untch, Chu and Harrold, appeared in IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering in 2001. This paper was a seminal paper in the area of test case prioritization, and it set the stage for research on many different topics related to prioritization. In this retrospective, we recount the work presented in the paper, and then reflect on how it has influenced subsequent research and practice.
“Data Mining Static Code Attributes to Learn Defect Predictors”
Authors: Tim Menzies, Jeremy Greenwald and Art Frank
Abstract: Industry can get any research it wants, just by publishing a baseline result along with the data and scripts need to reproduce that work. For instance, the paper “Data Mining Static Code Attributes to Learn Defect Predictors” presented such a baseline, using static code attributes from NASA projects. Those result were enthusiastically embraced by a software engineering research community, hungry for data. At its peak (2016) this paper was SE's most cited paper (per month). By 2018, twenty percent of leading TSE papers (according to Google Scholar Metrics), incorporated artifacts introduced and disseminated by this research. This brief note reflects on what we should remember, and what we should forget, from that paper.
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