I am a researcher in computer science. I am used to publish papers on computer science problem resolution (machine learning, optimization, disabilities, pattern recognition...).

In recent work, we needed to create a specialized software incorporating many complex technologies. This software is used to conduct other researches on which we already publish.

We are wondering if we can publish on how the software helps to solve our problem and on how we designed it with multiples technologies. A careful debate on the possibilities, choices and architecture would be incorporated. The problem is this is the first time we would publish such article and we don't know where to publish. We are seeking good scientific journals (if possible with an impact factor) accepting such papers. If you know one, can you tell me?

  • Not entirely clear what kind of software you are talking about. Since you mentioned machine learning: the journal of machine learning research accepts 4-page articles on open source machine learning software (impact factor ~3). – Marc Claesen Apr 18 '14 at 13:31
  • possible duplicate of Should I write a paper on open-source software I've built? – EnergyNumbers Jun 8 '14 at 12:35
  • What field your software is targeting? In bioinformatics and cheminformatics, journals accept things like application notes. For CV or other image related software, they are mostly published in a conference. – Rein Aug 21 '14 at 14:32

If the software system is targeted for a research problem that is deep, recognized by the community, requires complex architecture and design, and from which a wide community can benefit from, then system conferences could be a good match.

I'll give you an example. Symbolic execution is a widely used and researched technique in software verification. People from Stanford developed Klee, a symbolic execution engine that aims to be highly practical and scalable. Making such a system required taking care of quite some details. They published paper on OSDI, and I believe they received best paper award. Klee paper.

Other than that, there might be conferences in your particular area that care about building systems for the problems you mentioned, but I guess you already took a look into that. Hope this helps.


I don't think there's enough information in this question to give a yes or no answer of whether this is publishable. It might depend upon factors like: what problem it solves, whether the problem is novel, whether the problem is important, how novel the solution is, how useful this will be to others, how effectively you can evaluate your solution.

So, instead of giving a yes or no answer, let me instead suggest a process you could use to form an answer on your own. I would suggest that you talk to your colleagues in your area and ask them the same question. They will have the domain knowledge and will be in the best position to judge the contribution of your particular work. Take a few minutes to sit down for coffee with them and get their advice. Personally, I've always found this to be an incredibly valuable exercise.

I can't tell you where to publish it, as that is highly domain-specific: it'll depend very heavily on your field, the area of research, and the nature of your contribution (which you haven't told us). In general, if you are thinking of publishing somewhere that you are not familiar with and where you are an outsider, it will be especially important for you to make sure that you learn the related work and the values and culture of that community.


The Association for Computing Machinery has at least two journals with the word "software" in the title:

I don't know much about the latter, but the former publishes mathematical software packages.


The Open Channel Foundation publishes software created by academics. They have published one of my software programs that I created for research.


  • They're looking to publish an article about the software in a scientific journal. This doesn't seem to answer that question. – ff524 Aug 22 '14 at 22:29

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