Message from the IDoESE 2013 Doctoral Symposium Chairs

Empirical research has become an important means in any science and continues to grow in importance also in software engineering research. The ISERN and ESEM community together with the Empirical Software Engineering Journal have advanced the state of the art in how empirical research is conducted today in software engineering. We now have a plethora of empirical research techniques at our disposal, and it sometimes becomes challenging to choose the appropriate one. Also the application of the techniques, such as experiments, case studies, surveys or systematic literature reviews, is complicated and needs detailed understanding. This doctoral symposium aimed at supporting PhD students who are already conducting or plan to conduct empirical research as part of their research project. Experienced empirical researchers form the board of advisors reviewed the research plans from PhD students and gave them detailed feedback and guidance. The most promising research plans were invited for presentation at the symposium where the students could get more direct feedback in the discussion. Each of the presenting PhD students was assigned a mentor from the board of advisors who supported them in improving the research plan.