Foreword

Welcome to the 9th International Workshop on Software Clones (IWSC 2015) held on March 6th 2015 in Montreal, Canada and co-located with the 22nd IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution, and Reengineering (SANER 2015). Software clones are similar or identical fragments of software artifacts. Clones are used as a proxy for various concerns in software engineering, such as software quality, complexity, architecture, refactoring, evolution, licensing, plagiarism, and so on. Various characteristics of software systems can be uncovered through clone analysis, while system restructuring can be driven by merging clones. The purpose of this workshop is to continue to solidify and give shape to this research area and community. More specifically, the goals are to bring together researchers and practitioners from around the world to evaluate the current state of research and applications, discuss common problems, discover new opportunities for collaboration, exchange ideas, envision new areas of research and applications, and explore synergies with similarity analysis in other areas and disciplines.