Empirical work in software engineering has become substantially more prevalent since the 1990s and is now considered a fundamental requirement of high quality research in the field. This has also led to improvements in the quality and rigor in empirical software engineering research. The ISERN community, the ESEM conference and the Empirical Software Engineering Journal have been instrumental in advancing the standards in our area.

Doctoral students whose doctoral research involves a substantial empirical component are encouraged to submit a research plan for the symposium. Empirical work in the research can include experiments, case studies, surveys, or other empirical methods and data collection techniques, including a combination of them.

The objective of the symposium is to provide young researchers with the opportunity to present their work to, and receive valuable feedback from the empirical software engineering community. Some of the most experienced members of that community will serve as the symposium advisors and provide feedback to participating doctoral students. The advisors for this year's symposium (to be confirmed) include:

• M. Ali Babar, ICT Copenhagen (Denmark)
• Teresa Baldassarre, University of Bari (Italy)
• Marcela Genero, University of Castilla-La Mancha (Spain)
• Andreas Jedlitschka Fraunhofer IESE (Germany)
• Ross Jeffery, University of New South Wales (Australia)
• Forrest Shull, Fraunhofer Center Maryland (USA)
• Dietmar Winkler, Technische Universität Wien (Austria)

In addition, the symposium will facilitate the exchange of ideas among young researchers. Accepted papers will be published on the ESEM conference website. There will be an award for the best IDoESE paper based on the revised final papers. Submissions can be performed by means of the online system.

This year, the IDoESE chair is:

Stefan Biffl
Technische Universität Wien
Austria