Requirements Engineering Conferences: wither industry tracks? Unabridged version with a track history of the RE Conferences

This report argues that industry tracks have no place in any research conference. Instead, a research conference should always have room for industrial case studies, evaluated according to criteria for empirical research. Such case studies would not be acceptable at a practitioners’ industrial conference, just as papers presented at such conferences would not be acceptable at research conferences. It follows as corollary that if researchers want to become familiar with problems and solutions of RE practice, they should visit industrial conferences. A shorter version of this report has been published at the RE 2013 conference.