ECSA 2008 encourages submission of papers describing basic and applied research, novel applications and experience reports (in addition to research challenges) on all topics related to software architectures (e.g. component-based and service-oriented architectures) including, but not limited to:

• architecture description languages and metamodels,
• architectural models, patterns and styles,
• architecture analysis, validation and verification,
• architecture transformation and refinement,
• architecture-based synthesis, code generation,
• architecture-based support for
• reconfigurable, adaptive or mobile applications,
• requirements engineering and software architectures,
• quality attributes and software architectures,
• architecture reengineering, recovery,
• architecture conformance, run-time monitoring,
• aspect-oriented software architectures,
• service-oriented architectures,
• web services: composition, orchestration, choreography,
• ontology-based approaches for component and architecture description,
• process and management of architectural decisions,
• process models and frameworks for architecture-centric software engineering,
• architecture-centric model driven engineering,
• architectural features of Model Driven Architecture (MDA),
• software tools and environments for
• architecture-centric software engineering,
• architectural styles and models for
• applications based on mature and emerging technologies (Web Services, Java/J2EE, .Net, ...)
• architectural concerns of autonomic systems,
• component-based models, middleware, component-based deployment,
• technology of components and component-based frameworks,
• industrial applications, case studies, best practices and?experience reports on software architecture,
• other aspects and applications related to software architecture.

ECSA 2008 seeks four types of contributions:

1. Full research papers (max. 16 pages in LNCS style) which describe novel contributions to software architecture research (submissions should cover work that has a sound scientific/technological basis and has been validated). They should clearly support claims of novelty with citations to the relevant literature. In addition to publishing their full papers in the conference proceedings, authors will present their work in the research paper sessions.
2. Experience papers (max. 16 pages in LNCS style) which describe significant experiences related to software architecture practice (submissions should present case studies or real-life experiences of benefit to practitioners and researchers). They should clearly draw lessons learned. In addition to publishing their full papers in the conference proceedings, authors will present their work in the experience paper sessions. 
3. Emerging research papers (max. 8 pages in LNCS style) which present promising preliminary results from work-in-progress in a topic of software architecture research (submissions should cover work that has a sound basis, but perhaps has not been validated in full). In addition to publishing their short papers in the conference proceedings, authors will present their work in the form of a poster and concisely in the emerging research paper sessions.
4. Research challenge papers (max. 4 pages in LNCS style) which present significant research challenges in theory or practice of software architecture (submissions should clearly present the research questions and their rationale). In addition to publishing their position papers in the conference proceedings, authors will present their work in interactive discussion sessions.

All submitted papers will undergo a rigorous peer review process. Papers will be selected based on originality, quality, soundness and relevance. All contributions must be original, not published, accepted or submitted for publication elsewhere.