From its early foundations in the 1970s, empirical software engineering (ESE) has evolved into a mature research discipline that embraces a plethora of different topics, methodologies, and industrial practices. Despite its remarkable progress, the ESE research field still needs to keep evolving, as new impediments, shortcoming, and technologies emerge. Research reproducibility, limited external validity, subjectivity of reviews, and porting research results to industrial practices are just some examples of the drivers for improvements to ESE research. Additionally, several facets of ESE research are not documented very explicitly, which makes it difficult for newcomers to pick them up. With this new regular ACM SIGSOFT SEN column (SEN-ESE), we introduce a venue for discussing meta-aspects of ESE research, ranging from general topics such as the nature and best practices for replication packages, to more nuanced themes such as statistical methods, interview transcription tools, and publishing interdisciplinary research. Our aim for the column is to be a place where we can regularly spark conversations on ESE topics that might not often be touched upon or are left implicit. Contributions to this column will be grounded in expert interviews, focus groups, surveys, and position pieces, with the goal of encouraging reflection and improvement in how we conduct, communicate, teach, and ultimately improve ESE research. Finally, we invite feedback from the ESE community on challenging, controversial, or underexplored topics, as well as suggestions for voices you would like to hear from. While we cannot promise to act on every idea, we aim to shape this column around the community interests and are grateful for all contributions.

翻译：自20世纪70年代早期奠定基础以来，实证软件工程（ESE）已发展成为一个成熟的研究学科，涵盖了众多不同的主题、方法论和工业实践。尽管取得了显著进展，但随着新障碍、缺陷和技术的出现，ESE研究领域仍需持续演进。研究可复现性、有限的外部效度、评审的主观性以及研究成果向工业实践的转化，仅是推动ESE研究改进的部分驱动因素。此外，ESE研究的多个方面未得到充分明确记录，这使新手难以掌握。通过这一新的ACM SIGSOFT SEN常规专栏（SEN-ESE），我们引入了一个讨论ESE研究元层面的平台，涵盖从复制包的本质与最佳实践等通用主题，到统计方法、访谈转录工具和跨学科研究发表等更细微的议题。本专栏旨在成为一个定期引发ESE领域讨论的场所，聚焦于那些较少被触及或隐含的话题。专栏内容将基于专家访谈、焦点小组、调查和立场文章，旨在促进对ESE研究如何开展、交流、教学及最终改进的反思与提升。最后，我们邀请ESE社区就具有挑战性、争议性或未充分探索的主题提供反馈，并推荐希望聆听的专家观点。虽然无法承诺采纳所有建议，但我们致力于围绕社区兴趣塑造本专栏，并对所有贡献表示诚挚感谢。