Guest editors' introduction to the first issue on Experimental Software Engineering in the Cloud (ESEiC)

This inaugural Special Issue on Experimental Software Engineering in the Cloud (ESEiC) demonstrates a novel, cloud-based approach to the empirical evaluation of software engineering tools. The issue contains two papers that are the result of long term research efforts by multiple authors. Both papers are supplemented by a multitude of software environments: all tools under study are available via virtual machines (VMs) in the academic SHARE cloud. The first paper cites 13 VMs, each containing one tool, while the second one cites one VM containing five tools under study. With a few clicks in SHARE, readers can access from their browser a personal instance of these VMs. Both papers contribute new frameworks for comparing the tools under study. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first informatics journal issue that offers reproducible comparisons of such depth and breadth. In this editorial, we clarify the background of the special issue, introduce the supportive SHARE cloud, and summarize the two papers