What paper types are accepted at the international conference on software engineering?

With the aim of identifying good structures and examples for papers in the software engineering field, we conducted a study of the type of papers accepted along four decades in the Research Track of the International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE). We used for this purpose a categorization scheme for Software Engineering papers that was obtained by merging, extending and revising a few existing paper scheme proposals. This paper summarizes some outcomes relative to what topics and problems are addressed, what types of contribution are presented and how they are validated. Insights from the study could help ICSE authors, reviewers and conference organizers in focusing and improving future efforts.