4th SEMAT Workshop on General Theory of Software Engineering (GTSE 2015)

General theories explain the fundamental phenomena that constitute a research domain. They apply across a domain and often integrate many theories and concepts into a single cohesive view. While general theories are extremely important for education and research coordination, and common in many disciplines (e.g. sociology, criminology, electrical engineering, biology, physics), software engineering lacks a well-accepted general theory. The General Theory of Software Engineering workshop seeks to rectify this situation by promoting theory development in software engineering. The fourth workshop in this series, held in conjunction with the International Conference on Software Engineering, displayed a promising trend toward more theory development papers.