The 27th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE'19) is the premier international forum for researchers, practitioners, educators, and students to present and discuss the most recent innovations, experiences, and concerns in the discipline of requirements engineering.

The RE'19 theme is RE and Collective Intelligence in the Days of AI. RE research has a unique opportunity to lead a paradigm shift that places human and society at the forefront of the design of AI systems. Research in RE has never been more needed in AI. For example, in helping address ethical considerations in the design, use, and misuse of intelligent systems; or, in enabling the multi-disciplinary, collaborative efforts that are key to exploring and understanding the problem on a greater scale than individual decision making.

Application of RE in the days of AI can be twofold. First, RE techniques are important to explore the complex problem space so that we design an intelligent machine that understands the nature of real-world problems and behaves accordingly. Secondly, developers need to fully understand and comprehend what people (or in a large scale ‘society’) expect from AI and articulate these expectations/values to the machine. A thorough understanding of the requirements can help negotiate the values of various stakeholders affected by AI system. Our attention shifts to asking “how do we collaborate among various groups of people with different perspectives and expectations so that we end up designing the right system with the right set of behaviors” as opposed to “how do we make a system intelligent with the latest technical achievements”. By incorporating an end-to-end collaboration of RE and Collective Intelligence in AI technologies, engineers can design a system that understands the complexity of human and environments.

RE'19 therefore encourages accounts of innovative research concerned with this theme, within specific topics as listed (but not limited to) here, and in paper categories as described here. Five candidates to the best paper award will be invited to submit an extended version of their work for a special journal issue. A double-blind review process will be used to review and select papers.

Categories for Research Papers

• Technical solution papers present solutions for requirements-related problems that are novel or significantly improve on existing solutions. These papers are mainly evaluated with regard to problem relevance, novelty, clarity of presentation, technical soundness and provided evidence for its benefits. Technical solution papers must not exceed 10 pages for the main body, and 2 additional pages for the references. There are 3 main kinds of solutions and corresponding evaluation criteria:
  • Analytical: the main contribution relies on new algorithms or mathematical theory. Such a contribution must be evaluated with a convincing analysis of the algorithmic details, whether through a formal analysis or proof, complexity analysis, or run-time analysis, among others and depending on the objectives.
  • Technological: the main contribution is of a technological nature. This includes novel tools, modeling languages, infrastructures, and other technologies. Such a contribution does not necessarily need to be evaluated with humans. However, clear arguments, backed up by evidence as appropriate, must show how and why the technology is beneficial, whether it is in automating or supporting some user task, refining our modeling capabilities, improving some key system property, etc.
  • Methodological: the main contribution is a coherent system of broad principles and practices to interpret or solve a problem, e.g. a novel requirements elicitation method. The authors should provide convincing arguments, with corresponding experiences, why a new method is needed and what the benefits of the proposed method are.
• Scientific evaluation papers evaluate existing problem situations or evaluate real-world artifacts or validate/refute proposed solutions by scientific means. This includes controlled experiments, case studies, and surveys of professionals reporting qualitative or quantitative data and analysis results simulations. The papers are mainly evaluated with regard to interesting research questions, study design, appropriateness and correctness of analysis, and threats to validity. Replications are welcome. For papers reporting application of some solution lessons learned are particularly important. Scientific evaluation papers must not exceed 10 pages (for the main body, and 2 additional pages for the references.
• Perspective papers explore the history, successes, and challenges of requirements related practices and research agendas, and outline research roadmaps for the future. Literature reviews are also included in this category and must distill novel knowledge, present new insights and not be merely complicative. These papers are evaluated based on the insights they offer to the reader and the corresponding arguments, and on their potential to shape future research. Perspective papers may have more than 2 pages of references, but under no circumstances may the body of the paper exceed 10 pages or may the combined body of the paper and the references exceed 12 pages.

Note: The research papers can have up to 12 pages in length (with specific restrictions on the number of pages for the body and for references). In their initial submission, the authors are encouraged to consider reserving some space (about 0.5 to 0.75 page) in order to more easily implement the changes requested by the reviewers for the final version

Topics of Interest

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Elicitation and Stakeholders

  • Requirements elicitation, prioritization, and negotiation
  • Design thinking and open innovation
  • Innovation through creativity
  • Crowdsourcing and social media
  • Social, cultural, and cognitive factors
  • User feedback and usage monitoring
  • Capturing and understanding users’ needs

• Requirements Analysis, Specification and Validation

  • Natural language approaches
  • Model-driven approaches
  • Formal approaches

• Requirements Management

  • Traceability
  • Evolution and release planning
  • Reuse
  • Tools and standards

• Pragmatic Requirements Engineering

  • Good-enough Requirements Engineering
  • Agile and lean approaches
  • Requirements engineering in Open Source

• Large-scale Requirements Engineering

  • Complex systems
  • Product lines and value chains
  • Software ecosystems, artificial intelligence, big data, and cloud technologies
  • Requirements Engineering for Smart Cities, Cyber-Physical Systems, and Systems of Systems

• Global Requirements Engineering

  • Geographically-dispersed teams
  • Culturally-divergent requirements efforts

• Domain-specific Requirements Engineering

  • Embedded systems
  • Open source software
  • Privacy and Security
  • Sustainability
  • Mobility
  • Cyber-physical systems

• Quality Engineering

  • User experience
  • Quality factors
  • Safety and security
  • Test approaches

• Product Management

  • Value creation techniques
  • Product evolution
  • Requirements and marketing
  • Requirements and law

• Requirements Engineering Education and Training

• Empirical Studies, Measurements and Prediction

Submission Instructions

In order to guide the reviewing process, all authors who intend to submit a paper must first submit the title, abstract (max. 200 words) and author information of their paper. Abstracts are used only to point out your interest to submit a full paper and to allow us to initiate the search for possible reviewers early in time.

Papers must describe original work that has not been previously published or submitted elsewhere. Submissions must be written in English and formatted according to the IEEE formatting instructions.

Note: The research papers can have up to 12 pages in length (with specific restrictions on the number of pages for the body and for references, see above categories). In their initial submission, the authors are encouraged to consider reserving some space (about 0.5 to 0.75 page) in order to more easily implement the changes requested by the reviewers for the final version.

Papers that exceed the length specification (see above categories) or are not formatted correctly will be desk-rejected without review. It is acceptable to reference additional content (i.e., data repositories, source code for open source tools, full protocols of empirical studies, etc.) by providing a corresponding URL hosted on an institutional, archive-grade site (Useful suggestions can be found at this link).

Please note that only full paper submissions will be peer reviewed. Abstract-only submissions will be discarded without further notice after the submission deadline.

At least one author of each accepted paper must register to and attend the conference in order to present their paper.

Need Help?

If you have never previously published at a major international conference and would like some help with planning your Research Paper submission, please consider the guidance and support offered by the RE'19 RE Mentors, Shaukat Ali and Nan Niu.

Additional Instructions for the Double-Blind Review Process

The RE'19 Research track will use a double-blind reviewing process. The goal of double-blind reviewing is to ensure that the reviewers can read and review your paper without having to know who the authors are, and hence avoid related bias. It is not about making the authors’ identity undiscoverable. Of course, authors are allowed and encouraged to submit papers that build on their previously published work.

In order to prepare your submission for double-blind reviewing, please follow the instructions given below.

1. Omit all names and affiliations of authors from the title page, but keep sufficient space to re-introduce them in the final version should the paper be accepted.
2. Do not include any acknowledgements that might disclose your identity. Leave space in your submission to add such acknowledgements when the paper has been accepted.
3. Refer to your own work in the third person, as you would normally do with the work of others.
4. When providing supplementary material, do this via a website that does not disclose your identity (you can find useful suggestion at this link).
5. Do not make changes that compromise the technical integrity of your work. For example:
   • do not change the names of your own tools, approaches or systems, but when referencing them, do this in the same way as you would refer to tools, approaches or systems created by others. HOWEVER, names of your proposed tools and systems should be avoided in the paper title;
   • in case you’d like to extend an RE:NEXT paper and need to recall concepts, definitions already published in the RE:NEXT paper, summarise them in a background section where a blind reference or a footnote indicates that references to the original work are omitted for DB reasons. This footnote should be removed and references added in the CR version for accepted papers. Moreover, use a fictitious name of your new tool/approach (originally presented in the RE:NEXT paper) to be replaced with the correct name in the CR version for accepted papers;
   • if your submission presents the results of a second part of an empirical study (where the first part has been already published) consider summarising key results needed from the first part in a background section that could be shortened or even removed in the camera ready (for accepted papers), and when the reference to your own work could be added.
6. Avoid using your project name in your submission (e.g. “we validated our techniques in a European project”, not “we validated our techniques in the NAME European project”).
7. Remove identification metadata from the PDF file before submission (in Adobe Acrobat Reader, you can check their presence with File Properties, or Ctrl-D). Microsoft Word users should follow the Document Properties and Personal Information section of these instructions.

Submission Link

Please submit your Research paper in PDF format via EasyChair. Select the RE'19 Research track for your submission.

Key Dates

All deadlines are 23:59 Anywhere on Earth (Standard Time).

Contact

Any inquiries regarding research papers can be directed to the Program Co-Chairs:

Program Co-Chair

Anna Perini

Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Trento, Italy

Program Co-Chair

Daniela Damian

University of Victoria, Canada