Scientific Approaches to Requirements Engineering: Research, Applications, Education and Future Directions

Dear Colleagues,

Software engineering offers theories, methods, and tools supporting the development of digital systems. Requirements engineering is a central discipline of software engineering, involved in eliciting and analysing the stakeholders' needs and specifying and managing the functional and non-functional properties of a system under development. These properties are the glue between the users, the conceptual design of the system, and its implementation. As such, they support the development of software systems that are useful, usable, and enjoyable to use. A scientific approach to the requirements engineering activities is critical to evaluate their foundations and effectiveness. 

As the software engineering field evolves rapidly, new aspects have to be considered. Agile and DevOps teams have been defining novel approaches to requirements engineering to handle evolution and time to market. Advances in artificial intelligence, and most specifically machine learning, introduce new challenges and opportunities. Systems of the future will have to cope with the complexity of new ethical and societal concerns (e.g., sustainability, human values, and gender issues) and with their evolution and impact on the society and ecosystem where they are deployed. 

The requirements engineering community must adapt its current practice to leverage and adequately evaluate the foundations and effectiveness of these new approaches to requirements engineering. 

This Special Issue aims at covering a wide variety of approaches to requirements engineering from a scientific perspective. It is intended to compile and disseminate original results from research, industry and academia, while also defining future directions as foreseen by the contributors. Potential topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Software requirements methods
• Software requirements application in industry
• Software requirements tools
• Software requirements education
• Functional and non-functional requirements
• Model driven requirements engineering
• Formal methods for the early software development stages
• Requirements engineering for artificial intelligence
• User-centered software development
• Requirements engineering for sustainability
• Ethical and societal concerns (e.g., sustainability, human values) in software requirements 
• Requirements in Agile development 
• Requirements in DevOps processes

The main manuscript types accepted for submission are as follows:

- Article (from 10 to 25 pages including references) presenting an original research that should include scientifically sound experiments and provide a substantial amount of new information.

- Short Communication (6 pages + 1 page maximum of references) of preliminary, but significant, results with potential impact on the targeted domain(s).

- Review (min 10 pages – max 25 pages + references) providing either a concise and precise update on the latest progress made in a given area of research, or a systematic review on a specific topic. Systematic reviews should follow the PRISMA guidelines (http://www.prisma-statement.org/).

Dr. Nicolas Guelfi
Dr. Ana Moreira
Dr. Cécile Péraire
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Information is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• User-centered software development
• Software requirements methods
• Requirements engineering
• Software engineering