Q-SE 2024

5th International Workshop on Quantum Software Engineering (Q-SE 2024)

Quantum computers promise to solve unthinkably complex problems that traditional computers could never solve. The evidence of such quantum supremacy over traditional computers has started to emerge, as can be seen by Google’s quantum computer recently performing a complex computation that would take 10,000 years for the best supercomputer available today. High-level languages to write quantum programs have also started to appear, e.g., Microsoft Q# and IBM Qiskit. Thus, we believe that this is the right time to build a community for quantum software engineering (QSE), focusing on devising methods, approaches, and processes to develop software for quantum programs efficiently and to ensure their correctness. The Q-SE workshop will provide a platform for researchers and practitioners to discuss the challenges in developing software quantum software in high-level quantum languages, developing novel solutions to build correct methods for developing testing quantum programs, executing quantum software, developing best practices, and creating a research roadmap of quantum software engineering.

The key goals of the workshop are:

1. Provide practical and generalizable insights on how to apply and extend existing approaches to quantum software development or develop entirely new approaches.
2. Devise ways in which industry and academia can collaborate to provide further knowledge on developing quantum software.
3. Provide academia with feedback on which skills and abilities are required in quantum software development and where to concentrate on the education of students.
4. Demonstrate to academia new, as well as existing, practical challenges in the field of quantum software engineering.
5. Communicate the latest research findings to practitioners and discuss ways to adapt them for industrial products, services, and processes.

The key outcomes of the workshop are:

1. Understanding the current state-of-the-art and state of the practice related to quantum software engineering.
2. Continued discussion on developing a future research roadmap for quantum software engineering from the last edition.
3. Establishing a new research community in the area of quantum software engineering through developing a special interest group.

Previous editions

• 4th International Workshop on Quantum Software Engineering (Q-SE 2023)
• 3rd International Workshop on Quantum Software Engineering (Q-SE 2022)
• 2nd International Workshop on Quantum Software Engineering (Q-SE 2021)
• 1st International Workshop on Quantum Software Engineering (Q-SE 2020)

Accepted Papers

Call for Papers

Q-SE welcomes submissions addressing topics across the full spectrum of Quantum Software Engineering, being inclusive of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods research. Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

• Paradigms for developing quantum software
• Quantum software design
• Quantum software testing
• Quantum software verification
• Quantum software coding practices
• Quantum software reuse
• Quantum software experimentations
• Quantum software execution
• Quantum programming languages
• Service-oriented quantum software
• Industrial applications
• Empirical evaluations

Three types of contributions will be considered:

• Regular papers (8 pages, including references): Research or experience reports, research methods, longer challenge papers.
• Position paper (4 pages, including references): Describing a well-argued position in any area of quantum software engineering.
• Fast Abstracts (2 pages, including references): Work in progress, challenges.

Evaluation Criteria (inspired by ICSE 2024’s review criteria)

All submissions submitted electronically through EasyChair will be reviewed by at least three program committee members. Each reviewer will evaluate each contribution for its:

• Novelty: The novelty and innovativeness of contributed solutions, problem formulations, methodologies, theories and/or evaluations, i.e., the extent to which the paper is sufficiently original with respect to state-of-the-art.
• Rigor: The soundness, clarity and depth of a technical or theoretical contribution, and the level of thoroughness and completeness of an evaluation.
• Relevance: The significance and/or potential impact of the research to the field of software engineering.
• Verifiability and Transparency: The extent to which the paper includes sufficient information to understand how an innovation works; to understand how data was obtained, analyzed, and interpreted; and how the paper supports independent verification or replication of the paper’s claimed contributions. Any artifacts attached to or linked from the paper may be checked by one reviewer.
• Presentation: The clarity of the exposition in the paper.

Reviewers will carefully consider all of the above criteria during the review process, and authors should take great care in clearly addressing them all. The paper should clearly explain and justify the claimed contributions.

Paper submissions

All authors should use the official “ACM Primary Article Template”, as can be obtained from the ACM Proceedings Template page https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template

LaTeX users should use the sigconf option, as well as the review (to produce line numbers for easy reference by the reviewers) and anonymous (omitting author names) options. To that end, the following LaTeX code can be placed at the start of the LaTeX document:

LATEX users must use

\documentclass[sigconf,review,anonymous]{acmart}

Submission link

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=qse2024

Important dates

• Papers Submission: 07 Dec 2023 AoE
• Acceptance Notification: 11 Jan 2024 AoE
• Camera Ready: 25 Jan 2024 AoE

Proceedings

The official publication date of the workshop proceedings is the date the proceedings are made available in the ACM Library. This date may be up to two weeks prior to the first day of ICSE 2024. The official publication date affects the deadline for any patent filings related to published work. Purchases of additional pages in the proceedings is not allowed.

Special issue

Selected papers of the workshop will be invited to submit an extended version to a Special Issue of the Springer Computing journal (https://www.springer.com/journal/607) on Pivoting Quantum Computing Using Software Engineering Best Practices. More information can be found here (https://link.springer.com/journal/607/updates/26555032).