Q-SE 2023

4th International Workshop on Quantum Software Engineering (Q-SE 2023)

Quantum computers promise to solve unthinkably complex problems that traditional computers could ever solve. The evidence of such quantum supremacy over traditional computers has started to emerge as it 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’s Q# and IBM’s 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 adopt 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. Developing a future research roadmap for quantum software engineering.
3. Establishing a new research community in the area of quantum software engineering through developing a special interest group.

Previous editions

• 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
• 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 2023’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:

• Soundness: The extent to which the paper’s contributions and/or innovations address its research questions and are supported by rigorous application of appropriate research methods.
• Significance: The extent to which the paper’s contributions can impact the field of quantum software engineering, and under which assumptions (if any).
• Novelty: The extent to which the contributions are sufficiently original with respect to the state-of-the-art.
• Verifiability and Transparency: The extent to which the paper includes sufficient information to understand how an innovation works; to understand how data (if any) was obtained, analyzed, and interpreted; and how the paper supports independent verification or replication of the paper’s claimed contributions.
• Clarity: The extent to which the paper’s quality of writing meets the high standards of Q-SE and ICSE, including clear descriptions, as well as adequate use of the English language, absence of major ambiguity, clearly readable figures and tables, and adherence to the formatting instructions provided below.

Reviewers will carefully consider all of these criteria during the review process, and authors should take great care in clearly addressing them all. The paper should clearly explain the claimed contributions, and how they are sound, significant, novel, and verifiable, as described above.

Paper submissions

The paper format must follow the IEEEE formatting guidelines, see also also https://www.ieee.org/conferences/publishing/templates.html

LATEX users must use

\documentclass[10pt,conference]{IEEEtran}

without including the compsoc or compsocconf options

Submission link

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=qse2023

Important dates

• Abstract Submission: January 13, 2023 AoE
• Paper Submission: January 13, 2023 AoE January 20, 2023 AoE
• Acceptance Notification: February 24, 2023 AoE
• Camera Ready: March 17, 2023 AoE

Proceeding

The official publication date is the date the proceedings are made available in the ACM or IEEE Digital Libraries. This date may be up to two weeks prior to the first day of ICSE 2023. 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

We are organizing an open special issue on Software Engineering for Hybrid Quantum Computing Systems in the Journal of Systems and Software:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/journal-of-systems-and-software/about/call-for-papers#software-engineering-for-hybrid-quantum-computing-systems