Call for Submission and Participation

The Doctoral Symposium primarily welcomes any Ph.D. student who has already settled on a dissertation topic in the Requirements Engineering area. We call for submission and participation from students typically in the first half of their research toward their Ph.D. dissertation.

Goals of the Symposium

The RE Doctoral Symposium provides an interactive forum where doctoral students can: - Refine their research vision by presenting work-in-progress and receiving personalized feedback from senior researchers. - Engage with the RE community, sharing knowledge, methods, and challenges with peers from diverse backgrounds. - Build professional networks that last beyond the Ph.D., fostering interdisciplinary collaborations for years to come.

This year’s theme emphasizes how RE research can prepare practitioners, organizations, and societies to design and sustain systems in collaboration with advanced AI tools. While submissions need not directly address the theme, students are encouraged to reflect on how their research connects to sustainability, transformation, or AI-enabled futures.

Submission Requirements

Each student’s submission must include two components: 1. Letter of Recommendation: A letter from the dissertation advisor sent directly to the Doctoral Symposium Chairs (Liliana Pasquale liliana.pasquale@ucd.ie and Paola Spoletini pspoleti@kennesaw.edu). The letter should provide an assessment of the research progress and an anticipated dissertation completion date. 2. Doctoral Symposium Paper: A paper authored solely by the student (supervisors are not co-authors).

Length:

• Up to 4 pages (plus 1 page for references).
• For early-stage Ph.D. students, a shorter version of 2 pages (plus 1 page for references) is acceptable.

Content:

• The research problem, its significance, and why it remains unresolved.
• The research goal or hypothesis.
• Related work and motivation.
• Anticipated contributions.
• Proposed methods to achieve the goals or test hypotheses.
• (For later-stage students) Results obtained so far.

Papers must be submitted electronically via the RE’26 EasyChair system under the Doctoral Symposium track. Submissions must follow the conference formatting guidelines.

Evaluation Criteria

Submissions will be evaluated on: - The quality, originality, and potential impact of the research. - The clarity and quality of the paper. - Soundness of the proposed methods to achieve the goals or test hypotheses. - Accepted papers will be published in the RE’26 conference proceedings.

Participation Requirements

Accepted students must register at student rates and attend the Symposium in person. Participants are expected to attend the entire Doctoral Symposium day, actively engaging in discussion and feedback.

The format of your paper must strictly adhere to the IEEEtran Proceedings Format. LaTeX users: please use the LaTeX class file IEEEtran v1.8 and the following configuration (without option ‘compsoc’ or ‘compsocconf’): \documentclass[conference]{IEEEtran}

Word users: please use this Word template. See the official IEEE Templates page for more information.

Please make sure that your submission:

• does not exceed the respective page limit specified in the track call
• is in PDF format,
• is in letter page size,
• does not have page numbers,
• has all fonts embedded in the PDF file,
• uses only scalable font types (like Type 1, TrueType) — bit-mapped font types (like Type 3) are not acceptable,
• has all figures embedded in vector graphics (if not possible, use a high-resolution bitmap format of at least 300 dpi; do not use JPG, but a lossless format like PNG or GIF),
• has all text in figures and tables large enough and readable when printed,
• has a caption for every figure or table,
• has the title and all headings properly capitalized
• has no orphans and widows (cf. Section Help), and
• does not use footnote references in the abstract.