The RE’26 Industrial Innovation Track will identify and enable the application of research results to industry and society, with the goal of driving significant economic and societal impact. The track helps raise awareness of the rapidly evolving state of the art and fosters collaboration between industry and research. These goals are achieved through paper presentations and networking during the full conference from August 19-21, 2026.

Call for Contributions

The RE 2026 Industrial Innovation Track welcomes original papers from researchers working with practitioners or from practitioners themselves. The papers can focus on traditional RE topics, such as requirements elicitation, analysis, prioritisation, documentation, validation, evolution, and maintenance. They can also cover novel areas at the boundary of RE and other disciplines, including but not limited to software engineering/computer science at large, mechanical/electronic/civil engineering, social science, psychology, sustainability, anthropology, and the humanities. 

Categories of Industrial Innovation Contributions

The track welcomes three main types of contributions:

Full Papers

Full papers report innovative application(s) of a requirements engineering concept, method, framework, or practice in an interesting industrially relevant context or operational environment (experience papers) or the industry at large (state-of-practice papers). These papers must report well-supported findings or the lessons learned from the perspective and context of industry.

The papers must not exceed 10 pages, plus optionally 1 page for references. They will undergo full single-blind peer review and be published in the IEEE proceedings. Single-blind means the paper does not need to be anonymised for the industrial innovation track.

Submission Deadline: Abstract on March 9 (not mandatory), Paper on March 23.

Review Criteria for Full Papers:

• Clarity of the context and challenge addressed with the practice or experience
• Coverage of prior work by you and others that your practice or experience builds on
• Feasibility of replicating the practice or experience based on your paper
• Support of your findings or lessons with the evidence described in your paper
• Significance and usefulness of your contribution or findings for industry and research

Short Papers

Short papers report significant challenge(s) or opportunities encountered in the industry that have not been satisfactorily solved (innovation challenge papers) or propose key elements of a solution and a roadmap for addressing the challenge (innovation opportunity paper). The innovations should clearly relate to requirements engineering, for example, by using the discipline to innovate or by innovating for this discipline. These papers must present verifiable evidence or arguments to support the significance of the challenge and, for innovation opportunity papers, the feasibility of the solution and roadmap.

The innovation challenges and opportunities are encouraged to be linked to data published in conjunction with the RE’25 Open Data Initiative. While not mandatory, availability of data can substantially accelerate innovations and increase their success.

The papers must not exceed 5 pages, including references. They will undergo full single-blind peer review and be published in the IEEE proceedings. Single-blind means the paper must not be anonymised for the industrial innovation track.

Submission Deadline: Abstract on March 9 (not mandatory), Paper on March 23.

Review Criteria for Short Papers:

• Clarity and significance of the challenge addressed with the practice or experience
• Coverage of existing approaches and explanation of why change is needed
• Appropriateness of success criteria and feasibility of solving the challenge
• For innovation opportunities: pertinence of the solution and roadmap
• Adequacy of recommendations for industry and research to solve the challenge
• Argumentation for the impact of solving the challenge, including opportunities and threats

Presentations

Presentation outlines describe the participant’s background in industry, economy, society, investment, or funding in research and innovation, a proposed innovative challenge, idea, opportunity, or other type of contribution with supporting evidence, and a call for action. You will receive a short slot to present your proposal and link it with a call for action in the interactive sessions at the conference.

To be submitted is the presentation outline. The outline’s text (including any references) must not exceed 1 page, but submissions may furthermore contain any number of images and slides. The format is free, except that it shall not have any abstract. It will undergo fast-track peer review. The short presentation will be held in an interactive format at the conference. Accepted presentations will be shown on the website along with the outline’s text; they will not be published in the conference proceedings.

Submission Deadline: Presentation outline on June 15.

Review Criteria for Presentations:

• Clarity of your presentation of your company, your background, and your interests related to requirements engineering
• Significance of your challenge, idea, opportunity, or other type of contribution, and/or its support with evidence
• Value creation potential of the call for action

Recommendations and Know your PC

Unsure whether to submit the paper to the industrial innovation track or a different RE track?

The research and industry innovation track papers must both meet IEEE’s high publication standards, but they are judged by different criteria. Authors should submit their papers to the correct track to improve their chances of acceptance. The following examples are not exhaustive but serve as guidelines.

• Research Track: A novel solution evaluated on public or industrial data or an evaluation of an existing problem through sound empirical methods, e.g., controlled experiments, experimental simulations, case studies, surveys, systematic literature reviews, etc. This track focuses on extending the scientific literature. Note that only papers in this category can qualify to receive the research track’s best paper award.
• RE@Next! Track: A science-driven vision or preliminary research plan that advances the state-of-the-art. This track focuses on scientific thought leadership.
• Industrial Innovation Track: An innovation challenge or opportunity driven by industry or experience report based on a practitioner’s first-hand work experience or trial in the relevant environment – regardless of failure or success. This track focuses on the practitioners’ perspective.

Tip for all types of contributions: Get to know the programme committee members of the industrial innovation track and, on demand, get matchmade for co-authoring your paper.

Check here to know how to meet your programme committee!:

https://conf.researchr.org/track/RE-2026/RE-2026-industrial-innovation-papers#Get-to-Know-the-Programme-Committee

AI Generated Content

Concerning AI Generated content, authors should adopt the IEEE Policy: https://open.ieee.org/author-guidelines-for-artificial-intelligence-ai-generated-text/

“The use of content generated by artificial intelligence (AI) in an article (including but not limited to text, figures, images, and code) shall be disclosed in the acknowledgements section of any article submitted to an IEEE publication. The AI system used shall be identified, and specific sections of the article that use AI-generated content shall be identified and accompanied by a brief explanation regarding the level at which the AI system was used to generate the content.”

“The use of AI systems for editing and grammar enhancement is common practice and, as such, is generally outside the intent of the above policy. In this case, disclosure as noted above is recommended.”

Authors are ultimately responsible and accountable for the contents of the work.

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.

Full and Short Papers:

Papers must be submitted electronically in PDF format via the RE’25 EasyChair system (link corrected). Select the RE’25 Industrial Innovation Track for your submission.

To guide the reviewing process, all authors who intend to submit a paper must first submit the title and abstract. Abstracts should describe explicit coverage of context, objectives, methods, results, and conclusions and should not exceed 200 words.

Full papers must be at most 10 pages plus 1 page for references, and short papers must be at most 5 pages, including references. Submissions must be written in English and formatted according to the IEEE formatting instructions. Submissions to the industrial innovation track must not be double-blinded.

Please note: Papers that exceed the length specification or are not formatted correctly will be desk-rejected without review. Only complete submissions that include the paper will be peer-reviewed. Abstract-only submissions will be discarded without further notice after the submission deadline. Accepted papers may require editing for clarity before publication and presentation. They will appear in the IEEE Digital Library.

Papers submitted to RE’25 must be original. They must be written by humans, potentially assisted by artificial intelligence, not contain plagiarised material, and have not been published nor submitted for review elsewhere while under consideration for RE’25. RE’25 follows the IEEE policies for cases of double submission or plagiarism.

Presentations:

While “presentation-only” authors are not required to submit full papers, they must provide an outline of their presentation to the industry track program committee to show that it meets the review criteria. For instance, authors must be able to support any claims made in their presentation. They will also be required to submit draft slides with detailed notes explaining each slide. In particular, for slides containing graphics or photos, authors should use the notes section to explain the key messages they intend to convey clearly.

Presentation outlines must not exceed 1 page and shall not have any abstract. Submissions must be written in English and should be formatted according to the IEEE formatting instructions.

Tip for all types of contributions: Get to know the programme committee members of the industrial innovation track and, on demand, get matchmade for co-authoring your paper.