Doctoral SymposiumVARIABILITY 2026

Call for Doctoral Symposium Papers

Context

The Doctoral Symposium of VARIABILITY 2026 aims to provide a supportive environment that enables doctoral students to get constructive feedback on their research. Students will discuss their work with experienced community members and other students. The event is open to any PhD student whose research topic concerns software variability, software and systems reuse, product lines, and configuration. This includes PhD students at early stages of their research (after setting up a research program, but before having results). Accordingly, we will have two submission categories:

• Late – late-stage PhD students, having at least 6 months of work after the conference and before their expected completion; and
• Early – early-stage PhD students, with at least 6 months of work already performed prior to the submission date.

Important Dates

• Doctoral symposium submission: 06/06/2026 (AOE)
• Doctoral symposium notification: 06/07/2026 (AOE)
• Camera-ready & author registration: 15/07/2026 (AOE)

Submissions/Publishing

Requirements

To participate, students should prepare a research plan answering the following questions:

• The research problem being addressed and its importance
• The research methodology and techniques being applied
• The solution being proposed, its novelty and validity
• The relation of the work with the state-of-the-art
• Preliminary results and their impact (for the ‘late’ category)

The research plan aims to provide clear material that can be used as a basis for guidance and discussion. It is strongly recommended that students discuss the research plan with their supervisors. The following structure is recommended:

• Front matter: Title, your name, email address, abstract
• Introduction and Motivation: Introduction, description of the problem tackled and its importance; what the literature says about this problem and where existing work fails; how you plan to tackle this problem; what results you envision; how you plan to validate your solution.
• Research Questions: Clearly state the research questions you plan to address and any assumptions you make.
• Research Methodology and Approach: The research methodology you plan to use (e.g., design science, action research), including the techniques you plan to use (e.g., formalisation, algorithm specification, case studies). In line with your research methodology, describe your research approach: what novel methods and/or technology you are going to build, how you are going to do that, including aspects such as data collection, software prototyping and evaluation. Discuss any threats to validity you can envision and expect to address (to the extent possible).
• Preliminary Results (for the ‘late’ category): Overview of the results you achieved so far. Provide an example to explain how the solution obtained so far works. This is only applicable to the ‘late’ category.
• Work plan:
Both categories of submissions should consider an overall work plan for the whole thesis. Submissions for the ‘late’ category can mention which parts of the work plan they have reached so far. Both categories of submissions should consider the schedule for the next 12 months.

Submission format

VARIABILITY DS papers will be published in the second volume of the VARIABILITY conference proceedings published by Springer (Lecture Notes in Computer Science). Submissions should be in the Springer format (please see the information about the format in the call for the research track). All submissions must be in English, in PDF format, and neither contain proprietary or confidential material. The page limits for doctoral symposium submissions are as follows:

• Early category: 6 pages (+2 pages for references only)
• Late category: 8 pages (+2 pages for references only)

Submissions should be sent as a single file via Easychair track Doctoral Symposium: https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=variability2026 (please select ‘VARIABILITY 2026 – Doctoral Symposium Track’).

Evaluation

At least two reviewers will evaluate each submission according to the research’s relevance, originality and feasibility. The PhD student of the accepted submission must register and attend VARIABILITY 2026 so that the submission can be published.

Format of the Symposium

The symposium will be held in conjunction with VARIABILITY 2026. In addition to presentations by PhD students and discussions, the doctoral symposium will feature a keynote/panel and ask-me-anything sessions with experienced researchers. All students are expected to attend every symposium session.