Aims and scope

The aims of the Software Quality Journal are:

(1) To promote awareness of the crucial role of quality management in the effective construction of the software systems developed, used, and/or maintained by organizations in pursuit of their business objectives.
(2) To provide a forum of the exchange of experiences and information on software quality management and the methods, tools and products used to measure and achieve it.
(3) To provide a vehicle for the publication of academic papers related to all aspects of software quality.

The Journal addresses all aspects of software quality from both a practical and an academic viewpoint. It invites contributions from practitioners and academics, as well as national and international policy and standard making bodies, and sets out to be the definitive international reference source for such information.

The Journal will accept research, technique, case study, survey and tutorial submissions that address quality-related issues including, but not limited to: internal and external quality standards, management of quality within organizations, technical aspects of quality, quality aspects for product vendors, software measurement and metrics, software testing and other quality assurance techniques, total quality management and cultural aspects. Other technical issues with regard to software quality, including: data management, formal methods, safety critical applications, and CASE.

Special Issue on Advances in Gamification of Software Development, Verification and Validation
Día de Entrega: 2026-01-15

This Special Issue aims at collect papers from researchers working on topics related to the application of gamified mechanics to software development, verification and validation. The Special Issue will aim including both theoretical and empirical research, as well as presentations of gamified tools and industrial case studies.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

–gamified software development
– gamified definition of test cases/suites
– gamified end-2-end capture & replay or exploratory testing
– gamified integrated development environments
– theoretical gamification frameworks
– metric frameworks to evaluate the performance of software developers and testers
– gamification applied to software development and software testing education

Submitted papers should present original, unpublished work, relevant to one of the topics of the Special Issue. All submitted papers will be evaluated on the basis of relevance, significance of contribution, technical quality, scholarship, and quality of presentation, by at least two independent reviewers. It is the policy of the journal that no submission, or substantially overlapping submission, be published or be under review at another journal or conference at any time during the review process.

Special Issue on Software Quality in an AI-Driven World
Día de Entrega: 2026-03-30

In the era of Artificial Intelligence (AI), software systems are evolving rapidly, bringing new opportunities—and new challenges—for ensuring quality. The rise of AI-driven components, predictive models, autonomy, and data-intensive architectures deeply affects how we define, measure, assure, and improve software and systems quality. At the same time, AI is emerging as a powerful enabler of software and system quality. Techniques such as test generation, fault localization, and code analysis—collectively referred to as AI-for-Quality (AI4Q)—offer significant potential but require careful validation before deployment. Conversely, the growing prevalence of AI-enabled systems, whose functionality is determined by data rather than fixed specifications, introduces novel challenges for quality assurance. Ensuring the reliability, robustness, and correctness of these systems—termed Quality of AI-enabled Systems (Q4AI)—demands new methods, tools, and practices.

The Special Issue on Software Quality in an AI-Driven World invites contributions that explore all perspectives of software quality, inspired by the thematic tracks of the 18th International Conference on the Quality of Information and Communications Technology (QUATIC 2025) held in Lisbon, Portugal. The goal of the conference series is to provide a forum for disseminating advanced methods, techniques and tools for supporting quality approaches in every phase and all aspects related to the engineering and management of advanced ICT-based systems. This Special Issue invites original research and industrial experience papers that advance the state of knowledge and practice in software quality across all dimensions represented in the QUATIC 2025 thematic tracks. Therefore we welcome high quality papers in any of the following areas, but not limited to:

Requirements Engineering

- Quality in requirements elicitation, specification, and validation
- Requirements traceability and evolution
- Capturing and managing non-functional requirements
- Dealing with ambiguity, inconsistency, and conflict

Cloud Computing and System Architecture

- Architecture evaluation methods for scalability, resilience, and performance
- Architectural patterns, styles, and design decisions for quality
- Quality issues in cloud-native, edge, and distributed architectures
- Trade-offs between cost, performance, and sustainability

Verification, Validation, and Testing

- Advances in model-based, automated, and AI-driven testing
- Test generation, prioritization, and optimization
- Verification and validation in safety-critical systems
- Quality assurance of data-intensive software

Evolution and Maintenance

- Refactoring and technical debt management
- Co-evolution of software, models, and requirements
- Quality assurance in continuous delivery and DevOps
- Software evolution in AI-driven systems

Process Improvement and Analytics

- Metrics and dashboards for software quality assessment
- Data-driven approaches to process improvement
- Agile and lean quality practices
- Maturity models and standards for software quality

Security and Privacy

- Software Safety and Risk Management
- Security Models, Policies, and Testing
- Security and Privacy in Emerging Technologies
- Cloud, IoT, and Big Data security

Green and Sustainable Computing

- Energy-aware software engineering practices
- Sustainable design principles and trade-offs
- Life-cycle assessment of software systems
- Balancing performance and environmental impact

Human, Ethical, and Social Aspects

- Ethical implications of AI and software systems
- Human factors in software development and use
- Fairness, accountability, and transparency in digital systems
- Social responsibility and inclusiveness in software design

Quality in the Age of AI

- Reliability, robustness, and interpretability of AI models
- Data quality, drift, and bias in AI systems
- Verification, validation, and testing for AI/ML components
- Quality models, standards and guidelines for developing AI-based systems
- AI Supporting Software Quality Processes

Quality of AI-enabled Systems:

Manuscript submission information:

The call for this special issue is an open call. In addition, the authors of the best papers of the 18th International Conference on the Quality of Information and Communications Technology (QUATIC 2025), will be invited to submit extended versions of their papers. Authors are encouraged to submit high-quality, original work that has neither appeared in, nor is under consideration by other journals or conferences. All submitted papers will undergo a rigorous peer-review process and should adhere to the general principles of the Software Quality Journal articles. If a paper has been already presented at a conference, it should contain at least 30% of new technical contents and contribution before being submitted to this issue. Authors must provide any previously published material relevant to their submission and a summary document explaining the enhancements made in the journal version. Surveys, and (systematic) literature reviews are out of the scope of this special issue and will be desk-rejected. Final decisions on all papers are made by the Editor in Chief.

Authors should prepare their manuscript according to the Instructions for Authors available from the Journal’s submission guidelines https://link.springer.com/journal/11219/submission-guidelines. Submitted papers should present original, unpublished work, relevant to one of the topics of the special issue. All submitted papers will be evaluated on the basis of relevance, significance of contribution, technical quality, scholarship, and quality of presentation by at least two independent reviewers. It is the policy of the journal that no submission, or substantially overlapping submission, be published or be under review at another journal or conference at any time during the review process.

Submissions will be processed and start the reviewing process as soon as they arrive, without waiting for the submission deadline.