Aims and scope

The focus of this journal is on formal methods for designing, implementing, and validating the correctness of hardware (VLSI) and software systems. The stimulus for starting a journal with this goal came from both academia and industry. In both areas, interest in the use of formal methods has increased rapidly during the past few years. The enormous cost and time required to validate new designs has led to the realization that more powerful techniques must be developed. A number of techniques and tools are currently being devised for improving the reliability, and robustness of complex hardware and software systems. While the boundary between the (sub)components of a system that are cast in hardware, firmware, or software continues to blur, the relevant design disciplines and formal methods are maturing rapidly. Consequently, an important (and useful) collection of commonly applicable formal methods are expected to emerge that will strongly influence future design environments and design methods.

The journal is an international forum for the dissemination of research related to the application and development of formal methods in both hardware (VLSI) and software system design. Papers describing original work in all aspects of formal methods as they relate to this general area are invited.

Special Issue on CAV 2025
Día de Entrega: 2026-12-31

This collection includes papers that appeared in the 37th International Conference on Computer Aided Verification (CAV'25). Based on the reviews, presentation, and interaction at the conference, the chairs of the program committee chose the papers that they found most interesting and included them in this collection . The papers in this collection are extensions of the work that was presented in the conference.

Authors should prepare their manuscript according to the Instructions for Authors available from the Journal’s submission guidelines https://link.springer.com/journal/10703/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 Submitted papers should present original, unpublished work, relevant to one of the topics of the special issue.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.

Please note that the authors of selected papers presented at CAV 2025 are invited to submit an extended version of their contributions by taking into consideration both the reviewers’ comments on their conference paper, and the feedback received during presentation at the conference. It is worth clarifying that the extended version is expected to contain a substantial scientific contribution, e.g., in the form of new algorithms, experiments or qualitative/quantitative comparisons, and that neither verbatim transfer of large parts of the conference paper nor reproduction of already published figures will be tolerated.

The extended versions of CAV 2025 papers will undergo the standard, rigorous journal review process and be accepted only if well-suited to the topic of this special issue and meeting the scientific level of the journal. Final decisions on all papers are made by the Editor in Chief.

https://link.springer.com/collections/fabegegihf

Special Issue on FMCAD 2025
Día de Entrega: 2026-12-31

This collection includes papers that appeared in the 25th International Conference on Formal Methods in Computer-Aided Design (FMCAD'25). Based on the reviews, presentation, and interaction at the conference, the chairs of the program committee chose the papers that they found most interesting and included them in this collection . The papers in this collection are extensions of the work that was presented in the conference.

Authors should prepare their manuscript according to the Instructions for Authors available from the Journal’s submission guidelines https://link.springer.com/journal/10703/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.

Please note that the authors of selected papers presented at FMCAD are invited to submit an extended version of their contributions by taking into consideration both the reviewers’ comments on their conference paper, and the feedback received during presentation at the conference. It is worth clarifying that the extended version is expected to contain a substantial scientific contribution, e.g., in the form of new algorithms, experiments or qualitative/quantitative comparisons, and that neither verbatim transfer of large parts of the conference paper nor reproduction of already published figures will be tolerated.

The extended versions of FMCAD papers will undergo the standard, rigorous journal review process and be accepted only if well-suited to the topic of this special issue and meeting the scientific level of the journal. Final decisions on all papers are made by the Editor in Chief.

https://link.springer.com/collections/fabeadefeg