About

REFSQ 2026 will host its renowned Doctoral Symposium (DS) for PhD students whose research relates to the field of Requirements Engineering (RE).

Goals

The goals of the DS are:

1. To provide PhD students with an opportunity to learn about the field and to get a feeling of what their colleagues are working on.

2. To provide PhD students with a supportive and safe environment where to present their plans and results.

3. To provide all participant students with feedback from a panel of senior researchers in RE.

4. To facilitate interaction between students and with established researchers in RE.

Registration

Please note the registration rules for PhD students accepted to the Doctoral Symposium.

Call for papers

Following the tradition of REFSQ, the DS will revolve around structured presentations and discussions, with ample time devoted to interactions and exchange of ideas.

Well-known researchers will attend the event and provide in-depth feedback to the participating students.

Doctoral Symposium Co-Chairs

• Gunter Mussbacher – McGill University (gunter.mussbacher@mcgill.ca)
• Kurt Schneider – Leibniz Universität Hannover, Germany (kurt.schneider@inf.uni- hannover.de)

Submission Instructions

We welcome submissions from PhD students who have started their PhD but have not submitted their thesis yet.

How to apply

To apply to the REFSQ 2026 Doctoral Symposium, you will need to submit an application consisting of the following:

• A Doctoral Symposium Paper (max 6 pages + 1 for references, CEUR format, see below) that consists of an abstract and of the following sections:

  • The problem you are addressing: what is unsatisfactory in the current state of the art relevant for your research, and why is this problem relevant (why would anyone care if the problem was solved)? Include a definition of the problem statement.
  • Related work: why are the existing approaches sub-optimal?
  • The research method you are applying or you plan to apply: what are the research questions, which method(s) are you following to get to the solution, and how do you plan to evaluate the solution?
  • Your proposed solution: what have you achieved so far with your research, what is its contribution to the existing literature, and what is the novelty?
  • An overview of the research plan: what are the next steps toward completing your PhD, and what are the challenges ahead?

• A Declaration from the Supervisor that confirms that they agree with the submission and that the student will be allowed to attend the event, should the DS paper be accepted. Furthermore, the declaration needs to state at which stage of their PhD the student is, including the number of years completed and how many years are left in their PhD.

The DS paper should be formatted using the CEURART one-columns style. There is an Overleaf template as well as a downloadable offline template.

Both DS paper and supervisor’s declaration should be submitted via EasyChair (choose the DS paper option) by February 2nd, 2026. Please upload the two files to the respective fields.

Submissions will be evaluated based on the quality of the DS paper and on the interest of the research described therein.

Accepted submissions will be published in CEUR-WS proceedings.