Open Science is a movement that seeks to make scientific research more transparent, rigorous, accessible, and reproducible. This increases the accountability of those contributing the research, but also their credit for opening up scientific work. Open science aims to make research more open to participation, review/refutation, improvement, and (re-)use for the community to benefit through making research material available and reusable.

Like REFSQ’24 and REFSQ’25, the Open Science Track of REFSQ’26 encourages and supports authors in making their research and artifacts more accessible, reproducible, and verifiable. Upon submission of the camera-ready versions of the papers, the Open Science Co-Chairs assess the state of Open Science of submissions to REFSQ’26.

In addition to continuing and expanding the existing Open Science Policy, which all authors are encouraged to adhere to, REFSQ’26 and the Open Research Knowledge Graph (ORKG) organize the second Open Science Competition with two challenges to contribute to the promotion of Open Science in Requirements Engineering.

All authors are invited to take up these challenges. Fame, honor, ORKG Awards, and prize money await you.

As at REFSQ’25, The Open Science Track of REFSQ’26 and the Open Research Knowledge Graph (ORKG) organize the second Open Science Competition to encourage and support authors to promote Open Science in Requirements Engineering. This competition aligns with the broader movement of Open Science and the Open Science Policy of REFSQ, which aims to make scientific research more accessible, reproducible, and verifiable. This competition is an opportunity for the research community to showcase its commitment to Open Science and its promotion in Requirements Engineering by making scientific knowledge FAIR - Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. It is a call to action for researchers to adopt practices that will shape the future of scientific publishing and communication.

The competition will be comprised of two challenges that will ask the authors to make their contributions to research knowledge more explicit with the help of the Open Research Knowledge Graph (ORKG). The best submission in each challenge receives an ORKG award, including prize money. The Open Science Co-Chairs will involve other reviewers to determine the winners.

More detailed information on the challenges will follow soon.

For further information, questions, or help please contact Tobias Hey (hey@kit.edu) and Katharina Großer (grosser@uni-koblenz.de).

We expect authors to include an explicit Data Availability Statement at the end of their paper (similar to acknowledgments). Specifically, authors should provide details about any material disclosed alongside their submission such as data, or code, and other relevant material. Otherwise, the authors should justify the reasons why disclosure is not possible (e.g., due to IP agreements).

We strongly encourage authors to read and apply the following best practices to contribute to Open Science:

Upon submission:

• If you have additional material (an artefact) associated with your submission, like data, code, and evaluation material, follow the Open Science - Artefact Management Guideline. In particular:

  • Adequately document the artefact to allow for, to the best extent possible, replicability, reproducibility, and reusability. See Document the Material.

• Establish a good intent by making your material available on a persistent repository with a public link, e.g., archiving your replication package on Zenodo or FigShare, which generates a permanent DOI for your material. The DOI should be referenced in the artifact and also in the paper. Note: On both Zenodo and FigShare it is possible to prepare your repository in a way that it does not disclose data for double-blind review. See this guide.

• Annotate your paper with SciKGTeX to describe its research contribution and thus participate in the first challenge of the Open Science Competition.

• Enrich your publication with an ORKG Comparison, if applicable, e.g., to provide an overview of the state of the art for your particular research domain, question, or problem and thus participate in the second challenge of the Open Science Competition.

• Indicate in your EasyChair submission if you annotated your paper with SciKGTeX and provide the link to your published ORKG comparison if you created one.

Upon acceptance:

• Attribute an appropriate open licence to the shared material and make sure you share this licence together with the material under the same folder in a LICENSE.md file.
• Upload your annotated paper to the ORKG in less than 90 seconds to increase its visibility: Youtube - Import of SciKGTeX annotated PDF into the ORKG.

Document the Material

• Prepare a README.md file that lists precisely what is being shared and how to use and re-use the research material. E.g., by summarizing the following:
  • “Summary of Artefact” – Describe what the artefact does, the expected inputs and outputs, and the motivation for using it.
  • “Description of Artefact” - Describe the structure of the artefact, e.g., all files included.
  • “Authors Information” – List all authors and how to cite the use of this artefact.
  • “Artefact Location” – Describe at which URL (or DOI) the artefact can be obtained.
• Introduce a running example that helps reviewers and the community validate and reuse the shared material.
• If you are sharing code, think thoroughly about the requirements for running the code and how to facilitate this process (e.g., use virtual environments such as Docker where possible). It should be exercisable, complete, and include appropriate evidence of verification. Provide the following in the README.md or consider a separate INSTALL.md:
  • “System Requirements” – state the required system, programs, and libraries needed to successfully run the artefact.
  • “Installation Instructions” – explain in detail how to run the artefact from scratch.
  • “Steps to Reproduce” – explain in detail what needs to be done to produce the same data, figures, and tables as presented in your submission.

Further reading:

• Guiding materials for using SciKGTeX and ORKG Comparisons:

  O. Karras, A. Ferrari, D. Fucci, D. Dell’Anna: Supplementary Materials of the Tutorial: “Promotion of Open Science in Requirements Engineering - Leveraging the Open Research Knowledge Graph for FAIR Scientific Information”, Zenodo, 2024. Link

• General introduction into Open Science in Software Engineering and generally recommended practices:

  D. Mendez, D. Graziotin, S. Wagner, H. Seibold: Open Science in Software Engineering, In: M. Felderer, G.-H. Travassos (eds.) Contemporary Empirical Methods in Software Engineering, Springer, 2020. Link

• Open Science - Artefact Management Guideline:

  J. Frattini, L. Montgomery, D. Fucci, M. Unterkalmsteiner, D. Mendez, J. Fischbach: Requirements Quality Research Artifacts: Recovery, Analysis, and Management Guideline, Journal of Systems and Software, 2024. Link