Submission Guidelines

Each year, WER invites submissions of papers presenting new research or experiences in the field of Requirements Engineering. Submissions with original results from research, education, or industry in any aspect of Requirements Engineering are welcome. The selection process will consider relevance, originality, and clarity. Papers must be submitted as PDFs via the submission system, following the LNCS format. Submissions can be in Portuguese, Spanish, or English. Papers that exceed the page limit, fall outside the conference scope, or don't follow formatting guidelines may be rejected without review. All submissions will be reviewed by at least three Program Committee members. Accepted papers will be published as open access in the WERpapers repository.

WER - Statement of Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

The Workshop on Requirements Engineering is committed to upholding the highest standards of publication ethics and takes all possible measures against any publication malpractices. The Editorial board is responsible for, among other, preventing publication malpractice. Unethical behavior is unacceptable and the WER does not tolerate plagiarism in any form. Authors who submit articles to the Conference Proceedings: affirm that manuscript contents are original. Furthermore, authors’ submission also implies that the manuscript has not been published previously in any language, either fully or partly, and is not currently submitted for publication elsewhere. Editors, authors, and reviewers, within the WER are to be fully committed to good publication practice and accept the responsibility for fulfilling the following duties and responsibilities, as set by the COPE Code of Conduct for Journal Editors (http://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines).

Section A: Publication and authorship

• All submitted papers are subject to strict peer-review process by at least three international reviewers that are experts in the area of the particular paper.
• The factors that are taken into account in review are relevance, soundness, significance, originality, readability and language.
• The possible decisions include acceptance or rejection.
• If authors are encouraged to revise and resubmit a submission, there is no guarantee that the revised submission will be accepted.
• Rejected articles will not be re-reviewed.
• The paper acceptance is constrained by such legal requirements as shall then be in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism.
• No research can be included in more than one publication.

Section B: Editors’ responsibilities

• Editors have complete responsibility and authority to reject/accept an article.
• Editors are responsible for the contents and overall quality of the publication.
• Editors should always consider the needs of the authors and the readers when attempting to improve the publication.
• Editors should guarantee the quality of the papers and the integrity of the academic record.
• Editors should publish errata pages or make corrections when needed.
• Editors should have a clear picture of a research’s funding sources.
• Editors should base their decisions solely one the papers’ importance, originality, clarity and relevance to publication’s scope.
• Editors should not reverse their decisions nor overturn the ones of previous editors without serious reason.
• Editors should preserve the anonymity of reviewers.
• Editors should ensure that all research material they publish conforms to internationally accepted ethical guidelines.
• Editors should only accept a paper when reasonably certain.
• Editors should act if they suspect misconduct, whether a paper is published or unpublished, and make all reasonable attempts to persist in obtaining a resolution to the problem.
• Editors should not reject papers based on suspicions, they should have proof of misconduct.
• Editors should not allow any conflicts of interest between staff, authors, reviewers and board members.
• Editors ensure that the submitted fullpapers are reviewed without regard to the authors’ race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy.

Section C: Authors’ responsibilities

• Authors must certify that their manuscripts are their original work.
• Authors must certify that the manuscript has not previously been published elsewhere.
• Authors must certify that the manuscript is not currently being considered for publication elsewhere.
• Authors must participate in the peer review process.
• Authors are obliged to provide retractions or corrections of mistakes.
• All Authors mentioned in the paper must have significantly contributed to the research.
• Authors must state that all data in the paper are real and authentic.
• Authors must notify the Editors of any conflicts of interest.
• Authors must identify all sources used in the creation of their manuscript.
• Authors must report any errors they discover in their published paper to the Editors.

Section D: Reviewers’ responsibilities

• Reviewers should keep all information regarding papers confidential and treat them as privileged information.
• Reviews should be conducted objectively, with no personal criticism of the author.
• Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.
• Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors.
• Reviewers should also call to the Editor in Chief’s attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.
• Reviewers should not review manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.

Section E: Copyright and Licensing

• Authors keep the copyright to their papers.
• Authors publish their papers as open-access licensed via the Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
• Authors keep the right to publish a copy of the published original of their paper on their home page or via the institutional repository of their organization or via comparable repositories.
• WERpapers acquires no rights to the papers in a proceedings volume, or to the volume as a whole. The editors of the volume hold the right to publish the complete volume. The editors execute this right by publishing the volume on WERpapers. They are the self-publishers of their volumes.
• Authors do not have the right to demand the removal or update of their paper published at WERpapers.
• Any communication of authors about their papers must instead be directed to the editors of their proceedings volume.

Section F: Author fees

• The goal of WERpapers is to ensure articles are published as quickly as possible, subject to appropriate quality controls (peer review, and submission of final version), and widely disseminated.
• All articles from all editions are open access, it does not involve any upfront payment of an article publishing charge (APC). We also make the article immediately and freely available upon publication in the Workshop on Requirements Engineering.
• For more information, please go to COPE’s web site https://publicationethics.org/