Methods of Software Design: Techniques and Applications

Science of Computer Programming is dedicated to the distribution, via publication of papers and software, of research results in the areas of software systems development, use and maintenance, including the software aspects of hardware design. The journal has a wide scope ranging from the many facets of methodological foundations to the details of technical issues and aspects of industrial practice.

The subjects of interest to SCP cover the entire spectrum of methods for the entire life cycle of software systems, including:

    Requirements, specification, design, validation, verification, coding, testing, maintenance, metrics and renovation of software;
    Design, implementation and evaluation of programming languages;
    Programming environments, development tools, visualisation and animation;
    Management of the development process;
    Human factors in software, software for social interaction, software for social computing;
    Cyber physical systems, and software for the interaction between the physical and the machine;
    Software aspects of infrastructure services, system administration, and network management.

Special emphasis is given to recent trends in software development, such as software architecture, component-based software development and web-based software engineering.

SCP is divided into two tracks. These are: (1) Research papers and (2) Software.

Research Papers Track

These cover four lines of work: (1) Concepts and methodology, (2) Formal techniques, (3) Experimental software technology, (4) Descriptive software technology.

    Concepts and methodology is open for methodological, philosophical and sociological studies on all aspects of computer software production and usage, including ethics. Also short papers are allowed here, called viewpoints.

    Formal techniques emphasizes the development and the pragmatic application of formal and semi-formal techniques. Submissions that the editors consider mainly mathematical or theoretical in nature, with the preliminary consent of the authors, will formally be forwarded to the sister journal TCS.

    Experimental software technology is open for expositions on implementations of and experiments with novel programming languages, systems and methods.

    Descriptive software technology deals with observational studies of current software development practices, reporting on new languages, systems and methods, including survey reports on the various themes.

Software Track

SCP disseminates impactful and re-usable scientific software through Original Software Publications. The software track is open for papers describing new software tools of relevance to SCP under the strict condition that the source code of the tools is open. Moreover, the results should be reproducible and show general applicability. By means of the article type of Original Software Publications, versioned software product, corpora and datasets can enter the review process and get published. A copy of the 'accepted for publication' version of software will be copied to the journal's GitHub repository for indexing purposes. Go to the Science of Computer Programming GitHub repository.

Badged for Reproducibility: Software submitted to SCP for consideration is considered for certification for computational reproducibility by the CodeOcean, a cloud based computational reproducibility platform that helps the community by enabling sharing of code and data as a resource for non-commercial use. Certified papers will be given additional exposure by having an attached Reproducibility Badge, and by being listed on the CodeOcean website.

Special Issues: The Journal welcomes Special Issues within its Scope either resulting from conferences or workshops or from dedicated editorial efforts. There can be special issues for research papers or for software.

Special Issue on 17th International Symposium on Functional and Logic Programming
Submission Date: 2025-01-01

Guest editors:

Professor Jeremy Gibbons
University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Areas of Expertise: Functional programming, programming languages, program correctness, program transformation, patterns in programming

Dr. Dale Miller, PhD
Inria Saclay France
Areas of Expertise: computational logic, proof theory, automated theorem proving

Special issue information:

The FLOPS conference series aims to bring together practitioners, researchers and implementors of declarative programming, to discuss mutually interesting results and common problems: theoretical advances, their implementations in language systems and tools, and applications of these systems in practice.

The scope includes all aspects of the design, semantics, theory, applications, implementations, and teaching of declarative programming. FLOPS specifically aims to promote crossfertilization between theory and practice and among different styles of declarative programming. This special issue includes extended versions of selected papers from the 17th iteration of FLOPS, held in Kumamoto, Japan in May 2024.

Manuscript submission information:

Final Manuscript Submission Deadline: 01/01/2025

Please note that the submission is via invitation only for this special issue.

Keywords:

Functional programming, Logic programming, Declarative programming, Rewriting, Program transformation, Programming language semantics

Special Issue on Advances in Software Aspects of Cyber-Physical Systems
Submission Date: 2025-03-01

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) seamlessly integrate computational processes with physical entities, resulting in enhanced automation and intelligence across varioussectors, including healthcare, transportation, and industrial automation. While all components of CPS contribute significantly to successful development, the software is paramount. It is essential for managing critical functions such as data acquisition, real-time processing and analysis, decision-making algorithms, and actuator control.

To fully realize the potential of CPS, cutting-edge research and development in the software aspects are crucial. This includes addressing challenges related to computation deadlines, interoperability, virtualization, limited resources, and system reliability and adaptation. Advancements in these areas are vital for the effective and efficient operation of CPS.

Guest editors:

Dr. Ahmad Khonsari, Associate Professor
Member of Scientific Council of School of Computer
Science at IPM, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
Areas of Expertise: Performance modeling, performance evaluation, computer networks

Dr. Mehdi Kargahi, Full Professor
Senior Member of IEEE
University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
Areas of Expertise: Cyber-Physical Systems, Embedded Software, Real-Time Scheduling, Edge AI

Dr. Hamid Reza Zarandi, Associate Professor
Member of IEEE,  Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic), Tehran, Iran
Areas of Expertise: Reliable System Design, Computer Architecture, Embedded Systems, Networks-on-Chip

Dr. Mahdi Dolati, Assistant Professor
Member of IEEE, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran
Areas of Expertise: Computer Networks, Network Management, Service Management

Special issue information:

The objective of this special issue is to investigate the challenges and explore potential solutions associated with CPS from a software perspective. It invites submissions from participants of the 2024 International Symposium on Cyber-Physical Systems (Applications and Theory) (CPSAT 2024) as well as new contributions. This special issue aims to showcase the latest advances and innovations in the software aspects of cyber-physical systems, providing a platform for researchers to present their work and collaborate on pioneering solutions in this dynamic field.

This special issue seeks state-of-the-art research, high-quality technical contributions on specific topics that include but are not limited to the following:

    System-level design, synthesis, and co-design techniques
    Human-machine interactions, sensors and actuators
    Foundations of CPS/IoT, design models, simulation/emulation for CPS/IoT
    Emerging embedded systems
    Embedded Software/Hardware
    Real-time operating systems, hypervisors and runtime frameworks
    Specification languages, requirements, compilers and tools
    Middleware and firmware in embedded systems
    Time-sensitive applications
    Bioinformatic embedded applications
    Autonomous computing in CPS
    Optimization, control and resource planning in CPS
    Verification and validation of CPS
    Performance, safety and resilience in CPS/IoT
    Software platforms, simulators, and emulators for CPS/IoT
    Real-time AI, NLP, explainable AI, neuromorphic computing, evolutionarycomputing in CPS

Manuscript submission information:

All manuscripts and supplementary materials should be submitted through the Elsevier Editorial System at Submission site for Science of Computer Programming . Please select the "VSI:Software Aspects of CPS" as the Article Type during the submission process.

Submissions should be prepared according to the Guide for Authors: Guide for Authors - Science of Computer Programming  posted on the journal’s website.

Final Manuscript Submission Deadline: 1st March 2025