Visit the journal's proposal guidelines to submit a proposal for a special issue (original contributions on a topic within the scope of the journal) or a special section with extended papers from a conference of workshop within the scope of the journal.

Information and Software Technology is the international archival journal focusing on research and experience that contributes to the improvement of software development practices. The journal's scope includes methods and techniques to better engineer software and manage its development. Articles submitted for review should have a clear component of software engineering or address ways to improve the engineering and management of software development. Areas covered by the journal include: 

• Software management, quality and metrics,
• Software processes,
• Software architecture, modelling, specification, design and programming
• Functional and non-functional software requirements
• Software testing and verification & validation
• Empirical studies of all aspects of engineering and managing software development Short Communications is a new section dedicated to short papers addressing new ideas, controversial opinions, "Negative" results and much more. Read the Guide for authors for more information.

The journal encourages and welcomes submissions of systematic literature studies (reviews and maps) within the scope of the journal. Information and Software Technology is the premiere outlet for systematic literature studies in software engineering. Guidelines for conducting systematic reviews are provided here.

Special Issue on Model- and Data-driven Digital Twins
Submission Date: 2025-05-05

Digital Twins (DTs) are virtual replicas of physical assets, systems, or processes that enable realtime monitoring, analysis, and simulation. Their strength lies in the dynamic duality between the real system and its digital representation: a DT is constantly and continuously updated with realtimedata, reflecting changes in the state of its physical counterpart. Thus, the adoption of a DTbased approach allows the execution of an effective and timely what-if analysis to support systems innovation and achieve efficiency gains and cost savings.

The design, implementation, and deployment of DTs might significantly benefit from the adoption of innovative Software Engineering (SE) practices and methodologies that provide appropriate guidance in the DTs development process, ensuring consistency and traceability between the physical system and its digital twin.

Due to the dynamic relationship between the actual system and its digital counterpart, the investigation of innovative data-driven approaches constitutes a prominent challenge in the DTs domain. Networks of sensors and IoT devices capable of measuring and storing large quantity of data are often part of the execution infrastructure of complex systems. Furthermore, their application layer often relies on Process-Aware Information Systems (PAIS) which orchestrates local, web and cloud-based services and captures data regarding the actual process execution in an event log.

Guest editors:

Dr. Paolo Bocciarelli
University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, Italy

Dr. Andrea D’Ambrogio
University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, Italy

Dr. Ghaith Rabadi
University of Central Florida (UCF), Orlando, FL

Dr. Greg Zacharewicz
IMT - Mines Ales (Institut Mines Télécom), France

Special issue information:

This special issue aims to collect high-quality research contributions, reviews and case studies that explore approaches, methodologies and innovative applications in the field of digital twins, with a specific focus on data- and model-driven paradimgs and principles.We invite submissions on the following topics (but not limited to):

    Requirements Engineering​
    Agile and traditional methodologies for the DT development
    Modeling and Simulation
    Simulation model parameterization
    Statistical methods for calibrating simulation parameters from observational data
    Information and Knowledge Management
    Machine Learning and AI techniques for supporting the DTs development
    Mathematical and computational foundations of DTs
    DT Verification and Validation
    Optimization Methods and Models for DTs
    Model-driven and Low-code approaches
    Real-time data management in DTs lifecycle
    CPS and IoT Integration
    Case Studies and Applications