As software plays an increasingly important role in our daily lives, it is essential to maintain its reliability and dependability in the face of faults and failures. Unlike faults in other components, software faults can cause catastrophic consequences unless they are anticipated and handled appropriately. The rise of software-based autonomous systems (e.g., self-driving cars) has exacerbated this problem. In such systems, there is very little time for humans to intervene and correct any erroneous decisions made by the software. Further, software bugs have significant economic consequences and can result in losses of billions of dollars. Therefore, it is important to explore principled approaches to remove defects in software as early as possible, preferably before its deployment.
Academia and industry widely recognize the inherent potential of software reliability and dependability engineering for the assessment, prediction, and improvement of the reliability and dependability of software products. Nevertheless, in spite of decades of research and methodological advances, software reliability and dependability engineering in specific areas keep posing challenging research questions due to the complexity, heterogeneity, and distributivity of software products, emerging machine-learning techniques, emerging application domains in critical areas, etc.
This special issue aims to concentrate contributions from academic and industrial organizations addressing reliability and dependability of software systems, and to publish consolidated research results focusing on the assessment, prediction, and improvement of the reliability and dependability of
software products. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- Primary dependability attributes (i.e., security, safety, and maintainability) impacting software reliability
- Secondary dependability attributes (i.e., survivability, resilience, and robustness) impacting software reliability
- Reliability and dependability threats, i.e., faults (defects, bugs, etc.), errors, and failures
- Reliability and dependability means (fault prevention, fault removal, fault tolerance, and fault forecasting)
- Metrics, measurements, and threat estimation for reliability prediction and the interplay with dependability
- Reliability and dependability of software services
- Reliability and dependability of open source software
- Reliability and dependability of Software as a Service (SaaS)
- Reliability and dependability of software dealing with big data
- Reliability and dependability of model-based and auto-generated software
- Reliability and dependability of software within specific types of systems (e.g., autonomous and adaptive, green and sustainable, and mobile systems)
- Reliability and dependability of software within specific technological spaces (e.g., Internet of Things, cloud, semantic web/Web 3.0, virtualization, and blockchain)
- Normative/regulatory/ethical spaces pertaining to software reliability and dependability
- Societal aspects of software reliability and dependability
Relevant application areas include, but are not limited to:
- Machine-learning systems
- Distributed, parallel, clustered, and grid systems
- Cloud
- Database and transactional systems
- Operating systems
- Web-based information
Submission Guidelines
Submitted articles must not have been previously published or currently submitted for journal publication elsewhere, and must be a significant contribution to the state of the art in software reliability and dependability engineering. All the submissions will be judged on novelty of the proposed problem and/or solution, technical relevance and practicality of presented ideas, relevance of the addressed topic to the scope of the special issue, writing and presentation, and accuracy and impact of the results. As an author, you are responsible for understanding and adhering to the TDSC submission guidelines. Please, carefully read these guidelines before submitting your manuscript. Permission for including figures that appear elsewhere must be obtained from the copyright owner.
In the case the manuscript extends previous work, please make sure to 1) cite the previous paper(s); 2) clearly explain in the paper introduction and related work sections what the contributions of the submitted paper are and why they are significant; 3) by way of points 1 and 2, explain how the paper submitted to this TDSC special issue extends the previous work; and 4) properly attribute any material taken and used from the conference paper, or any other paper. That means the text must be quoted, cited, and referenced.
To ensure proper submission, log in to ScholarOne and select “Special Issue on Software Reliability and Dependability Engineering” as the manuscript type.
Important Dates
Submission deadline: 16 March 2021
All reviews back and first-round notification: 16 May 2021
Revised submission deadline: 15 June 2021
All reviews back and final notification: 1 August 2021
Camera-ready deadline: 1 September 2021
Guest Editors
