Call for Papers: Special Issue on Building Trustworthy Software in the Time of AI

Artificial intelligence is now embedded across the software lifecycle. Models influence requirements, generate code, guide operational decisions, and increasingly act with varying degrees of autonomy. These capabilities introduce new uncertainties in reliability, safety, security, privacy, and fairness. Ensuring that AI-enabled software behaves in ways that are predictable, accountable, and aligned with organizational and societal values is a pressing challenge for the software engineering community.

This special issue of IEEE Software seeks contributions that provide practical, evidence-based methods for building and assuring trustworthy software systems that incorporate AI components. We invite researchers, engineers, architects, product leaders, and practitioners to share approaches that are grounded in real-world experience and offer actionable guidance to the broader community.

Topics of Interest

Submissions may address, but are not limited to, the following themes:

• Architectural approaches for integrating AI into complex software systems
• Testing, verification, and validation of nondeterministic or data-driven components
• Security and privacy controls for model training, deployment, and inference workflows
• Supply chain integrity for models, data sources, and generated software artifacts
• Operational governance for monitoring, updating, and managing model behavior over time
• Compliance with standards and regulations for aligning AI systems with legal, ethical, and industry requirements across their lifecycle
• LLMs and agents to support trustworthiness for monitoring, compliance, and governance of AI systems
• Human oversight and fail-safe mechanisms in semi-autonomous and autonomous systems
• Human–AI collaboration for enabling effective oversight, shared decision-making, and trust between humans and AI
• Transparency, explainability, and fairness in decision-making systems
• Case studies demonstrating lessons learned, implementation patterns, and repeatable practices across domains such as healthcare, finance, public infrastructure, manufacturing, and education

We welcome submissions that blend conceptual clarity with demonstrated practice. Articles focused on deployable methods, measurable outcomes, and practical implementation patterns are strongly encouraged.

Submission Instructions

For author information and guidelines on submission criteria, visit the IEEE Software Author Information page. Please submit papers through the IEEE Author Portal system, and be sure to select the special issue name, “Special Issue: Building Trustworthy Software in the Time of AI." Manuscripts should not be published or currently submitted for publication elsewhere. Please submit only full papers intended for review, not abstracts, to the IEEE Author Portal. If requested, abstracts should be sent by email to the guest editors directly.

In addition to submitting your paper to IEEE Software, you are also encouraged to upload the data related to your paper to IEEE DataPort. IEEE DataPort is IEEE's data platform that supports the storage and publishing of datasets while also providing access to thousands of research datasets. Uploading your dataset to IEEE DataPort will strengthen your paper and will support research reproducibility. Your paper and the dataset can be linked, providing a good opportunity for you to increase the number of citations you receive. Data can be uploaded to IEEE DataPort prior to submitting your paper or concurrent with the paper submission.

Call for Reviewers

We also invite qualified experts to participate as reviewers. Reviewers should have experience in software engineering, AI/ML systems, security, privacy, governance, or related disciplines. To volunteer, please contact the issue editors at: