Aims & Scope

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

See the specific submission instructions for the Software Track in the Guide for Authors.

The Software Track of Science of Computer Programming publishes Original Software Publications (OSP) to disseminate existing and useful software in the areas of programming (languages) and software development. Research on programming and software development may involve the creation of (huge) software systems to perform all kinds of experiments related to programming (languages) and software development. 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.

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 Fundamentals of Software Engineering (extended versions of selected papers of FSEN 2025)
Día de Entrega: 2026-01-15

This Special Issue is dedicated to recent advancements in formal methods, highlighting innovative research and tools that enhance the development of software and hardware systems.

Guest editors:

Prof. Hossein Hojjat, PhD
Tehran Institute for Advanced Studies, Tehran, Iran
Areas of Expertise: Program verification, Program synthesis, Software-Defined Networking

Prof. Georgiana Caltais, PhD
University of Twente, Enschede, Netherlands
Areas of Expertise: Causal reasoning, Concurrency, Verification

Special issue information:

This Special Issue features extended versions of selected papers presented at FSEN 2025, the International Conference on Fundamentals of Software Engineering. As software and hardware systems grow increasingly complex and ever more critical to society, ensuring their reliability, safety, correctness, and robustness has become a major challenge.Formal methods, rooted in theoretical computer science, provide rigorous techniques to enhance system quality. By applying mathematically sound approaches to system analysis and verification, these methods contribute to the development of more dependable and secure systems. This Special Issue highlights advances in formal methods, showcasing innovative research and tools for improving software and hardware design.

Manuscript submission information:

Submissions to this special issue are by invitation only.
Final Manuscript Submission Deadline: January 15, 2026

Keywords:

Formal Methods, Software Engineering, Software
Testing, Model Checking