First International Conference on Foundations and Formal Methods for Software and Systems
iFS is concerned with the foundations on which software engineering is built, with the aim of making software engineering a more mature and soundly-based discipline. In 2027, the iFS conference will have its first edition, resulting from the merge of the longstanding conferences FASE (International Conference on Fundamental Approaches to Software Engineering) and iFM (International Conference on integrated Formal Methods).
iFS welcomes submissions on formal and foundational approaches that support rigorous, reliable, and scientifically grounded software and systems development. The conference encourages work that integrates methods for formal modelling, verification, analysis, and simulation techniques to advance both the theory and practice of engineering software-intensive systems. Submissions should make novel contributions, supported by appropriate arguments and validation. We especially welcome research that builds conceptual or methodological advances on formal foundations, combining them with tool support, and practical application.
Areas of interest include (but are not limited to):
The important dates are available in the Joint Call for Papers.
The proceedings will be published in the Advanced Research in Computing and Software Science (ARCoSS) subline of Springer’s LNCS series in gold open access. The copyright of the papers will remain with the authors.
iFS’27 will organize journal special issues in STTT and FAC, for which the authors of selected papers will be invited to submit.
Continuing the long-standing tradition of FASE and iFM, iFS’27 will have an artifact evaluation. Detailed information on artifact evaluation can be found here.
iFS 2027 solicits five types of submissions: research papers, new ideas and emerging results (NIER) papers, tool and tool demonstration papers, empirical evaluation papers, and data showcase papers. Submissions must follow the formatting guidelines of Springer’s LNCS (use the llncs.cls class) and be submitted electronically in pdf through the Easychair author interface.
We welcome long (up to 16 pages + up to 2 pages of references) and short (up to 8 pages + up to 2 pages of references) papers. Each category is allowed an optional appendix of up to 6 pages which may or may not be read by the reviewers. Exceptions are short tool papers and data showcase papers, as described below.
(1) Regular papers (long) presenting original scientific research results. These should clearly identify and justify a principled advance to the fundamentals of software engineering. Research papers should clearly articulate their contribution, and provide sufficient evidence for the soundness and applicability of the proposed approach.
(2) New Ideas and Emerging Results (NIER) papers (short) describing forward-looking, thought-provoking, innovative research on the foundations of software engineering and formal methods, as well as lessons learned from the past. Specifically, these should be describing:
(3) Tools, their foundations and demonstrations (short or long plus an optional appendix with the actual demonstration). These should present a new tool, a new tool component, or novel extensions to an existing tool. They should provide some description of the theoretical foundations and emphasize the design and implementation concerns, including software architecture, as well as give a clear account of the tool’s functionality and its practical capabilities with reference to the type and size of problems it can handle. Tool demonstrations papers are encouraged to have an appendix (up to 6 pages) describing the actual demo.
(4) Empirical evaluation papers (short or long) . These should evaluate existing software challenges or critically validate current proposed solutions with scientific means, i.e., by empirical studies, controlled experiments, rigorous case studies, simulations, etc. This category also includes scientific reflection on problems and practices in the software industry as well as replicability studies.
(5) Data showcase papers (short) presenting a new dataset essential for software engineering research, replication studies, negative results, or insights gleaned from mining software repositories. Such papers are encouraged to have the appendix (up to 6 pages) describing details of the data.
Submissions must follow the formatting guidelines of Springer’s LNCS (use the llncs.cls class) and be submitted electronically in pdf through the Easychair author interface.