Submissions
Important Dates
- January 15, 2026: paper and interactive session proposal submission deadline
- February, 14, 2026: author notification
- February 21, 2026: camera-ready workshop paper submission
- March 23, 2026: workshop collocated with REFSQ 2026
Workshop Topics
Where do great requirements come from? Technological advancements in the form of amazing new software features, disruptive innovations, emerging new fields such as the Internet of Things and smart ecosystems, and radical enhancements to existing software all rely on one thing: innovative ideas that reinvent the work context, process, or experience. However, most requirements elicitation techniques help to identify only the basic requirements that an IT system should fulfill or conservative ideas for the incremental improvement of a system, all with little innovation potential.
Creativity is needed to identify delighter requirements, which make aspects of the new system a real positive surprise. Methods such as Design Thinking employ creativity to develop new innovative products and innovate improvements on existing products. With the progress of Artificial Intelligence (AI), innovative ways of the team of AI and humans can create new ideas jointly. The CreaRE workshop provides a platform for introducing, discussing, and elaborating on ways to be creative for RE.
Many practical questions remain open, especially (1) concerning the applicability and reliability of these techniques in different contexts or (2) the completeness and post-processing of the requirements resulting from a creativity session or being created by artificial intelligence tools. Different software applications domains may require creativity techniques to be applied differently. Meanwhile, the field of creativity techniques itself is also changing as tool support and trends like AI and multimedia are used with creativity techniques, Crowd RE, and online participation demand different approaches, which provide new opportunities for involving creativity in RE but also introduce new challenges.
The purpose of the CreaRE workshop is to provide a forum for the exchange of ideas, experiences, and research results. The participants will learn from the speakers and from each other, and will possibly gain hands-on experiences in applying creativity techniques themselves in mini-tutorials. Therefore, we are not only inviting research paper submissions but also interactive sessions.
Paper Submission and Evaluation Criteria
We invite for the submission of three types of paper submissions: position papers, full papers, and proposals for interactive sessions. Every type should treat a topic from the workshop themes.
- Proposal for an interactive session (1–3 pages): Proposal for an interactive session such as a game, method demonstration, role playing, or mini-tutorial of 20–30 minutes which can be executed at the workshop, including the participation of up to 20 persons.
- Position paper (3–6 pages): Short paper, stating the position of the author(s) on any of the workshop topics. For example, a position paper could describe an experiment or a case study in industry. A position paper will be evaluated for its potential for generating discussion, on practical relevance and on the originality of the positions stated. A position paper can be used also to describe emerging ideas on how creativity should be performed, in which case it will be evaluated based on its relevance, originality, and sound argumentation.
- Full paper (8–10 pages): Full paper evaluating an experience (in industry) or describing the results of a research effort. A full paper will be evaluated for innovativeness of the proposed ideas and for technical soundness.
Submissions will be accepted via EasyChair here: https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=creare26
Each paper, proposal, or tutorial summary submission should be in the CEUR Style for one-column (onecolceurws.sty from https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-XXX/) in line with the publication venue. Templates are available here:
http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-XXX/CEURART.zip
Each submission will be reviewed by three members of the Program Committee.