The Journal of Systems and Software publishes papers covering all aspects of software engineering and related hardware-software-systems issues. All articles should include a validation of the idea presented, e.g. through case studies, experiments, or systematic comparisons with other approaches already in practice. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: Methods and tools for, and empirical studies on, software requirements, design, architecture, verification and validation, maintenance and evolution Agile, model-driven, service-oriented, open source and global software development Approaches for mobile, multiprocessing, real-time, distributed, cloud-based, dependable and virtualized systems Human factors and management concerns of software development Data management and big data issues of software systems Metrics and evaluation, data mining of software development resources Business and economic aspects of software development processesThe journal welcomes state-of-the-art surveys and reports of practical experience for all of these topics.