The objective of the doctoral symposium is to provide junior researchers with the opportunity to present their work to the REFSQ community and receive valuable feedback from a panel of experts in Requirements Engineering. Experienced members of the Requirements Engineering community served in this panel of experts, and provided feedback to students presenting their work. The symposium also aims at facilitating the exchange of ideas among young researchers. This year, eight research proposals were selected for presentation at REFSQ 2016 DocSymp. Each paper was subjected to reviews by two different experts. The proposals were arranged into four sessions. Session 1 contained the first keynote and one proposal, covering the topic of healthcare monitoring. Session 2 contained three proposals covering topics in natural language queries, quality requirements, and service-based evolution. Session 3 had three proposals focusing on aspects of requirements traceability, and Session 4, shared with the final keynote, contained a proposal on open innovation. Following the goal of fostering discussion, each paper was assigned 30 minutes, half of the time for presentation, half of the time for discussion. The event opened and closed with two excellent keynote talks. The first was given by Prof. Sjaak Brinkkemper, Utrecht University, The Netherlands, entitled “On whose Shoulders we stand: Theory Building versus Theory Testing in Requirements Engineering”. The second was given by Prof. Dan Berry, University of Waterloo, Canada, entitled “How to Finish that Damn PhD”. We would like to thank all the people involved in the organization of the event: the REFSQ 2016 organizers, who supported the event; the panel of experts (see next page for the listing), who provided the reviews and participated in the event; and the PhD students who submitted their work for consideration to the symposium, particularly those who presented and participated in the REFSQ 2016 DocSymp.