This document is the preface of the Joint Proceedings of Workshops, Doctoral Symposium, Posters & Tools Track, and Education and Training Track of the 31st International Working Conference on Requirement Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality (REFSQ 2025), 7th-10th April 2025, held in Barcelona, Spain. The 31st International Working Conference on Requirement Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality (REFSQ 2025) took place from the 7th to the 10th of April 2025. The conference was held as a live, in-person event in Barcelona, Spain. REFSQ Working Conferences aim to provide a forum for discussing new and innovative ideas and approaches to successful Requirements Engineering (RE) and for exchange between researchers and practitioners. The REFSQ working conference is the leading European conference series on requirements engineering. It is the goal of REFSQ to foster the creation of a strong European RE community across industry and academia. Since 1994, Requirements Engineering continued to be a dominant factor influencing the quality of software, systems and services. REFSQ seeks contributions which report on novel ideas and techniques that enhance the quality of RE's products and processes, as well as reflections on current research. Interaction is a traditional and distinctive feature of REFSQ with the aim of promoting an active and fruitful discussion among the participants. In addition to the highquality scientific program, REFSQ also features a highly interactive Industry Track, Workshops, Posters and Tool demos, and a Doctoral Symposium.
team. This mediator role enables our community to have a major impact on the goals, capabilities, functionalities and qualities of digital solutions and thus take RESPONSIBILITY for the social impact that these solutions bring.
With this special theme, we aim to raise awareness for this “Social REsponsibility”, to share challenges / ideas / project experience and to foster discussions around the following questions:
How can our RE community contribute to the “social good”? How to support “Responsible Design” through requirements engineering? How to actively involve the society (respectively large / heterogeneous stakeholder groups) into RE activities (e.g., co-creation / co-design)? How to systematically derive, engineer and evaluate social values and impact?
How to align social needs and “intelligent” systems evolution?
The four workshops at REFSQ 2025 were carefully selected based on their quality, relevance, and potential to attract attendants. The selection process was led by our co-chairs Eduard C. Groen and Marcela Ruiz. This resulted in the following workshops: RE4AI 2025: 6th International Workshop on Requirements Engineering for Artificial Intelligence (https://sites.google.com/view/re4ai/home), organized by Renata Guizzardi, Jennifer Horkoff and Anna Perini. This workshop includes discussions on the role of RE in AI development, methods for ensuring systems meet intended requirements, and strategies for coordinating among RE4AI researchers. CreaRE’25: 12th International Workshop on Creativity in Requirements Engineering (https://creare.iese.de), organized by Maya Daneva, Andrea Herrmann, Kurt Schneider and Patrick Mennig. This workshop provides a platform for discussing and applying creative techniques in RE, with a focus on their applicability in different domains and the opportunities brought by AI and multimedia trends. NLP4RE 2025: Workshop on Natural Language Processing for Requirements Engineering (https://nlp4re.github.io/2025/), organized by Muhammad Abbas, Fatma Başak Aydemir and Marc Oriol Hilari. This workshop explores the application of NLP technologies, including large language models (LLMs), to support and enhance requirements engineering practices. The workshop covers topics like LLM applications, ethical considerations, and integrating NLP in RE education. ViVa RE! '25: Workshop on Virtues and Values in Requirements Engineering 2025, organized by Alexander Rachmann and Jens Gulden. The ViVa RE! workshop provides a collaborative platform to explore value-oriented and responsible approaches in requirements engineering (RE). This year's workshop emphasizes ethical reasoning and social responsibility in RE research and practices.
These proceedings also contain the content of the following tracks: Doctoral Symposium: The goals of the doctoral symposium (organized by Elda Paja and Andreas Vogelsang) are to provide PhD students with an opportunity to learn about the field of RE and to get a feeling of what their colleagues are working on, to provide PhD students with a supportive and safe environment where to present their plans and results, to provide all participant students with feedback from a panel of senior researchers in RE, and to facilitate interaction between students and with established researchers in RE. Posters and Tools Track: The Posters and Tools Track (organized by Laura Semini and Sylwia Kopczyńska) is a forum to present posters and demonstrate tools covering any aspect of RE. This track gives researchers and practitioners the chance to present their most recent work and obtain early feedback from the conference participants. Education and Training Track: The Education and Training Track (organized by Fatma Başak Aydemir and Paola Spoletini) seeks to convene educators from academia and industry to share and discuss best practices, tools, findings, experiences, and opportunities, with the aim of optimally preparing requirements engineers for real-world scenarios.
Furthermore, REFSQ 2025 also offered a Journal Early Feedback track, organized by Journal Early Feedback Track Co-Chairs Chetan Arora and Kelly Blincoe. This track did not include alreadypublished papers, but allowed authors to submit, present and discuss their almost-ready, just submitted, or just-rejected journal (or conference papers), and thus gather input from the community on their work and, if available, the comments they have received from the reviewers. However, as the core objective of this track was to provide authors with feedback to their work, the submitted papers will not be included in these proceedings.