Call for Papers of QEST 2018

15th International Conference on Quantitative Evaluation of SysTems
http://www.qest.org/qest2018/

QEST 2018 will be held in Beijing, China
September 4-7, 2018

QEST 2018 as part of CONFESTA
http://confesta2018.csp.escience.cn/dct/page/1
is co-located with
CONCUR (Int. Conf. on Concurrency Theory),
FORMATS (Int. Conf. on Formal Modeling and Analysis of Timed Systems) and
SETTA (Symposium on Dependable Software Engineering).

Scope and Topics

The International Conference on Quantitative Evaluation of
SysTems (QEST) is the leading forum on quantitative evaluation
and verification of computer systems and networks. Areas of
interest include quantitative specification methods, stochastic
and non-deterministic models and metrics for performance,
reliability, safety, correctness, and security. QEST is
interested in both theoretical and experimental research. QEST
welcomes a diversity of modelling formalisms, programming
languages and methodologies that incorporate quantitative aspects
such as probabilities, temporal properties and other forms of
non-determinism. Papers may advance empirical, simulation and
analytic methods. Of particular interest are case studies that
highlight the role of quantitative specification, modelling and
evaluation in the design of systems. Systems of interest include
computer hardware and software architectures, communication
systems, cyber-physical systems, infrastructural systems, and
biological systems. Papers that describe novel tools to support
the practical application of research results in all of the above
areas are also welcome.

Special Sessions

To encourage submissions of papers in frontier topics,
submissions in selected areas are encouraged. Paper submitted to
special sessions will be treated as regular submitted papers,
they will be peer reviewed, and subject to the same quality
requirements. A special session with accepted papers on the
selected topics will be organised during the conference. This
year selected topics are:

== Quantitative aspects of system security

Security of computer systems relies critically on the control of
confidential information. In recent years there has been great
interest in measuring various aspects of system behaviour that
can impact untoward release of secret information. There is a
general recognition that it is not possible to avoid all
information leaks and therefore it has become important to
determine whether a particular leak constitutes a serious breach.

We solicit papers on the topic of measurement of quantitative
aspects of system security. We are interested in new theoretical
perspectives on this problem as well as practicalities of
implementation and case studies show casing new techniques.

== Industrial strength techniques

We call for contributions on quantitative techniques focussing on
industrial applications. We are particularly interested in
techniques that have the potential to scale up or address
important safety, security, performance or reliability aspects of
industrial strength systems. We are interested both in new
techniques and experience reports of applying quantitative
analysis in an industrial setting.

Special Issue

Extended versions of the best papers will be considered for possible fast-track publication in the ACM Transactions on Modeling and Performance Evaluation of Computing Systems(TOMPECS, https://tompecs.acm.org (https://tompecs.acm.org/)).

Important Dates

Abstract submission: 28 March 2018 (EXTENDED)
Paper and tool submission: 04 April 2018 (EXTENDED)
Author notification: 30 May 2018
Final version due: 22 June 2018
Conference: 4-7 September 2018

Submissions

All accepted papers (including tool demonstrations) must be
presented at the conference by one of the authors. The QEST 2018
proceedings will be published in the Springer LNCS series and
indexed by ISI Web of Science, Scopus, ACM Digital Library, dblp,
Google Scholar. All submitted papers will be evaluated by at
least three reviewers on the basis of their originality,
technical quality, scientific or practical contribution to the
state of the art, methodology, clarity, and adequacy of
references. QEST considers five types of papers:

Theoretical: advance our understanding, apply to non-trivial
problems and be mathematically rigorous.

Methodological and technical: describe situations that
require the development and proposal of new analysis
processes and techniques.

Application: describes a novel application, and compares with
previous results.

Tools: should motivate the development of the new tools and
the formalisms they support, with a focus on the software
architecture and practical capabilities.

Tool demonstration: describe a relevant tool, as well as its
features, evaluation, or any other information that may
demonstrate the merits of the tool.

Submissions must be prepared in LaTeX, following Springer's LNCS
guidelines. Submitted papers should not exceed 16 pages (4 pages
for tool demonstrations). Papers must be unpublished and not be
submitted for publication elsewhere. Authors of tool papers (both
regular and demonstration) must make their tools and input data
available to reviewers; reproducibility of results will be taken
into account during the evaluation process, and the conference
will include a demo session. Authors should present use cases,
distinctive features, and computational/memory requirements
through motivating examples. Theoretical background need not be
presented in tool demonstration papers; substantial improvements
are required for existing tools.

Papers should be submitted electronically using the EasyChair
online submission system.

All accepted papers (including tool demonstrations) must be
presented at the conference by one of the authors.