The topics of interest of the workshop include all the concerns related to the join of Requirements Engineering (RE) and Empirical Software Engineering (ESE) and, in particular, the following:

Research methods and evaluation techniques in RE (e.g. systematic reviews, mapping studies, focus groups, grounded theory, interview-based studies,technical action research and case studies);
Surveys on state-of-the-art RE practices in industry;
Critical factors, properties and metrics of RE approaches to be empirically evaluated;
Approaches and techniques to conduct empirical studies and comparative evaluations;
Different types of approaches and techniques to evaluate RE research;
Experimental designs for empirical studies;
Frameworks and infrastructures for empirical studies;
Definition and development of benchmarks for experimental evaluations;
Reporting on the results of empirical studies about techniques, methods and tools in requirements engineering
Lessons learned in running empirical studies and comparative evaluations;
Identification of strengths and weaknesses of empirical and comparative evaluation approaches;
...
Workshop Contribution Format
The workshop will accept three types of papers: position papers, young position papers and full technical papers. All the papers have to be related to the topics of interest of the event.

Position papers (max 4 pages in IEEE format) Short papers introducing the position of the author/s on any of the topics within the scope of the workshop or visionary papers exploiting new ideas about the contribution of the empirical method in requirements engineering. For instance, a position paper can propose new criteria to empirically assess methods and techniques, or it can introduce new ideas or areas for relevant experimentations.
Young Position papers (max 4 pages in IEEE format). Short papers written by PhD/master students presenting the experimentation they performed/plan to perform during their research work.
Technical papers (max 8 pages in IEEE format). Full papers describing empirical experiences in requirements engineering and reporting the results of such experiences. For example, a full paper might describe how a requirements engineering approach has been evaluated in a real context or in a laboratory scenario, or how two requirements engineering approaches have been compared in practice.
All submissions must be in English. All papers submitted to the workshop will be peer reviewed by three members of the Program Committee. Acceptance will be primarily based on originality, contribution to the area, ability to generate discussion, quality of the paper and of the research, research completeness and maturity. Young position papers will be reviewed, but more "helpfully" than "critically". Only original papers not submitted to journals or other conferences will be considered.

All the accepted papers will be published in the IEEE digital library with the support of the RE 2012 conference

Moreover, we plan to have an open special issue on Empirical Requirements Engineering on the international Journal (under negotiation) in which will publish also a selection of the most mature and promising workshop papers.

We look forward to receiving your submissions and seeing you in Chicago in September!