Collaborative software systems support networks of spatially dispersed actors (either humans or not) that play different roles and cooperate to achieve common goals, which are usually non-technological goals. On the other hand, collaboration is obviously enabled by the several technological building blocks that contribute to set up a collaborative software system.

Traditionally, most of the efforts in the context of collaborative software systems have mainly addressed technology issues, while collaboration issues have been dealt with at a very limited extent, more as a side effect of an innovative technology rather than as a driver that brings technology closer to people and organizational needs.

In this respect, the proposed journal fosters innovative research contributions addressing collaborative software systems that help to create the right conditions for effective cooperation and coordination, thereby boosting factors like productivity, innovation and creativity. The contributions must specifically address the impact on collaboration of the proposed solution.

Collaboration is a cross-domain issue and thus it is expected that the contributions will tackle collaborative software systems from different perspectives, such as collaborative development, collaborative learning, collaborative management, collaborative editing and tagging, collaborative modeling and simulation, collaborative gaming, etc.

From the system engineering point of view, collaborative systems should be investigated along the entire lifecycle, from requirements to operation and maintenance, by putting into evidence the collaboration enabling features of the research contributions.

In addition, collaborative software systems require multi-dimensional research approaches that encompass people, processes, products and their integration/interoperation.

Notwithstanding the multi-disciplinary nature of this research area, that spans from social sciences to organizational sciences, the journal specifically focuses on software-related research contributions. Nevertheless, contributions that put into evidence the multi-disciplinary aspects of collaborative software systems are also welcome.

An example short list of topics addressed by the proposed journal includes (but is not limited to): collaboration-aware software systems, collaboration services and their orchestration, collaboration platforms (e.g., P2P, agent-based, etc.), quality of collaboration, model-driven engineering of collaborative software systems, collaborative system requirements, ontology-driven collaboration, collaboration mining.