Dear SoSyM readers, it is our pleasure to introduce the first SoSyM issue of 2026.As is customary, this opening issue includes an editorial offering an annual overview of the journal's current status and the changes in the editorial board and technology.The past year has been productive, with the publication of numerous new SoSyM articles, special sections, and ongoing initiatives within our editorial team.The launch of our new 2024 publication format dedicated to modeling tools has led to the first three tool-focused publications, which are already available online.The first one, namely, "The MDENet education platform: zero-install directed activities for learning MDE" by Steffen Zschaler, Will Barnett, Artur Boronat, Antonio Garcia-Dominguez, and Dimitris Kolovos is already included in this issue.Two more will follow in the next issues.We would like to thank Jordi Cabot and Abel Gómez for organizing this tool paper format.As may be expected when introducing a new format, the number of incoming papers is slowly but steadily B

As we present this issue of the Journal of Software and Systems Modeling (SoSyM), we take a moment to acknowledge and celebrate the remarkable contributions of Professor Antonio Vallecillo.After decades of dedication to the field, Antonio is now retiring, leaving behind an impressive amount of results in software and systems modeling.He has been a cornerstone of our journal, serving as an editor almost from the very beginning of SoSyM's 25 year journey.He was always helpful as editor, advisor, and friend.His expertise, vision, and continuous commitment have significantly shaped not only the special section presented in this issue, but also the broader research community.Antonio has played a long lasting and pivotal role in advancing the journal's mission, ensuring the highest standards of quality in published research, and fostering a strong sense of collaboration among researchers.His influence extends well beyond SoSyM; he has been a driving force in the development of modeling techniques, particularly in the domains of cyber-physical systems (CPSs), uncertainty B Benoit Combemale

Dear SoSyM readers

International audience

International audience

The inaugural issue of each SoSyM volume-year is usually written during a time of personal and professional reflection.Over the past 12 months, researchers from all disciplines continued to experience the need for flexibility as the COVID-19 pandemic extended its impact across the globe through many variants.This has forced us all to adapt in many ways such that the idea of "virtual everything" permeates our daily discussions.The software and systems modeling community continued to thrive and exhibited a great degree of flexibility and increased production in the overall research output, despite the limitations for in-person collaborations.In fact, for many years, the first issue of each SoSyM volume-year has reported growth in submissions and other important metrics.The same is true for the 2021 publication year of SoSyM.The journal continues a positive and healthy trajectory in the increased number of submissions and an impact factor that ranks SoSyM among the top publication venues for software engineering.The following sections report on various statistics and general updates about SoSyM that occurred over 2021.We invite all authors to continue submitting their contributions to SoSyM, and we are always available to correspond regarding questions about the suitability of an idea or potential submission.We wish you all of the best for a productive and satisfying year of research and personal growth in 2022!

When writing the "2019 State of the Journal Report" at this same time last year, we could not have predicted the global changes that would beset us with so many challenges from the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic.Some of us lost loved ones, friends, and colleagues, while the entire world adapted to working from home, participating in remote classrooms, and adopting safety precautions as a new means of daily life.The research community was also affected, with the cessation of travel leading to virtual conferences.Thanks to the heroic efforts of many conference chairs 1 adapting to the quick pace of change, scientific discussions continued, but sometimes in a less personable form.Journals also experienced changes with submissions on the rise, but fewer reviewers available to assist with the evaluation because of personal challenges faced by many.Yet, in the presence of a global pandemic, scientific contributions continued in the software and systems modeling community.The number of SoSyM submissions over the past year saw an increase, while the general health of the journal remains strong.Measures put in place recently, such as the second year of moving to six issues per year, have helped to reduce the time to publication significantly.The Open Access movement is also progressing, with Springer announcing new initiatives to make SoSyM publications more accessible to a broader community of researchers.The rest of this editorial summarizes the progress made by the journal during this unprecedented situation.Our hope is that you remain safe and have a productive 2021!

The recent surge in computer science (CS) education for children has led to the popularization of blocks-based programming languages (BBPLs), which offer a syntax-directed approach to teach fundamental programming concepts. Most BBPL environments are designed with imperative programming in mind. The primary building blocks represent the key constructs that support sequencing, iteration, and selection, all in an imperative style. Some BBPL environments support bi-directionality and can show the source code of the same program represented as either blocks or in a general-purpose textual language. There have been few alternatives to the imperative primitives used in these environments. In this Vision paper, we propose a paradigmatic change to the underlying and front-facing structures of BBPL environments by replacing them with Model-driven Engineering (MDE) primitives, such as declarative transformation rules and metamodels. We have implemented a prototype of our envisioned system in a modeling environment to show the feasibility of the approach, which we believe could be used by young children. The contribution of our vision is a demonstration of the potential for a new thread of research that lies at the intersection of modeling and CS education for children. We aim to spark an interest in MDE among CS education researchers, while encouraging the modeling community to consider how MDE might be taught to younger students.

In model-driven engineering, stakeholders work on models in order to design, transform, simulate, and analyze systems. Complex systems typically involve many stakeholder groups working in a coordinated manner on different aspects of a system. Therefore, there is a need for collaborative platforms to allow modelers to work together. Previously, we introduced the cloud-based multi-user tool AToMPM, designed to address the challenges for building a collaborative platform for modeling. This paper presents on the multi-user, multi-view architecture of AToMPM and an initial evaluation of its performance and scalability.