Guest editorial for the special section on MODELS 2016

The MODELS conference series continues to be the premier venue for model-based software and systems engineering covering all aspects of modeling, from theory to languages and methods to tools and applications. MODELS 2016 took place in St.Malo, France, fromOctober 2 to October 7, 2016, as the ACM/IEEE 19th International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems. A total of 118 papers were submitted to the ‘Foundations’ track of MODELS 2016, of which 28were accepted, hence at a rate of 24%. The ‘Practice and Innovation’ track received 27 submissions, of which 10 were accepted, hence at a rate of 37%. It has become a much valued tradition that authors of the best papers at each MODELS conference are invited to submit revised and extended versions of their papers for publication in a special section in SoSyM. The selection of these papers is based on input from the Program Committee and on the reception of the papers at the conference. This special section presents the five articles that resulted from this invitation. Each article was subject to the full SoSyM review cycle, and authors received anonymous feedback in two rounds of reviewing from three reviewers who are experts in the field. As a result, each article has been thoroughly revised and substantially extended compared to its conference version.