Special issue: Intelligence support on learning, composition and networking

International Journal of Knowledge and Web Intelligence 3(1) 2012

Papers from the 15th International Conference on Knowledge-based and Intelligent Information and Engineering Systems (KES2011), held in Kaiserslautern, Germany, 12-14 September 201.

• Open system of distance learning: soft system approach to information system analysis
• The development of a course recommendation system for e-learning students
• Mistake detection method in Chinese-Japanese translation for Japanese learning support
• Back-review support system for presentation rehearsal review
• Review-based recommendation of attractive sentences in a novel for effective browsing
• Chaotic oscillations in user-centric cognitive radio networks and their control

Special issue: Mergers and acquisitions management: new directions

European Journal of International Management 6(4) 2012

• Integration in large, related M&As: linkages between contextual factors, integration approaches and process dimensions
• The stepfamily metaphor: further insights and alternatives for understanding the M&A discourse
• Mergers and acquisitions as embedded network activities
• Acquisitions, market share and interest groups
• Top management retention in cross-border acquisitions: the roles of financial incentives, acquirer's commitment and autonomy

Call for papers: Mining Social Networks for Recommender Systems

A special issue of International Journal of Social Network Mining

Social networks such as Facebook, Linkedin, etc. contain gigabytes of data that can be mined to make recommendations for products, events or even friendships. The premise of these recommendations is that individuals might only be a few steps from a desirable social friend, event or product, but not realise it.

In such systems, people often belong to multiple explicit or implicit social networks because of different interpersonal interactions. That is, besides the explicit friendship relations between the users, there are also other implicit relations. For example, users can co-comment on products and they can co-rate products or co-tag a photo.

The aim of this special issue is to study how mining of social networks can leverage the quality of recommendations. The analysis of social influence and the inference of social rating networks and social media can help in providing more accurate and effective product, friend, activity and event recommendations.

Suitable topics include but are not limited to:

• Link prediction in social networks
• Rating prediction in social rating networks
• Recommendation in social rating networks
• Cross-domain recommendation in social rating networks
• Group recommendation in social networks
• Top-N friend recommendation in social networks
• Top-N item recommendation in social networks
• Recommendation in social networks with distrust
• Recommendation in time-evolving social networks
• Social network analysis for recommendation
• Memory-based methods for recommendation in social networks
• Model-based methods for recommendation in social networks
• Recommendation by combining multiple social networks
• Privacy of recommendation in social networks
• Event and activity recommendation in mobile social networks
• Recommendation in location-based social networks
• Collaborative filtering in social networks
• Context-aware recommendation in social networks
• Explaining recommendation in social networks
• Recommendation in social media
• Multi-criteria recommendation in social networks

Important Dates
Paper submission due: 1 February, 2013
First round notification: 1 May, 2013
Revised version due: 1 August, 2013

Call for papers: Recent Advances in Dependable Computing

A special issue of International Journal of Critical Computer-Based Systems

This special issue is focused on recent progress, ideas, problems and solutions relating to dependable computing and fault-tolerant computing. It is intended for academics, practitioners, scientists and engineers who are involved in the areas of dependable computing theories, practical experiment designs and commercial systems.

The issue will carry revised and substantially extended versions of selected papers presented at the 18th IEEE Pacific Rim International Symposium on Dependable Computing (PRDC 2012)  or in one of its satellite workshops (Fast Abstracts, Industry Track), but we also strongly encourage researchers unable to participate in the conference to submit papers for this call.

Suitable topics include but are not limited to:

• Software and hardware reliability, testing, verification and validation
• Dependability measurement, modelling and evaluation
• Security quantification
• Self-healing, self-protecting and fault-tolerant systems
• Software aging and rejuvenation
• Safety-critical systems and software
• Architecture and system design for dependability
• Fault-tolerant algorithms and protocols
• Tools for design and evaluation of dependable systems
• Reliability in Internet and web systems and applications
• Internet information security
• Dependable transportation systems
• Dependability issues in computer networks and communications
• Dependability issues in distributed and parallel systems
• Dependability issues in real-time systems, databases and transaction processing systems
• Dependability issues in autonomic computing
• Dependability issues in embedded systems

Important Dates
Submission of manuscripts: 20 January, 2013
Notification to authors: 30 March, 2013
Final versions due: 30 April, 2013

Call for papers: Inter-Firm Cooperation and Innovation

A special issue of International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management

Since the 1980s the shortening of product and technology life cycles and the overlapping of technological trajectories have pushed firms to reconsider their innovation strategies. In this context cooperation in R&D and innovation widens their technology base and is used to complement internal resources.

 A large number of empirical and theoretical studies have been devoted to inter-firm cooperation in innovative activities. Generally these analyses show that cooperation affects innovation positively and, as a consequence, firms’ performances. Other results suggest that the innovation capability of firms is stimulated through the relationship established with external partners.

 Strategic alliances concerning innovation are increasing in order to facilitate the coordination of complex projects that firms could not carry out individually. In some cases cooperation in innovation is not in addition to, but instead of investing internally in R&D. Of course these alliances can have implications for antitrust and competition, as highlighted by some authors, but generally national and regional governments are increasingly incorporating public support for coordination among firms into their policies.

 In spite of this interest, another strand of the literature emphasises the high rate of failure in cooperative agreements for innovation, especially when direct competitors are involved. Moreover, the rise of these networks as a new method of collaboration (also concerning innovation) has opened a new perspective of analysis involving a larger theoretical approach.

 The aim of this special issue is to reconsider cooperation for innovation in an interdisciplinary approach in which management, industrial organisation, economics of innovation, public policy and local development can coexist and offer a better interpretation. Submissions from academic researchers, consultants and managers are strongly encouraged. Papers can employ both qualitative and quantitative methodologies.

Suitable topics include but are not limited to:

• Cooperation for innovation among firms
• Cooperative innovation in networks and clusters
• Historical trends
• Typologies of cooperation
• Formal and informal cooperation
• Vertical and horizontal cooperation
• Determinants of success/failure
• Public policies for cooperation
• Geographical proximity in cooperation
• Case studies

Important Dates
Submission of manuscripts: 30 November, 2012
Notification to authors:  31 January, 2013
Final versions due: 28 February, 2013

Special issue: Strategic practices and cases adopted for technology marketing

International Journal of Technology Marketing 7(3) 2012

Papers from the  International Conference on Management Cases 2011, held in Greater Noida, India, 1-2 December 2011.

• Pushing new technologies through business model innovation
• Compressing the business development cycle: applying stewardship design principles for commercial scale solar projects
• Virtual business empires at Second Life
• Optimising online marketing resources: SEO strategy
• Strategic redesign for globally distributed manufacturing: a case study

Regular Papers

• Managing product variety decisions for sustainable profitability in B2B industries
• A study of software product sampling
• Aesthetic technology: scale development and measurement

Special issue: Interesting knowledge mining

International Journal of Data Mining, Modelling and Management 4(3) 2012

• Discovering (frequent) constant conditional functional dependencies
• EverMiner: consideration on knowledge driven permanent data mining process
• Rule schemas and interesting association action rules mining
• Detection of research trends from bibliographical data
• Dimensionality reduction framework for blog mining and visualisation

Additional Paper

• Who are our clients: consumer segmentation through explorative data mining

Special issue: Recent advances in swarm intelligent systems

International Journal of Computational Science and Engineering 7(2) 2012

• A new chaos particle swarm optimisation algorithm and its applications for transportation continuous network design problem
• Optimising maximum power output and minimum entropy generation of Atkinson cycle using mutable smart bees algorithm
• Fast distributed consensus seeking in large-scale sensor networks via shortcuts
• Social emotional optimisation algorithm with emotional model
• Using QIGSO with steepest gradient descent strategy to direct orbits of chaotic systems
• Agent-based model and simulation on firm size

Submitted Papers

• Multi-objective no-wait hybrid flowshop scheduling problem with transportation times
• Adaptive testing system based on diagnosis mechanism and normal distribution
• CFD simulation of gas-solid-liquid fluidised bed reactor

Call for papers: Constructing Interstitial Heritage: Architectures, Visions and Experiences

A special issue of International Journal of Tourism Anthropology

 This special issue invites submissions that explore the past and present modes through which alternate cultural heritage can be preserved and encouraged. In particular, it focuses on the realm of the interstice: a “space, opening, crevice etc, between things near together or between the component parts of a body”.

 Interstitial heritage can be located between entities as well as within them. By nature, it creates an aperture that forms an alternate field and conduit to existent structures. It needs not necessarily negate a prevailing socio-political and economic frame (though it may well do so), but it ultimately provides individuals and groups with a ground on which to construct their environment and express themselves within it rather than be subservient to it. In the city, for example, spontaneous occupations of grounds and temporary archisculptures have offered models of interstitial production.

 In the ever-increasing flow of images during the 20th century, visual strategies aiming to build alternate banks of visual data have grown inside and outside of the constraints of the society of spectacle. In the everyday life of an increasingly global world, numerous attempts have been made to propose behaviours and experiences that challenge the predicates of top-down social fabrics.

 This issue is concerned with the history and the present of interstitial architectures, visions and experiences. And crucially, it is concerned with the issue of their safeguarding. Given the alternate nature of interstitial production and living, their sustainability is central to the articulation of empowered individual and communal consciousness.

 The issue invites proposals that explore historical and contemporary forms of interstitial heritage, such as spontaneous architectures and three dimensional constructions, visual archives and alternate visual production systems, as well as the transmission of a varied and fertile bodily creativity.

 The readership of this issue includes academics and researchers in anthropology, sociology, architecture, urban history and art history, and historians and professionals of tourism as well as local planners and decision making agents.

The issue will carry revised and substantially extended versions of selected papers presented at the inaugural conference for the Association for Critical Heritage Studies (held in June 2012), but we also strongly encourage researchers unable to participate in the conference to submit papers for this call.

Suitable topics include but are not limited to:

• Theorising interstitial heritage: contemporary developments
• Theorising interstitial heritage: historical mapping and safeguarding
• Urban forms and functionalities of architectural interstices
• Preserving and empowering para-identities
• Experiencing the norm and subverting or displacing it
• Constructing interstitial aesthetic machines
• The economics and politics of a multilayered whole: developing strategies, empowering actors

Important Dates
Deadline for submission of manuscripts: 15 November, 2012
Notification of acceptance/rejection to authors: 15 January, 2013
Final acceptance of manuscript:  31 March, 2013

Special issue: Metaheuristics and swarm intelligence in engineering and industry

International Journal of Bio-Inspired Computation 4(4) 2012

• An improved hybrid Cuckoo Search (IHCS) metaheuristics algorithm for permutation flow shop scheduling problems
• Particle swarm optimisation applied to real time control of spherical tank system
• Multi-agent simulated annealing algorithm based on differential evolution algorithm
• Solving 0-1 knapsack problems by a discrete binary version of cuckoo search algorithm
• Production planning and scheduling by means of artificial immune systems and particle swarm optimisation algorithms
• Particle swarm optimisation for data warehouse logical design
• Dynamic objectives aggregation methods for evolutionary portfolio optimisation. A computational study

Special issue: Recommender systems to support the dynamics of virtual learning communities

International Journal of Web Based Communities 8(3) 2012

• Case study: recommending course reading materials in a small virtual learning community
• A hybrid user-centred recommendation strategy applied to repositories of learning objects
• An evolving recommender-based framework for virtual learning communities
• Educational resources recommendation system based on agents and semantic web for helping students in a virtual learning environment
• Designing a user interface to manage recommendations in virtual learning communities
• Theories of participation in online learning communities: an intersectional understanding
• Does beauty matter? The role of friends' attractiveness and gender on social attractiveness ratings of individuals on Facebook

Newly announced title: International Journal of Quantitative Research in Education

Beginning publication in 2013, International Journal of Quantitative Research in Education aims to enhance the practice and theory of quantitative research in education, defined in the broadest sense of the word, to include settings outside the school. It will publish empirical research employing a variety of quantitative methods and approaches, including but not limited to surveys, cross sectional studies, longitudinal research, structural equation modelling, multilevel modelling and Rasch modelling.

Call for papers: Entrepreneurship and its Socio-cultural Contexts

A special issue of Journal for International Business and Entrepreneurship Development

The literature acknowledges that context is important for understanding when, how and why entrepreneurship happens and who becomes involved. Since entrepreneurship is about people, it is conditioned by the socio-cultural background of the entrepreneurs as well the socio-cultural contexts in which they do their business. On the other hand, as an economic activity, entrepreneurship can exert certain influence on socio-cultural changes. However, the link between entrepreneurship and its socio-cultural contexts is still under explored in the literature.

This special issue seeks to compile a collection of papers that can contribute to the development of an exciting new research agenda geared towards the assessment of the relationship between entrepreneurship and its socio-cultural contexts.

The issue welcomes research papers that offer valuable new insights or present new approaches to any of the above or related topics. Papers that are either conceptually or empirically-based, employ a range of methodological approaches and offer an international dimension with valuable cross-country/cross-sectoral comparisons are also encouraged. Case studies on any of the above topics may also be submitted.

Topics appropriate to this special issue include, but are not limited to the following:

• The impact of culture versus location on entrepreneurial activities
• The impact of entrepreneurship on socio-cultural changes
• How enterprise-creation processes are shaped by the entrepreneur's socio-cultural background
• Entrepreneurial orientation in different socio-cultural contexts
• Socio-cultural influence on entrepreneurial propensity
• Socio-cultural influence on international entrepreneurship

Important Dates
Expressions of interest in the form of an abstract by: 30 November, 2012
Deadline for submission of full manuscript: 28 February, 2013

Call for papers: Current Trends and Improvements in Software Engineering Practices

A special issue  of International Journal of Computer Applications in Technology

Software Engineering (SE) had witnessed many changes in practices over the years. Software has been developed for use in many sectors such as medicine, education, engineering, etc. Improvements in SE practices will improve the quality of software to be developed for various sectors, thereby enhancing productivity in the client organisations.

This special issue invites original submissions that present innovative methods, tools and techniques that result in improvements in SE practices. Papers reporting the experiences, transitions from different practices, are also welcome.

Papers are invited covering, but not limited, the following topics:

• New modelling techniques
• Automation support and improvement
• Requirements engineering
• Software testing
• Software maintenance
• Programming/coding practices
• Decision making in software development

Important Dates
Last Date for Paper Submission: 4 January, 2013
Editorial Review results: 14 January, 2013
1st review decision: 14 March, 2013
Submission of revisions: 14 April, 2013
Final Acceptance/Rejection decision: 14 May, 2013