Call for papers: Sustainable Practices for Industrial Sectors and Regional Development

Call for papers: Sustainable Practices for Industrial Sectors and Regional Development

A special issue of International Journal of Sustainable Economy

The role of environmental performance in contemporary society is increasing. Industrial business has a potentially crucial role in developing sustainable practices which can maximise its productivity and improve its strategical, tactical and operational performance. Various industrial sectors are reconsidering actions to be taken on sustainable issues, because the political and social, as well as the technological and financial, pressures increase and require urgent actions for the development of the regions. The regional development process offers an opportunity for building sustainable programmes in the economic, environmental and social spheres and for improving the long-term effectiveness of government policy agenda.

The motivation of this special issue is to address concerns integrating sustainability into the mainstream regional development. It will present papers which focus on sustainable issues, particularly over industrial dimensions and regional and local issues associated with environmental performance. The main goal is to provide a current perspective of sustainable economy, including theory and illustrative manufacturing and managerial applications, with particular emphasis on sustainable initiatives.

Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

• Banking sector performance in globalised financial markets
• Best sustainable practices
• Brand marketing
• Business incubator development strategy
• Corporative governance responsibility and legislation
• Cultural and social collaboration for sustainable knowledge
• Design for environment
• E-commerce
• Econometric and mathematical modelling of sustainable economic processes
• E-learning
• Energy conservation
• Environmental quality management
• Environmental policy
• Environmental burdens of international trade
• Environmental accounting
• Environmental rating
• Entrepreneurs in the non-profit sector
• E-marketing
• Europeanisation and open economy
• Foreign direct investments in sustainable initiatives
• Globalisation, strategic management and green technologies
• Innovative environmental management
• Industrial ecology
• Industrial metabolism
• Innovation and sustainability
• Innovative marketing strategies for MNEs and SMEs
• Knowledge management and sustainability
• Macroeconomic and microeconomics analysis of sustainable economic growth and development
• Multiple or simultaneous equation models of (sustainable) economic growth and development
• Project management for regional development
• Resource management
• Reverse logistics and green supply chain applications
• Regional development and partnerships
• Regionalisation and sustainable development
• Sustainable fiscal policy
• Sustainability models and welfare
• Sustainable and rural tourism
• Sustainable product development
• Sustainable consumption models
• Teleworking
• Territorial management
• Waste management
• Web-based knowledge management planning

Important Dates
Full paper deadline: 15 July, 2009
Notification of status and acceptance of paper: 21 September, 2009
Final version of paper: 30 October, 2009

Call for papers: Grid and Cloud Computing

Call for papers: Grid and Cloud Computing

A special issue of International Journal of Ad Hoc and Ubiquitous Computing

Grid and cloud computing have been among the most popular research topics in recent years. They earn increasing attention because they can integrate various geographically distributed and heterogeneous resources into a single computing platform. Users can transparently access the resources without caring about how many resources the platform has and where the resources will be located. Cloud computing can be seen as a natural next step from the grid-utility model. Both need advanced technologies, such as platform, architecture, service, resource discovery and management, job scheduling, replication, and so on, to provide transparent, secure, reliable, and efficient resource access behind the platform.

The new possibilities of grid and cloud computing on the Internet go beyond traditional distributed computing. Therefore, advances in middleware, programming models and tools, components models, and standards will be important issues in developing the grid platform and cloud applications. In addition, a well-defined model and effective economics are useful for coordinating resources scattered over virtual organisations in the computing model. In addition, various valuable applications and implementation experiences will drive sustained development and success in the topic.

This special issue aims to foster state-of-the-art research in the area of grid and cloud computing and is expected to focus on all aspects of cloud technologies and to present novel results and solutions to solve the various problems and challenges in grid and cloud platforms.

We encourage the submission of innovative and mature results in designing, analysing, and developing technology, services, and applications of grid and cloud computing. Areas of interest include, but are not limited to, the following topics:

• Grid computing
• Cloud computing
• Grid architectures and systems
• Grid and cloud resource management
• Utility models and service pricing
• Grid economics and service architectures
• Middleware for grid and cloud computing
• Community and collaborative computing networks
• Support for autonomic grid infrastructure
• Scheduling and load balancing
• Programming models, tools, and environments
• Performance evaluation and modelling
• Grid-based problem solving environment
• Grid and cloud services and components
• Information retrieving in the cloud computing
• Novel architectural models for cloud computing
• New parallel/concurrent programming models for cloud computing
• Scientific computing in the cloud and grid
• Workflows for grid and cloud computing
• Performance monitoring for grid and cloud applications
• Novel applications of grid and cloud computing

Important Dates
Deadline for Submission: 1 April, 2009
Acceptance notification: 15 July, 2009
Camera ready papers due: 1 September, 2009

Special issue: 17th Symposium on Computer Architecture and High-Performance Computing (SBAC-PAD)

International Journal of High Performance Computing and Networking 5(4) 2008

The 17th Symposium on Computer Architecture and High-Performance Computing (SBAC-PAD) was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on 24–27 October 2005.

• Analysing and improving clustering based sampling for microprocessor simulation
• VRM: a failure-aware Grid resource management system
• Autonomic application management for large scale MPI programs
• Improving machine virtualisation with 'hotplug memory'
• Adaptive hybrid partitioning for OLAP query processing in a database cluster
• Indexing continuously changing data with mean-variance tree
• An analytical framework for the modelling and evaluation of the mobile agent based distributed network management paradigm

Special issue: Kansei engineering and emotional design applied into design science

International Journal of Product Development 7(1/2) 2009

• A European emotional investigation in the field of shoe design
• A cross-cultural study of users' craftsmanship perceptions in vehicle interior design
• A Bayesian learning of probabilistic relations between perceptual attributes and technical characteristics of car dashboards to construct a perceptual evaluation model
• Product semantics and wine portfolio optimisation
• A product design method using macroscopic shape feature 'complexity'
• Research on Kansei image-driven method of product styling design
• Design with event-related potentials: a Kansei information approach on CMC design

Additional Papers

• Functional product enrichment and supply chain disorganisation: two barriers for sustainable design
• A new fuzzy method for dealing with inconsistency Production System application

Special issue: Managing ICT in the network economy

International Journal of Information Technology and Management 8(1) 2009

• Dynamic capabilities in the software process
• To prevent them from entering, provide the keys
• The small-world and scale-free structure of an internet technological community
• A contingency framework for effective information systems design and e-business applications
• An innovative model of supply chain management: a single case study in the electronic sector
• Strategic use of the internet and e-business: the 'Celta' case at GM Brazil
• Managing globally dispersed R&D teams

Special issue: Performance and dynamics of diversified land vehicle systems: Part one

International Journal of Heavy Vehicle Systems 15(2/3/4) 2008

• Approaches to improving the mobility of military tracked vehicles on soft terrain
• Disturbance rejection control of a light armoured vehicle using stability augmentation based active suspension system
• Performance and emission enhancements of a variable geometry turbocharger on a heavy-duty diesel engine
• Optimisation of AWD off-road vehicle performance using visco-lock devices
• Steering strategies for multi-axle vehicles
• Simplified truck chassis modelling and crashworthiness analysis
• Driver alertness monitoring techniques: a literature review
• Dynamic analyses of heavy vehicle with pitch-interconnected suspensions
• Engine-in-the-loop study of the stochastic dynamic programming optimal control design for a hybrid electric HMMWV
• A low-order dynamic model of a tracked robot inclusive of non-linear slip
• Hybrid component specification optimisation for a medium-duty hybrid electric truck
• Optimal tyre inflation pressures for urban buses
• Dynamic modelling and virtual prototype simulation of dump truck-haul road interactions
• Vehicle configuration design with a packing genetic algorithm
• The effect of dynamic arm support on grip forces and steering errors during simulated driving

Special Issue: Challenges in designing Massively Multiuser Virtual Environments: experiences from MMVE 2008

International Journal of Advanced Media and Communication 2(4) 2008

Papers from the 1st International Workshop on Massively Multiuser Virtual Environments held in Reno, Nevada, USA on 8 March 2008 at the IEEE Virtual Reality 2008 conference.

• The HyperVerse: concepts for a federated and Torrent-based '3D Web'
• Clustering players for load balancing in virtual worlds
• Towards an authentication service for Peer-to-Peer based Massively Multiuser Virtual Environments
• Scalable reputation management with trustworthy user selection for P2P MMOGs

Additional Paper

• Discovering First Person Shooter game servers online: techniques and challenges

Special issue: Bioinformatics and personalised medicine

International Journal of Computational Biology and Drug Design 1(4) 2008

• 2009 and beyond: the decade of personalised medicine
• Feature selection for the imbalanced QSAR problems by using EasyEnsemble
• Pairwise statistical significance and empirical determination of effective gap opening penalties for protein local sequence alignment
• Statistical issues in the analysis of DNA Copy Number Variations
• A divide-and-conquer strategy to solve the out-of-memory problem of processing thousands of Affymetrix microarrays
• Software for the interactive visualisation of experimental data in the genomic context
• Weighted feature value based Drug Target Protein prediction
• Drug/nondrug classification with consensual Self-Organising Map and Self-Organising Global Ranking algorithms

Special issue: Enhancing mathematics teaching with technology

International Journal of Continuing Engineering Education and Life-Long Learning 18(5/6) 2008

Papers from the 8th International Conference on Technology in Mathematics Teaching held in Hradec Králové, Czech Republic, in July 2007.

• Teaching and learning mathematics with dynamic worksheets
• Helping teachers generate exercises with random coefficients
• What can technology add to the mathematics classroom?
• Getting mathematical concepts and learning proofs by computer aided linear algebra
• Drawing in movement and insights for the proof process
• The Casyopee project: a Computer Algebra Systems environment for students' better access to algebra
• Implications of neuroscientific research on teaching algebra
• Interactive geometry labs – combining the US and Russian approaches to teaching geometry
• Computer aided learning of proving in school geometry
• ALgebra on NUmerical SETs: a system for teaching and learning algebra
• Selected mathematical concepts and their animation with CAS maple
• Technological challenges of teaching mathematics in a blended learning environment
• Geometry Expressions – a dynamic symbolic geometry environment
• Teachers' practice and students' learning in the Mexican programme for Teaching Mathematics with Technology
• Dynamic web tools for trigonometry

Special issue: Measuring and managing financial risk

International Journal of Risk Assessment and Management 11(1/2) 2009

• Predicting business failure: an application of multicriteria decision aid techniques in the case of small UK manufacturing firms
• Determinants of non-performing loans and banking costs during the 1999-2001 Turkish banking crisis
• Optimal Bayesian portfolios of hedge funds
• Mean reversion in the US treasury constant maturity rates
• Autoregressive conditional moments in VaR estimate with Gram-Charlier and Cornish-Fisher expansions
• Option pricing in a hidden Markov model of the short rate with application to risky debt evaluation
• An HJB approach to exponential utility maximisation for jump processes
• A conditional value-at-risk model for insurance products with a guarantee
• Default forecasting for small-medium enterprises: does heterogeneity matter?
• Discrete-time affine term structure models: an ARCH formulation
• Optimal portfolio for HARA utility functions in a pure jump multidimensional incomplete market

Special issue: Intelligent technologies: recent advances and applications

International Journal of Automation and Control 2(2/3) 2008

Extended versions of papers from the 8th International Conference on Intelligent Technologies (InTech’07) held in Sydney, Australia, 12-14 December 2007.

• Application-motivated combinations of fuzzy, interval and probability approaches, and their use in geoinformatics, bioinformatics and engineering
• An adaptive manoeuvring strategy for mobile robots in cluttered dynamic environments
• Calibration-free probabilistic image sensor model for Bayesian search and tracking
• Automatic thresholding of license plate
• Properties of creation and reduction according to the equinumber principle for adaptive vector quantisation
• Computational intelligence applications to crisis management in power systems
• Intelligent technologies for real-time biomedical engineering applications
• A common disturbance decoupled observer for linear systems with unknown inputs
• Optimising vendor selection for information systems outsourcing under uncertainty
• Asymmetric information measures: how to extract knowledge from an expert so that the expert's effort is minimal
• Extension of logical structures by safe extension of specialisation systems
• A strong law of large numbers of fuzzy set-valued random variables with slowly varying weights
• Positive parts of convergent fuzzy set-valued martingales

Call for papers: Management Devices and the Quest for Performance in the Public Sector

Call for papers: Management Devices and the Quest for Performance in the Public Sector

A special issue of International Journal of Public Sector Performance Management

For several decades, and with renewed vigour since the late 1980s, public action has been called into question. All public institutions (the State, local government, health organizations, state-run companies) have been the object of two types of criticism. Economic inefficiency was jointly denounced with what was perceived as lack of democracy, transparency, equality, fairness and even security.

The rhetoric of “modernization” owes its origin to this two-fold criticism and was paralleled with two decades of successive reforms. These, however, were essentially aimed at economic inefficiency, thus leaving aside all other dimensions of public action. Among these initiatives, we can note the privatisations of state-run companies and public services, the introduction of quality management tools, the renovation of HRM techniques, performance related pay, balanced scorecards, and the conversion of citizens into “clients” and “shareholders”. Lately, state budgeting was also aligned with performance based logics. Symptomatically, the French government announced its decision of submitting its ministers to the assessment of private management consultants.

Derived from private management practice, a new vision of performance was vested by NPM (New Public Management) approaches into the public sector. It assumed the shape of management devices and remains at the core of most public reforms. The objective of this special issue is precisely to analyse public management reforms in the light of these management devices.

In the opinion of many authors, management devices are not value-neutral. They are increasingly seen as a mixture of principles, techniques and managerial doctrines, promoted by a heteronymous cluster of experts, professional groups and influential agencies. Hence, according to some public management researchers, the idea of their unrestricted transfer and universal applicability is increasingly losing ground.

Indeed, claiming that organisation models and control techniques brought about by the management devices are universal constitutes the first action of public managers conforming to a standardised conception of performance. In that respect, is the use of terms such as “modernization”, “rationality”, “performance”, not the first step to conceding to a managerialist ideology? However, differences in nature and in purpose (social, political, judicial, institutional, organizational, etc.) are too obvious between public and business universes to blindfold the drawbacks of such a blend.

Management devices go beyond a simple translation of executives’ desire into action. They are action generators triggering unexpected dynamics and enacting ideologies for which “managerialism” is merely a façade. They request new perspectives of public management research in which stakeholders, their professional experiences and moral preoccupations, implementation techniques and user’s strategies should all be considered. The analysis of the design and implementation of the tools of public action is also a means of understanding the dynamics of change, and highlighting the interactions between technocratic and political action. To what extend can management tools confer the appearance of rationality to public policies and provide an escape lane from legitimate debates? Up to what point could a “deviant” appropriation of tools alienate the outcomes of the intended reform?

Our call for papers is aimed at two fields of inquiry:

First, the papers should question the capacities of management devices to introduce performance ideologies into public action doctrines.

• What is the nature of innovation (technologies, organizational patterns, assumptions)?
• Who are its instigators and what are their aims?
• How does it change the interactions between different categories of public agents, and between civil servants and their publics?
• Does it produce conflicts between the general interest and economic performances?
• Can such a "better" management work against the inner purposes of public action?

Secondly, would it not be possible or even desirable to imagine a new vision of public performance, one that would outclass market transpositions?

• Are there any other sources of inspiration?
• Could these new approaches gain acceptance?
• Could third sector experiences provide new paths of thinking?

In all these respects, it would be interesting to explain the success of managerialist approaches to performance.

• Does the century old glorification of the entrepreneurial firm explain this infatuation of the media, politicians and intellectuals, or should it be attributed to the downhill image of the state and its traditional values?
• Is it possible that these trends prevent us from imagining alternatives and formulating criticisms?
• Does this create a vicious circle of societal perception from which we should escape?

All articles related to these issues in local or central governments, public services, and entities, or state owned companies would be greatly appreciated.

Important Dates
Submission of full paper before: 1 May, 2009
Notification of acceptance before:1 July, 2009
Submission of final and revised manuscripts:1 September, 2009

Call for papers: Customer-centric Service Experience Design and Choreography in Innovative Online Services and Mobile Services

Call for papers: Customer-centric Service Experience Design and Choreography in Innovative Online Services and Mobile Services

A special issue of International Journal of Enterprise Network Management

The advent of services sciences has opened up new possibilities for service innovation. The emerging discipline of service science management, engineering, and design (SSMED) is outlined in practice (IBM, Fraunhofer etc.) and academia (UC Berkeley, MIT etc.) The value-adding economical activities for service sector include retail, finance, transportation, healthcare, education, entertainment, and government etc. Customer-centric service design and choreography facilitates service sector to better systematise service innovation.

Research on these questions that provide the advanced e-service and service mobility can change existing human lives by means of integrating work, life, and entertainment aspects. From the viewpoint of service marketing, the service sector with cutting-edge innovative online services and mobile services may promote the position and brand goodwill. Compared with the physical products and adherence to manufacturing specifications, the quality of service is adequately measured only by customer perceptions. Moving towards customer-centric experience choreography can be a significant objective of blueprinting service, designing service, and developing new service to improve customer perceptions. In other words, customer-centric experience choreography can leverage capabilities of service sector to systematise new service concepts in online services and mobile services that will extend business opportunities and research issues.

Customer-centric experience design and choreography involves contextual research to identify new areas for service innovations and opportunities, and the insights into the new service concepts are derived from successful implementations with a variety of service provision and service excellence. Meanwhile, customer-centric experience design and choreography is cross-disciplinary research that can take advantage of diverse thoughts and creativity including psychological, social, and economic perspectives in addition to information technologies and communication. Moreover, to demonstrate the practicality of customer-centric service and experience, innovative online services and mobile services are a rich domain in which new service concepts, service provision, service evaluation, and service marketing can provide good theoretical, empirical, and scientific formulations. Herewith, mobile services refer to the ubiquitous or ambient services that upgrade the service to reach an eminent level and assure customers’ satisfaction.

The goal of this special issue is to address concerns that involved customer-centric service experience design and choreography issues within the broad online services and mobile services scope in regard to services sciences. Due to the rapid growth in intelligence, collaboration, mobile technologies, so the above special issue will be a timely contribution to service sector entities, service users’ daily lives, and the society.

The special issue provides a global forum for presenting authoritative references, academically rigorous research and case studies in both theoretical development and applied research. The purpose of the special issue is to discuss the effective and timely development of state-of-the-art customer-centric service experience design and choreography to accelerate the popularity of these concepts to the entire society. Specifically, it intends to disseminate the researches and studies in the service science from customer-centric service experience design and choreography that directly address the issue of problem-solving toward the obstacles currently encountered in these services online and mobile services.

Suitable topics include, but are not limited to:

• Customer-centric service experience design
• Customer-centric service experience choreography
• Customer-centric mobile service design and implementation
• Customer-centric service experience engineering
• New customer-centric service experience development
• Customer-centric service concept design
• Customer-centric service concept implementation
• Customer-centric service experience vision and blueprint as well as strategy
• Service management in online services and mobile services
• Customer-centric online services and mobile service system implementation and test
• Customer-centric service experience assessment and quality
• Verification and validation of customer-centric service systems
• Customer-centric Web service applications
• Customer-centric SOA applications (e.g., e-entertainment. e-learning, e-government, e-health)

Important Dates
Full paper deadline: 30 July 2009
Notification of acceptance and review results: 31 December 2009
Revised submission deadline: 31 January 2010
Final acceptance: 31 March, 2010

Call for papers: Marketing in Emerging Markets

Call for papers: Marketing in Emerging Markets

A special issue of International Journal of Business and Emerging Markets

Recently, there have been increasingly louder calls for more research in emerging markets, in order to both advance the discipline of marketing and ensure its managerial relevance. Indeed, emerging markets are fundamentally different from the industrialised nations in which scientific research has traditionally been conducted, calling into question, therefore, marketing’s conceptual and theoretical foundations. The growing importance of emerging markets in the world economy suggests that understanding the practice of marketing in emerging markets is critical to an organisation’s success.

The focus of this special issue, therefore, is on marketing in emerging markets. More specifically, it aims to explore both the scientific discipline and practice of marketing, in the context of emerging markets. The guest editors welcome:
conceptual, theoretical, critical, and managerial submissions;
both quantitative and qualitative methods; and
all research approaches, including experiments, empirical work, cases, and interpretive studies.

Suitable topics include, but are not limited to:

• Consumer research tools and techniques in emerging markets
• Buyer behaviour in emerging markets
• Distribution channel innovations in emerging markets
• Communication and promotional strategies in emerging markets
• Consumer education and consumer rights in emerging markets
• Social marketing and ethical dilemmas in emerging markets
• Counterfeiting and intellectual property rights
• New product development in emerging markets
• Internet marketing in emerging markets

Important Dates
Submission: 26 June, 2009
Notification: 25 September, 2009
First Revision: 27 November, 2009
Final Revision: 29 January, 2010

Special issue: Third International Workshop ‘Dependability Aspects on Data Warehousing and Mining Applications’ DAWAM 2008

International Journal of Business Intelligence and Data Mining 3(3) 2008

The DAWAM workshop was held in Barcelona, Spain, 4–7 March 2008 as part of the Third International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security (ARES 2008 – The International Dependability Conference)

• Privacy-enhancing methods for e-health applications: how to prevent statistical analyses and attacks
• How to implement multidimensional security into OLAP tools
• An evaluation of business solutions in manufacturing enterprises
• On the requirements of new software development

Special issue: Sustainable management of water resources in transboundary river basins: risk assessment and modelling

International Journal of Risk Assessment and Management 10(4) 2008

• Risk-based integrated management of transboundary water resources: a general framework
• Incorporating uncertainty into adaptive, transboundary water challenges: a conceptual design for the Okavango River basin
• Risk management of transboundary water resources: sustainable water management of the River Jordan basin area
• Risk management of transboundary water resources using the green supply chain approach
• Using risk management to increase the flexibility of transboundary water conflict resolutions
• A model for risk minimisation on water resource usage failure

Special issue: Knowledge-Intensive Business Services (KIBS)

International Journal of Services Technology and Management 10(2/3/4) 2008

• Knowledge-Intensive Business Services (KIBS) as drivers of multilevel knowledge dynamics
• Client-oriented multicompetence: the core asset in KIBS
• The internal differentiation of the KIBS sector: empirical evidence from cluster analysis
• Managing and organising technical and scientific service firms: a taxonomy and an empirical study
• Intermediating between the international and local levels: business consultancy and advertising firms and their clients in Finland
• Are KIBS more than intermediate inputs? An examination into their R&D diffuser role in Europe
• Spatial agglomeration, technology and outsourcing of knowledge-intensive business services: empirical insights from Italy
• Start-ups and innovation in the Vienna ICT sector: how important is the local cluster?
• A comparison of the effects of traditional production factors and sources of innovation on KIBS' performance: an empirical study of Taiwanese IC design firms
• KIBS startups in the Stuttgart region: a surprisingly below-average rate?
• KIBS, perceptions and innovation patterns
• Tracking knowledge angels: a research proposal

Special issue: Design, control and maintenance of sheet metal forming processes

International Journal of Materials and Product Technology 32(4) 2008

• On the inferences from the analyses of strain distributions in drawn sheet metal products
• Influence of media on process stability in sheet metal hydroforming
• Single point incremental forming
• Simulation of cage roll forming process of ERW pipes
• Study on the influence of mandrel type on copper tube rotary draw bending
• Versatile microforming press
• Plastic instability in complex strain paths and finite element simulation for localised necking prediction in sheet metal forming technology
• Architecture for a neural expert system for condition-based maintenance of blanking
• A method for force reduction in heavy duty bending
• Intelligent control scheme of divided blank holder for square-cup deep-drawing process

Call for papers: Integrated Manufacturing and Service Systems

Call for papers: Integrated Manufacturing and Service Systems

A special issue of International Journal of Industrial and Systems Engineering

Integrated manufacturing and service systems refer to the network of manufacturers, suppliers, retailers, distributors and other service providers who are organised to enable information flow critical to the movement of materials and/or services through the supply chain, and effective coordination of activities to address various stages of the product life cycle.

Increasingly, products are being offered as a service that must be provided over certain duration, at a pre-specified quality, price and level. Typical examples of such services include leasing of photo-copying machines, and service arrangements between airlines and engine manufacturers. Manufacturers provide such products as part of a service package, where they are responsible for maintaining the product during its contracted period.

The delivery of a service, and not just a product, requires that the supply chain behind it be designed and operated to deliver products initially, maintain them, accept returns, refurbish and deliver again the same service over and over again. The refurbished products also need to be taken out of the supply chain once they reach the end-of-life and/or are replaced by newer generations.

Design and operation of such integrated supply chains requires the development of methodologies and frameworks to support delivery of integrated products and services. Some of the interesting issues that such integrated supply chains throw up include:

1. Pricing of services that are offered,
2. Design and operation of service networks to support these services,
3. Management of product and spare parts inventory, considering the product life cycles, and
4. Design of products for refurbishability.

Competitive pricing of services would help the development of such models; service networks, on the other hand, need to be designed to support both the forward and reverse flow of components and end-products. Inventory management in these integrated supply chains has its own challenges, dealing as it does not only with new products/components but also refurbished ones. Finally, product life cycles have a great impact on the operation of these integrated supply chains, as does the design for refurbishability.

The effort towards integrated supply chains is also driven by increasing environmental concerns, as well as the economic opportunities inherent in the reuse (of components) and refurbishment of products. Going forward, such imperatives would take a more central stage in the design and operation of supply chains, creating new avenues for researchers and practitioners in the field.

Papers in this special issue will consider, but are not limited to, the following issues in integrated manufacturing and service systems:

• Modeling and design of supply networks that facilitate both forward and reverse flow of products and services
• Modeling tools to support the analysis and development of strategies in design and manufacturing for disassembly, recycling and refurbishment
• Consideration of product life-cycles in design and operation of supply chains
• Inventory management in supply chains that support both products and services
• Co-ordination mechanisms and techniques, protocols as well as tools for improving co-ordination between distributed members of supply chains
• Life cycle analysis of different value chains to minimize the use of materials and waste
• Development of appropriate performance measures for new manufacturing paradigms

Important Dates
Abstracts and proposals (max 1500 words) by: 21 March, 2009
Final drafts of accepted papers by: 31 July 2009

Special issue: EKC and sustainable development

International Journal of Global Environmental Issues 9(1/2) 2009

• Environment, human development and economic growth: a contemporary analysis of Indian states
• An empirical analysis of the environmental Kuznets curve for water pollution in India
• World emissions and economic growth: application of non-parametric methods
• EKC: static or dynamic?
• Applying Kuznets theory to the analysis of relation between the economic development and greenhouse gas emission
• Climate change and human insecurity
• Post-(sustainable) development?
• Pattern of distribution of global CO2 emission by countries
• Environment and economic growth: a convergence approach
• Technological progres

Additional Papers

• Cosmic Heat Emission concept to 'stop' global warming
• Estimates of CO2 emissions reduction and potential power generation from biogas at Mare Chicose landfill
• Diminishable/removable sources of greenhouse gases

Special issue: Emotion, gender and aesthetics

International Journal of Work Organisation and Emotion 2(4) 2008

Papers from the 5th International Gender, Work and Organization Conference held at Keele University, UK, 27-29 June 2007.

• Staging value and older women workers: when 'something more' is too much
• Beyond emotion: interactive service work and the skills of women
• Aesthetics and emotion in an organisational ethnography

Additional Paper

• An application of Cognitive Emotional Agent Architecture to model Emotional Intelligence

Special issue: Creative drivers of economic growth

International Journal of Foresight and Innovation Policy 5(1/2/3) 2009

Part A: Creativity

• The geography of creative people in Germany
• Creativity in rural development: an Australian response to Florida (or a view from the fringe)
• The implications of creative industries for regional outcomes
• Strategic Performance Management and creative industry

Part B: Entrepreneurship

• New orientations in ethnic entrepreneurship: motivation, goals and strategies of new generation ethnic entrepreneurs
• Innovative and creative entrepreneurship in Spain
• Growth of Information Technology industries in urban and rural areas
• Is culture a territorial resource in the knowledge economy?

Part C: Innovation Policy

• The relationship between universities of professional education and Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises
• Creating balanced partnerships for regional innovation and entrepreneurship: lessons from Australia's Community Banks®
• Artisanality and culture in innovative regional agri-food development: lessons from the Tasmanian artisanal food industry
• Planning for creativity and innovation in a global city: Sydney's Information Technology clusters in the context of the 2005 metropolitan strategy

First issue: International Journal of Adaptive and Innovative Systems

International Journal of Adaptive and Innovative Systems promotes intelligent system development and management, bringing together technologies, people and processes. It provides cross learning between various business, economics and logistical, as well as scientific and technological, disciplines comprising energy and resource industries, environmental and ecological systems, computer and automation sciences, risk and engineering management, human and material organisations.
There is a free download of the papers from this first issue.

First issue: International Journal of Leisure and Tourism Marketing

International Journal of Leisure and Tourism Marketing publishes high-quality conceptual and empirical papers that advance knowledge in the areas of leisure, recreation and tourism research, highlighting marketing issues and considering the influences of globalisation and growing competition.
There is a free download of the papers from this first issue.

First issue: International Journal of Knowledge Engineering and Soft Data Paradigms

International Journal of Knowledge Engineering and Soft Data Paradigms reports the most recent research results in the areas of knowledge engineering and soft data analysis, offering significant attributes such as learning, autonomy and self-organisation.

There is a free download of the papers from this first issue

First issue: International Journal of Shipping and Transport Logistics

International Journal of Shipping and Transport Logistics publishes papers on all methodological aspects in the field of shipping and transport logistics, particularly those that require empirical or mathematical analysis with managerial implications.

There is a free download of the papers from this first issue.

Special issue: e-Participation systems and services in converging regions

International Journal of Electronic Governance 1(4) 2008

• Assessment of the outcomes of e-government for good governance: a case of the Land Management Information System in Mozambique
• Engaging youth through deliberative e-participation: a case study
• Taking stock: local e-democracy in Europe and the USA
• Challenges and barriers in implementing e-participation tools. One year of experience from implementing Gov2demoss in 64 municipalities in Spain
• E-participation and its practice in Czech regional government

Special issue: Recent advances in applications of adaptive and robust control techniques

International Journal of Advanced Mechatronic Systems 1(2) 2008

• Thermal MIMO model and decoupling PID control
• A fuzzy optimal controller for the mechatronic system with non-smooth non-linearities
• Frequency estimation with an LMI-based adaptive update law
• Development of meal assistance orthosis for disabled persons using EOG signal and dish image
• A robust adaptive H∞ control for robotic manipulators with input torque uncertainties
• Adaptive active suspension controller achieving the best ride comfort at any specified location on vehicles with parameter uncertainties
• Torque balancing control in ignition event based scale for multi-cylinder SI engines
• A new neural networks based adaptive model predictive control for unknown multiple variable non-linear systems

Special issue: Global value chains and innovation networks: prospects for industrial upgrading in developing countries. Part 2

International Journal of Technological Learning, Innovation and Development 1(4) 2008

• Global value chains in the least developed countries of the world: threats and opportunities for local producers
• The global leather value chain: the industries, the main actors and prospects for upgrading in LDCs
• Innovation and internationalisation in the white goods GVC: the case of Arcelik
• Global values chains and networks in dialogue with consumption and social movements
• Innovation offshoring and Asia's electronics industry – the new dynamics of global networks

Call for papers: Algebraic and Combinatorial Coding Theory: in Honour of the Retirement of Vera Pless

Call for papers: Algebraic and Combinatorial Coding Theory: in Honour of the Retirement of Vera Pless

A special issue of International Journal of Information and Coding Theory

This special issue will focus on algebraic or combinatorial aspects of coding theory, in honour of Vera Pless’ retirement.

Topics include, but are not limited to:

• Linear codes
• Boolean functions
• Cyclic codes
• Self-dual codes
• Combinatorial matrices
• Codes over rings
• Connections with designs, groups, lattices, distance regular graphs and finite geometries

Important Dates
Deadline for submissions of manuscript: 1 June, 2009
Final selection of papers to be published: 1 October, 2009

Call for papers: Nanotoxicity

Call for papers: Nanotoxicity

A special issue of International Journal of Biomedical Nanoscience and Nanotechnology

With the advent of nanotechnology, the prospects of manufactured nanomaterials in many applications have progressed rapidly. Despite the bright outlook for nanotechnology there is increasing concern that intentional or unintentional human exposure to some types of nanoparticles may lead to significant adverse health effects. The question about the size effects of nanoparticles are important, since the potential for exposure to them will increase as the quantity and types of nanoparticles used in the society grow.

As the outcome of all these debates and concerns, nanotoxicology as a branch in toxicology research has emerged with the aim to investigate possible harmful effects of exposure to nanomaterials. The aim of this special issue is to discuss the application of nanoparticles and how to determine the potential toxicological properties of nanoparticles.

Subjects may include, but are not limited to:

• Cytotoxic responses to nanoparticles
• Health issues relating to nanoparticles
• Exposure to nanoparticles and nanotechnology
• Regulation of nanotechnology
• Nanoparticles and oxidative stress
• Nanoparticles-membrane interactions

Important Dates
Deadline for submission of manuscripts: 30 April 2009
Communication of peer reviews to authors: 31 July 2009
Deadline for revised manuscripts: 30 Sept 2009

Call for papers: Nanotechnology-based Biosensors

Call for papers: Nanotechnology-based Biosensors

A special issue of International Journal of Biomedical Nanoscience and Nanotechnology

Biosensors are playing an increasingly important role in diagnosing disease, monitoring biological and chemical processes, and elucidating important biological and physical mechanisms. Nanotechnology has advanced our ability to develop biosensors that interrogate, interact with, and examine biological targets at the molecular scale.

The aim of this issue will be to illustrate the role of nanotechnology in biosensor development, and to focus on the specific ways in which nanotechnology has enhanced sensor-target interactions, selectivity and sensitivity, mechanisms of signal transduction, and biorecognition. A strong emphasis should be placed on cutting-edge research on nanotechnology-based biosensor systems. Of particular interest are biosensors that utilise nanomaterials or nanoscale technologies that enhance sensor performance or provide new mechanisms for detection.

Subject Coverage

• Nanoparticle/nanomaterial based biosensors
• Nanoscale semiconductor/transistor based biosensors
• Nanoscale probes
• Nanomechanical detection of biological events/processes
• Sensitivity and selectivity enhancement through the use of nanomaterials/nanoscale technologies

Important Dates
Deadline for submission of manuscripts: 31 March 2009
Communication of peer reviews to authors: 30 June 2009
Deadline for revised manuscripts: 31 Aug 2009

Special issue: A consumer stance at search engine marketing

International Journal of Internet Marketing and Advertising 5(1/2) 2009

• Postmodern paradigms and brand management in the 'search' economy
• Antecedents and implications of search engine use as prepurchase information tools
• Search engine loyalty: considering the commitment-loyalty link from a hedonic versus utilitarian perspective
• Investigating customer click through behaviour with integrated sponsored and nonsponsored results
• Advertisers' perceptions of search engine marketing
• Developing an effective and affordable search engine marketing strategy for nonprofits

Special issue: Human-robot teaming

International Journal of Intelligent Defence Support Systems 1(2) 2008

• A coupled reaction-diffusion field model for perception-action cycle with applications to robot navigation
• Cooperative Target Observation of UAVs using Simulated Annealing
• On the complexity of system designs
• Artificial cognition for autonomous planar vehicles: modelling collision avoidance and collective manoeuvre

Special issue: Global value chains and innovation networks: prospects for industrial upgrading in developing countries. Part 3

International Journal of Technological Learning, Innovation and Development 2(1/2) 2009

• Globalisation of the automotive industry: main features and trends
• The North American automotive value chain: Canada's role and prospects
• Innovation capabilities in the Brazilian automobile industry: a study of vehicle assemblers' technological strategies and policy recommendations
• The past, present and future of China's automotive industry: a value chain perspective
• Auto-component industry in Asia: structure, trade patterns and potential for further upgrading

Call for papers: Open-Source Innovation for New Business Models

Call for papers: Open-Source Innovation for New Business Models

A special issue of International Journal of Information and Decision Sciences

In the Web 2.0 era, online communities, social networks, user generated content, and open-source collaboration have become prevalent. From the traditional organisation's perspective, open-source communities are socio-technical systems of volunteers with a variety reasons of motivation for participation such as the intrinsic satisfaction of seeing their work shared, attention gained, etc. Even though many open-source communities are for voluntary and social networking purposes, open-source innovation represents a revolutionary process of horizontalising R&D efforts for value creation.

While these communities are becoming important sources of new knowledge and innovation, it is a challenge to create business value out of such innovation because the participants are novices, collaborating without any meaningful organisational structure. Thus, it is important for both academicians and practitioners to explore innovative approaches to exploiting the value of collaborative open-source communities for developing new business models and value creation.

The focus of this Special Issue will be on the use of open-source innovation to foster knowledge creation and sharing, capture opportunities for developing new products and services, redesign the value chain for efficiency improvement, reinvent the concept of customer value, and expand the customer base. New business models that bring benefits to both participants and the organisation are the real core value of open-source innovation. Thus, the primary interest of the Special Issue would be to identify strategic contingencies and critical success factors (CSFs) that influence effective open-source innovation for business model development. We welcome conceptual and empirical papers, as well as interesting case studies that are within the scope of this issue.

Recommended topic areas to consider for inclusion in this special issue include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Open-source community collaboration: types, efficiency and effectiveness, motivation, etc.
• Open-source innovation for value chain improvement
• Open-source innovation for new product/service development and convergence opportunities
• Knowledge management in open-source communities
• Web 2.0 and open-source community
• Open-source innovation and intellectual property issues
• Security and privacy issues in open-source innovation
• Open-source innovation for new customer value creation
• Open-source innovation for blue ocean strategy
• Collaboration, motivation, and reward in open-source innovation
• Power, social capital, psychological capital, and trust in open-source collaboration
• Comparative analysis of open-source innovation in diverse cultures and markets
• Open-source innovation for e-business, m-business, and e-government
• Community behaviour factors (herd vs. hive) in innovation
• Measurement issues: members' contributions/satisfaction, individual and organisational productivity/performance, community success/failure, etc.

Important Dates
Submission of full paper: 1 April, 2009
Feedback from referees: 1 August, 2009
Submission due date of revised paper: 1 November, 2009
Notification of acceptance: 10 January, 2010
Submission of final revised paper: 1 February, 2010

Special issue: Computer applications in knowledge-based systems

International Journal of Computer Applications in Technology 33(2/3) 2008

• Optimal allocation problem: performance evaluation of communication networks using GA
• Handling imbalanced data sets with a modification of Decorate algorithm
• An efficient method of intention understanding and learning for the ambiguous expressions of sentence end
• Intelligent monitoring and diagnosis of manufacturing process using an integrated approach of neural network ensemble and genetic algorithm
• Design expert system tool with hybrid knowledge representation and reasoning
• Reverse-query diffusion over unstructured overlay network for content delivery
• Discovering auditing criteria for the going-concern disclaimer
• Intelligently reconfigurable manufacturing control system based on knowledge function block
• Technology extraction from time series data reflecting expert operator skills and knowledge
• A development method of UML documents from requirement specifications using NLP
• marService: multiattribute utility recommendation for e-markets
• Multilingual and multicultural message presentations to enhance communication capabilities of people with special needs
• Accuracy improvement for a voice recognition using field association knowledge
• A method of reduction e-mails using replacement and repression
• Automatic acquisition for sensibility knowledge using co-occurrence relation
• A method for extracting knowledge from medical texts including numerical representation
• Outlier detection and evaluation by network flow
• A fuzzy intelligent design retrieving system for customer requirements

Special issue: Digital interactive media in entertainment and arts

International Journal of Arts and Technology 2(1) 2008

Extended papers from DIMEA 2007: Second International Conference on Digital Interactive Media in Entertainment and Arts held in Perth, Australia, 19-21 September 2007.

• On the beauty of interactive art
• New teaching and learning experience with mixed reality technologies
• Digital television, Personal Video Recorders and Media, Automation, Data and Entertainment convergence in the home
• Gesture recognition in virtual reality

Additional Paper

• Making artworks and performance based on augmented reality

Special issue: Multimedia and ubiquitous engineering

International Journal of Ad Hoc and Ubiquitous Computing 4(1) 2009

Includes extended papers from the 2007 International Conference on Multimedia and Ubiquitous Engineering (MUE 2007) held in Seoul, Korea, 26-28 April 2007.

• Energy-efficient relaxed rekeying policies for distributed key management in sensor networks
• Illumination identification by using image colour data and robot's location and orientation data
• Towards a service-oriented Middleware Enabling Context Awareness for Smart Environment
• Buyer-seller watermarking protocols with off-line trusted third parties
• Visual-based embedding systems with targeted secret disclosures and applications
• A seamless handover scheme in IPv6-based mobile networks

Special issue: Telemedicine and e-health

International Journal of Biomedical Engineering and Technology 2(1) 2009

• Wireless monitoring of cardiac activity: a critical review
• Internet-enabled exercises and prosthesis for home-based cognitive rehabilitation
• Optimal displacement of a mobile telemedicine unit in an urban disaster scenario
• Teleconsultation in remote care stations: cost-minimisation analysis of the Guianese experiment

Call for papers: Being a Small Entrepreneur in a Globalised Economy. Traditional and Innovative Firms Competing in an Open World

Call for papers: Being a Small Entrepreneur in a Globalised Economy. Traditional and Innovative Firms Competing in an Open World

A special issue of International Journal of Globalisation and Small Business

Nowadays, the economic landscape seems to be deeply influenced by globalisation, whose fast development is dramatically affecting business competition and entrepreneurship around the world. Relevant strategic and organisational changes seem to be required both for traditional entrepreneurs and new ones, especially as far as the dynamic relationships among organisations are concerned. Futhermore, an increasing quality standard in the production of goods and services is challenged by ever-changing customer preferences.

In the light of this framework, management scholars are currently deeply committed to exploring and exploiting SMEs’ experiences in the international markets, in order to improve knowledge on this topic.

We invite contributions to this special issue, aiming to explore the dynamics of SMEs’ entrepreneurship in the globalised economy. In this regard, the goal is to collect a number of valuable papers analysing the various aspects of SMEs’ strategic organisational and technological innovations (e.g.: corporate governance, global/local networks, internationalisation, supply chain management, product or process innovation, corporate social responsibility, etc.).

Both theoretical and research papers are welcomed. Topics that can be considered for publication include, but are not limited to:

• Globalisation and SMEs' strategic and organisational changes
• Globalisation and SMEs' technological innovation
• Globalisation and SMEs' corporate governance
• Globalisation and SMEs' human resource management
• Globalisation and SMEs' service management
• Globalisation and SMEs' knowledge management
• Globalisation and SMEs' global or local networks
• Globalisation, sustainable development and SMEs
• Globalisation, corporate social responsibility and SMEs
• Globalisation, IAS/IFRS and SMEs' accountability
• Globalisation and SMEs' corporate restructuring
• Globalisation and SMEs' supply chain management
• Globalisation and SMEs' marketing management
• Globalisation and SMEs' internationalisation

Important Dates
Submission of extended abstracts (max. 500 words): 31 December 2008
Notification of acceptance of abstracts: 2 February, 2009
Submission of full papers following acceptance of abstracts: 18 April, 2009
Notification of acceptance, refusal or revision of full papers: 23 May, 2009
Submission of accepted and revisited final papers: 11 July, 2009

Call for papers: Technology-Based Entrepreneurship in Europe

Call for papers: Technology-Based Entrepreneurship in Europe

A special issue of International Journal of Technoentrepreneurship

Europe is a region of diverse countries, cultures and technologies. Due to this diversity, it is interesting to examine how technology-based entrepreneurship exists in Europe and what kind of innovations and knowledge developments are occurring in the European context. As technology-based entrepreneurship involves the creation of new ventures based on technological innovations, it is useful to examine what types of technology-based entrepreneurial ideas exist in Europe.

Examples of possible topics that can be addressed in this special journal issue include, but are not limited to:

• Environmental effects of technology firms in Europe
• Globalisation of European innovations in the technology sector
• Alliances, clusters and networks in European technology-based innovations
• Regional agglomeration of technology-based firms in Europe
• Strategy in technology-based firms in Europe
• European biotechnology
• European policy in technology-based firms
• Research and development in European technology intensive sectors

Important Date
Deadline: 30 April, 2009

Call for papers: New Technology and Culture Creative Industry Development

Call for papers: New Technology and Culture Creative Industry Development

A special issue of International Journal of Chinese Culture and Management

The 21st century is the era of digital network technology; any traditional form is considered to be out of date without digital network technology. It will change the traditional culture field by providing totally new perspectives and methods. This change, which takes place from form to content, from surface to essence, will inevitably lead cultural industries to entirely new areas. Any culture industry relying on digital and network technology is the main force of the era’s new economy. By means of advanced technology, major cultural scientific and technological achievement can be industrialised rapidly, bringing economies of scale. High-tech is the driver behind the rise of cultural industries by upgrading the means of production. In developed countries, the cultural products which take a variety of high-tech as the carrier not only create new concepts of life, but also stimulate new demands for culture.

2008 is the year that a variety of technological innovations were accelerated to develop and further integrate with cultural creativity. The 2008 Beijing Olympic Games is a contemporary example of the successful practice of creative culture based on high-tech. In order to discuss on the development of creative industries which takes cultural values as the soul, science and technology as the support, modern communication means as the symbol, software, cartoon and digital entertainment enterprises as the core of creative industries, this study takes new technologies and the development of culture creative industries as the subject. It aims at exploring their development strategies, combining them with high-tech, creating culture creative brands, building policy and a market environment for creative industry development, supporting their cluster development, establishing technology, capital, talent service platforms for their development, speeding up the digitalisation of creative means, the networking of transmission, the marketisation of productions, and the socialisation of services to promote them.

Topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Digital technology and network technology
• Innovation and management of culture industries
• Branding, marketing and strategic management
• Internationalisation
• Industry chain
• Human resource development and management
• Industrialisation, marketisation of culture production
• Capital markets
• Intellectual property
• Digital media industry
• Culture management mechanisms
• Government polices
• Case studies

Important Date
Deadline for Submissions: March 1, 2009

Call for papers: Reform and Opening 30 Years: Theories and Practices of China’s Economic Development

Call for papers: Reform and Opening 30 Years: Theories and Practices of China’s Economic Development

A special issue of International Journal of Chinese Culture and Management

According to Chinese President Hu Jintao, the decision of reform and opening is the key to the fate of contemporary China, and is also the common choice of 1.3 billion Chinese people. China has chosen the correct path of reform and opening since the late 1970s, achieving rapid development over almost 30 years, and has made great achievements in terms of various careers. In 2008, the reform and opening policy of China has entered its 30th year. In retrospect, China has been made gigantic achievements in various fields such as politics, economics, people's livelihoods, culture, sports, military, diplomacy etc., over the past 30 years.

In these 30 years, on the one hand, China has made great strides, (for instance, China’s annual economic growth rate is currently 9.8%, the annual growth rate of world is 3%; China’s economic aggregate ranked 10th in the world before reform and opening, but now it is the fourth), therefore, finding out and summarising the experiences and laws is necessary for getting the correct theoretical achievements so as to guide the practices, deepen reform and continually promote economic development. On the other hand, the shortcomings should not be evaded, and many issues still need to be resolved (e. g. the reform of the property rights regime, the layout and adjustment of state-owned economy and the joint-stock of state-own enterprises, the regulation of capital market, the social security system and the rule of law).

This special issue deals with issues revolving around the 30-year historical process of reform and opening of China's economic development. The scope embraces main achievements and basic experience, theoretical innovations and policy changes, strategic evolution of economic and cultural development, practice and reflection, future development prospects, etc.

Topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Survey of China's economic development
• Commodity economy theory
• Market economic theory
• Economic system
• Economic growth and scientific development
• Relationships among reform, development and stability
• Open-door to the outside world
• Capital market
• Regime of property rights
• Social security system
• Innovation management
• International relations
• Culture development and management
• Case studies

Important Date
Deadline for Submissions: March 1, 2009

Call for papers: China’s Cultural Development and Management: Strategic Objectives and Achievable Paths

Call for papers: China’s Cultural Development and Management: Strategic Objectives and Achievable Paths

A special issue of International Journal of Chinese Culture and Management

With the advent of the era of the global knowledge-based economy and China's entry into the WTO, the culture and information industries will become two of the new rising industries of the 21st century in China. As early as the October 2000, the concept of the cultural industry was used for the first time in an official document of the Central adopted by the Fifth Plenary Session of the Fifteenth Party Central Committee on "National Economic and Social Development: 10th Five-Year Plan", putting forward the tasks and requirements in terms of improving the policies of the cultural industry, enhancing the establishment and management of a cultural market, and pushing ahead with cultural industry development. The report of the Sixteenth National Party Congress of China clearly presents the necessity and urgency of China’s culture industry development, and claims that the development of a cultural industry is an important way to enrich social culture, meet spiritual and cultural need of people under the condition of a socialist market economy, and should improve cultural industrial policy, support China’s cultural industry development and enhance overall competitiveness of China cultural industry.

The Seventh National Party Congress of China raises cultural development to a new level. Chinese President Hu Jintao mentions in the report of the Seventh National Party Congress that the great development and great prosperity of China’s culture should be promoted to put the culture construction in a very important position from the overall situation and strategic perspective. Culture has become an important resource of national cohesion and creativity, and an important factor of comprehensive national competitiveness.

China is a country which is rich in cultural resources. China has huge potential in the development of cultural industry. Although the China’s cultural industry has developed rapidly in recent years, there is still a wide gap between China and the developed countries. The current hot topic of China’s cultural development and management is strategic objectives and achievable paths. It is worth studying and exploring how to build a cultural system, how to build a public cultural service system - including a cultural facilities system, institution security system, financial support system - how to promote the development of cultural industry - including the policies of the cultural industry, development mechanisms, structural optimisation, investment and financial policies - how to protect cultural heritage, how to enlarge international cultural exchange, etc.

This special issue brings together academics, practitioners, researchers, and aims to deliver a reference edition for all those interested in strategic objectives and achievable paths of China’s cultural development to foster conditions conducive to promote China’s cultural development and management.

Topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Culture management and mechanisms
• Cultural industry chain and extension strategy
• Cultural industry clusters and zones
• Human resource management and training
• Construction of rural culture
• Digital technology and web technology
• Branding, marketing and strategic management
• Cultural tourism and creativity
• Intellectual property, trademark registration
• Internationalisation of China's cultural industry
• Protection of cultural heritage
• Government policies
• Case study

Important Date
Deadline for Submissions: March 1, 2009

Call for papers: Learning Theories and Practices: the Perspective of Individual, Organisation, Region and Society

Call for papers: Learning Theories and Practices: the Perspective of Individual, Organisation, Region and Society

A special issue of International Journal of Learning and Intellectual Capital

The learning organisation has become a popular concept since it was described by Peter Senge in 1990. Learning organisations should train staff to be learning individuals. The issues which need to be explored include how to be a learning individual, how to learn consciously, and how to overcome the obstacles to self-motivated learning and career learning.

OECD (2001) claims that the theory of the learning region not only emphasises individual learning, but also stresses organisational learning. The most effective innovations arise from organisational internal environments in which learning is via intensive inter-organisational information exchange, while at the same time there exist steady and high mutual trust relationships among a variety of organisations. The successful communication networks among organisations are based on the efficient information exchange and sufficient social interaction; therefore, the organisation must be developed into learning organisation. The establishment of regional learning mechanisms and systems is the critical point in global competition, learning regions provide a series of related infrastructures which are propitious in the diffusion of knowledge, ideas and learning, and then further become major learning and innovation bases.

A learning society is a theoretical description for the development character of modern society, and learning is becoming the urgent need for individuals, organisations and society in the information society. Learning society demands the socialisation and generalisation of learning behaviour, including learning citizens, learning organisations, the learning city, learning governments. It is worth for us to explore how to create the learning society, strengthening national information networks, improving the technological conditions for knowledge diffusion, creating a cultural atmosphere for encouraging learning and promoting innovation, and cultivating the concepts and mechanisms for appreciating knowledge and talents.

The goal of the special issue is to publish the most recent results in learning theories and practices. Researchers and practitioners working in this area are expected to take this opportunity to discuss and express their views on the current trends, challenges, and applications in terms of learning individual, learning organisation, learning region and learning society.

Topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• The earning individual, learning organisation, learning region, learning society
• Social networks
• Effective learning
• Competence building
• Performance measures
• Learning tools
• Collective learning
• E-learning
• Intellectual capital (human capital, relational capital, social capital and organisational capital)
• Learning environment establishment
• Knowledge management, knowledge spillover, knowledge diffusion
• Government policies
• Case studies and other related topics

Important Date
Deadline for Submissions: March 1, 2009

Call for papers: Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs): Growth and Innovation

Call for papers: Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs): Growth and Innovation

A special issue of International Journal of Learning and Intellectual Capital

With economic globalisation having gradually developed in depth, science and technology has become the leading force for economic and social development, turning into the driving force to support and lead the development of the economy and the progress of human civilization. Impelled by science and technology, human beings are experiencing transformation from the industrial society to the knowledge society, with science and technology continuing to create new economic growth points, playing an increasingly important role in terms of solving a series of important issues for the sustainable development of mankind. Facing the current overall development trends of science and technology, many developed countries and newly industrialised countries have made similar strategic choices, setting scientific and technological innovation as a national strategy, keeping on investing in science and technology, and deploying and developing strategic technology and industry, to achieve continuous improvement in the competitiveness of the country.

The development of the world economy of past 30 years shows that SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises), especially technology-based SMEs, are the important force in technology innovation systems, the most active and most efficient part of national innovation systems, and the source of technological innovation and the direct carrier of the technological achievement transfer. According to statistical data, about 60% of the major innovations are originated from SMEs in the 20th century, especially from technology-based SMEs, more than 80% of American new technologies are turned into industrial productions by SMEs. Practice has proved that some international well-known large companies, such as Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Dell, etc., grow from small enterprises. Therefore, SMEs’ innovation activities should be paid great attention, and strong policies should be implemented to support the innovation and development of SMEs.

In the face of fierce competition, a critical issue has become how SMEs are able to withstand pressures from a large number of multinational enterprises and large domestic enterprises, and win more space for growth and development, an issue that entrepreneurs pay close attention to. The important support for continued growth of SMEs is continued innovation, particularly technological innovation. Therefore, the estimation of growth type, characteristics and paths are of special significance for SMEs to achieve sustained growth by way of technological innovation.

We invite contributions to this special issue that aims to discuss on SMEs’ growth and innovation, including intellectual capital management, improvement of enterprise capabilities, industry-academia cooperation, strategic management, establishment of growth and development environment, financial policies, government governance, case studies, etc.

Topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Survey of SMEs' growth
• Intellectual capital management, organisational learning, knowledge management
• Human resource training and management
• Environment establishment for SMEs' growth and development
• Informatisation of SMEs
• Venture capital
• Strategic management
• Industry-academia cooperation
• Core technology and competence management
• Science and technology intermediary service
• Intellectual property protection
• Corporate culture
• Globalisation of SMEs
• Entrepreneurial ability
• Government governance
• Support of policies
• Case studies

Important Date
Deadline for Submissions: March 1, 2009

Call for papers: Innovative City and Regional Innovation System

Call for papers: Innovative City and Regional Innovation System

A special issue of International Journal of Learning and Intellectual Capital

The regional development of society and the economy are closely related with innovative capacities. Choosing a suitable development model can give full play to regional advantages, integrate scientific and technological resources, and continually improve regional innovative capacities. It is an important issue that finds the rules and experiences of establishing and developing innovative city based on economic theory, innovative theory and intellectual capital management theory, puts forward the framework of establishing innovative city according to the unique characteristics of urban development, researches on structural and systemic characteristics of the “innovative city”, including innovative investment systems, innovative service systems, essential security systems, innovative management systems, innovative policy systems. Moreover, the design principles of the innovative city’s goal system and evaluation system of achievement should be studied.

Regional Innovation Systems (RIS) is an emerging concept, and is a new field of world economy and geography. Many scholars pay much attention to the theoretical study of RIS, and score certain achievements in terms of the basic concept, content, formation mechanism and function of RIS. RIS focuses on a specific region, and its cross-organisational knowledge innovation mainly gets through the share of common tacit knowledge and social capital links, the knowledge transfer factor of RIS is geographical and cultural adjacency and knowledge spillover. Study of RIS can help with the establishment of the innovative city.

Government governance plays a critical role in the establishment of RIS and the innovative city. The emphasis and model of government governance still need further exploration. Meanwhile, other issues that need further study are the mechanisms of innovation, business and creativity, information technology and Internet platform, infrastructure environment construction and investment, improvement of the education system and personnel training policies for social needs of the innovative society, development countermeasures and suggestions of knowledge-intensive service industries, improvement of living environment and establishment of livable city.

In this special issue, we invite authors to submit papers addressing topics on the factors, mechanisms and modelling of the innovative city, RIS, government governance and policies, innovation environment, regional innovative capacities and competitiveness, etc. We strongly encourage results that focus on regional innovation theories and applications.

Topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Survey of the innovative city
• RIS
• Intellectual capital management, knowledge management
• Knowledge spillover, technology diffusion
• Learning region
• Regional innovative capacities, regional competitiveness
• Knowledge-intensive service industries
• Government governance and policies
• Innovation environment and infrastructure
• Livable city
• Self-renovation capabilities
• Innovative city's goal system and achievement evaluation system
• Human resource training and management
• Education innovation
• Industry-academia cooperation
• City culture
• Case studies

Important Date
Deadline for Submissions: March 1, 2009

Special issue: Advances of automotive NVH technology in China and South-East Asia

International Journal of Vehicle Noise and Vibration 4(3) 2008

• Elastic sound absorption theory of fibrous material
• Investigation on axial vibration of high-speed vehicle engine crankshaft based on Rayleigh differential method
• Acoustic optimisation design for suspension characteristics based on the method of dynamic subsystem modification
• Prediction of noise from track systems
• Vibrations and instability of front-end accessory drive belt system

Special issue: e-Participation challenges and opportunities

International Journal of Electronic Business 6(6) 2008

• A survey of e-participation research projects in the European Union
• Designing the e-participation artefact
• ACM: a new index to measure the digital divide
• A participatory architecture for taxation and budgeting
• Alternative frames of participation: the east-timor newsgroup
• An empirical study of e-participation in Social Movement Organisations

Special issue: Virtual design of industrial systems with manufacturing and assembling errors

International Journal of Computer Applications in Technology 33(1) 2008

• Analysis of product quality with consideration of influence of manufacturing errors in discrete-part machining systems
• Statistical variation analysis of multi-station compliant assemblies based on sensitivity matrix
• Manual tool representation and positioning based on geometric reasoning in IVAE
• Dimensional and geometrical tolerance synthesis based on constrained optimisation: an industrial case
• Numerical simulation of a model of vibrations with joint clearance
• Enhanced 3D object snap for CAD modelling on large stereo displays
• Virtual manufacturing of gears with chip formation
• Modelling manufacturing errors in machining of thermoplastics

Special issue: Solid waste management: Part Two

International Journal of Environment and Waste Management 2(6) 2008

• Column studies aiming at identification of suitable filter materials for pollutant removal from landfill leachate
• The landfill leachate evapotranspiration in soil–plant system with reed Phragmites australis
• Recovery of nickel from spent catalyst by single- and multi-stage leaching process
• Pyrolysis properties of municipal sewage sludge with ZnCl2 activation under the N2 atmosphere
• Characterisation of humic acid maturation by fluorescence spectroscopy and thermal analysis during composting of olive mill waste
• Compost production from Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) employing bioinoculants
• Does substrate quality affect earthworm growth and reproduction patterns in vermicomposting systems? A study using three popular composting earthworms
• Biodegradation of water hyacinth, sugarcane bagasse and rice husk through vermicomposting
• Evaluating the concentrations of partitioned heavy metals in fly ash from a medium-sized (32 MW) municipal district heating plant with respect to the new Finnish limit values
• Incorporation of petroleum waste in clay ceramics and its characterisation
• Pneumatic powder injection technique as a tool for waste utilisation
• Land application of Water Treatment Residuals: effect on wheat yield and the availability of phosphorus and aluminium

Special Issue: Air pollution

International Journal of Environment and Pollution 36(1/2/3) 2008

• Variability of PM10 concentrations dependent on meteorological conditions
• Two impact related air quality indices as tools to assess the daily and long-term air pollution
• Statistical analysis of urban air-pollution data in the Athens basin area, Greece
• Modelling photochemical air pollutant formation in Hungary using an adaptive grid technique
• Connection between urban heat island and sky view factor approximated by a software tool on a 3D urban database
• Comparison of objective air-mass types and the Peczely weather types and their ability to classify levels of air pollutants in Szeged, Hungary
• Frequency distribution of particulate matter (PM10) in urban environments
• Modelling long-term averages of local ambient air pollution in Oslo, Norway: evaluation of nitrogen dioxide, PM10 and PM2.5
• Statistical characteristics of ozone and PM10 levels in a medium-sized Mediterranean city
• Synergetic use of TERRA/MODIS imagery and meteorological data for studying aerosol dust events in Cyprus
• A neural network implemented microcontroller system for quantitative classification of hazardous organic gases in the ambient air
• Elemental composition of airborne aerosols at a traffic site and a suburban site in Hong Kong
• Effect of the soil wetness state on the stomatal ozone fluxes over Hungary
• Relation of earth probe TOMS/AI data and ground level measured atmospheric aerosols over Marmara region
• Applied comprehensive NO2 and particulate matter dispersion modelling for Switzerland
• The selective catalytic reduction of NO with propane over Ni loaded on H-USY in the presence of excess oxygen
• Characterisation of ambient benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and m-, p- and o-xylene in an urban traffic area in Bangkok, Thailand
• Evaluation of SO2 dry deposition over a cassava plantation in Rayong, Thailand
• Plume dispersion in the wake of a rectangular model building
• Sources of particulate matter: emission profile of biomass burning
• The impact of landfills on the air quality of towns: a simple heuristic model for the city of Palermo
• Air quality indexing
• Daily variation of traffic emissions in Athens, Greece

Call for papers: Grid Computing

Call for papers: Grid Computing

A special issue of International Journal of Communication Networks and Distributed Systems

Service-oriented computing is a popular design methodology for large scale business computing systems. Grid computing enables the sharing of distributed computing and data resources such as processing, networking and storage capacity to create a cohesive resource environment for executing distributed applications in service-oriented computing. Grid computing also represents a more business-oriented orchestration of pretty homogeneous and powerful distributed computing resources to optimise the execution of time consuming process. Grid computing has received a significant and sustained research interest in terms of designing and deploying large scale and high performance computational in e-science and businesses.

This special issue aims to foster state-of-the-art research in the area of grid computing and is expected to focus on all aspects of grid technologies and to present novel results and solutions to solve various problems and challenges in grid platforms. The special issue will additionally select high quality papers from the First International workshop on Grid Computing (GridCom-2009) to be held in Morocco, May 2009

Authors are solicited to contribute to this special issue by submitting articles that illustrate research results, projects, survey works and industrial experiences that describe significant advances in the areas which include, but are not limited to:

• Applications, including e-science and e-business applications
• Architectures and fabrics
• Distributed and large-scale data access and management
• Core grid infrastructure
• Peer to peer protocols in grid computing
• Network support for grid computing
• Monitoring, management and organization tools
• Networking and security
• Performance measurement and modelling
• Metadata, ontology, and provenance
• Middleware and toolkits for grid computing
• Computing and programming models
• Programming tools and environments
• Distributed problem solving
• Creation and management of virtual enterprises and organiSations
• Information services
• Resource management, scheduling, and runtime environments
• Scientific, industrial and social implications
• QoS and SLA negotiation
• Grid economy and business models
• Autonomic and utility computing on global grids
• Cluster and grid integration issues
• Web services, semantic grid and web 2.0
• Grid related applications

Important Dates
Deadline for Submission: 10 June, 2009
Acceptance notification: 25 July 2009
Camera ready papers due: 10 September, 2009

Special issue: Environmental applications of nonthermal plasma technology

International Journal of Environment and Waste Management 2(4/5) 2008

• Decolourisation of dye solution using an electrical discharge with TiO2 suspension
• Influence of streamer-to-glow transition mode on the NO removal by an inductive energy storage type pulse power generator
• Nonthermal plasma reactors and plasma chemistry
• Suppression of particle deposition onto downstream wall in an AC Electrostatic Precipitator with neutralisation
• Characteristics of rotating arc for CF4 removal
• Robust corona-electrostatic separation method for solid waste recycling
• Hybrid gas-liquid electrical discharge for degradation of organic pollutants in aqueous solution
• Characteristics of atomic oxygen produced by a pulsed streamer corona discharge
• Non-Thermal Plasma degradation of wastewater in presence of titanium oxide by gliding arc discharge
• Mechanisms for formation of organic and inorganic by-products and their control in nonthermal plasma chemical processing of VOCs
• Confined plasma gliding arc discharges

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Call for papers: Innovation Management and Competence Leverage

Call for papers: Innovation Management and Competence Leverage

A special issue of International Journal of Learning and Intellectual Capital

For a long time, technology innovation, rather than other elements of innovation, has been seen as the primary force of economic development and competence leverage for enterprises. The suggestion that the knowledge-based economy, its wide distribution and fast growth will have much influence on business innovation model has not been seriously studied until the beginning of this century. Furthermore, with the rapid development of IT technology, huge changes in market demand and customisation, which call for corresponding innovation in business models, will emerge.

Drawing on the further development of innovation democratisation, total innovation and open innovation, this special issue will explore the implications of innovation management and competence leverage research. It aims to deliver a reference edition for all those interested in innovation management and competence leverage and we invite contributions from academics, practitioners and researchers.

Topics include, but are not limited to:

• Total innovation management and competence
• Open innovation and networking
• Indigenous innovation capability
• Building innovative countries/firms
• Managing innovation and competence in small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs)
• Core technology and competence
• Entrepreneurship, competence, and innovation
• Innovation learning and dynamic capability
• Strategic path for competence leverage
• Innovation networking and capacity building
• Learning mechanisms in firm innovation process

Important Dates
Submission of manuscripts: 15 March, 2009