Call for papers: Complex Adaptive Systems in Business

A special issue of International Journal of Business and Systems Research

Complex adaptive systems (CAS) have been defined as systems that involve the interactions of numerous individual agents or elements that change and learn from experience and can show emergent and adaptive properties not exhibited by the individual agents. CAS has been used to identify the evolutionary processes of anthills, bird flocking, and the economy, along with numerous other types of dynamic systems. Organizational management studies have embraced the study of CAS as a means of explaining how firms adapt, learn, and evolve (Organization Science May/June 1999; Management Science, July 2007). Although organization scientists have studied complex organizations for many years, a developing set of conceptual and computational tools makes possible new approaches to modelling nonlinear interactions within and between organizations. Network dynamics, socio-economics, agent-based computational economics, and other multi-agent modelling approaches have allowed management researchers to expand into unexplored areas in business applications.

We welcome interdisciplinary discourses that serve to enhance our understanding of the business environments, recognizing that the marketplace which organizations operate are living dynamic systems that is not always predictable. Studies using system dynamics modelling, agent-based modelling or other dynamic methodologies are encouraged. Preference will be given to high quality papers that have a firm grounding in scientific and mathematical methods, instead of primarily application-based papers. Because a substantial gap continues to exist between theory and practice, theoretical papers that also include a real-world application are very useful. Of additional interest are papers developing benchmarks and metrics that will provide guidance for future research.

We encourage submission of high-quality papers that take a systems approach to perplexing business issues. Potential topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Knowledge transfer and learning in the organization
• Network studies from an organizational perspective, i.e. use in technology transfer, diffusion of innovations, wom impact, etc.
• Co-opetition and other cooperation strategies
• Innovation in the dynamic organization
• Global evolution of consumer markets
• Artificial economic societies
• Supply chain dynamics
• Manufacturing for green consumerism
• Role of social networks in the organization
• Networks in the organization (e.g., board of directors, cross-functional teams, etc.)
• Co-evolution of organization systems (e.g., product, manufacturing, supply chain)
• Adoption/diffusion of innovations, particularly across organizational boundaries
• Artificial markets
• Team effectiveness
• Information management
• Interactive strategy formation
• Decision making in the organization
• System efficieincies
• Cooperation within the organization and across boundaries
• Any multi-agent business issue will be considered

Important Dates
Full paper deadline: 1 May, 2010
Notification of acceptance and review results : 1 September, 2010
Revised submission deadline: 1 November, 2010
Notification of acceptance: 1 December, 2010
Camera-ready version deadline: 1 January, 2011

Call for papers: Planning, Scheduling and Optimisation in Manufacturing and Services Enterprise

A special issue of International Journal of Enterprise Network Management

Companies must constantly contend with rapidly changing business conditions. Mergers and acquisitions, accelerated new product introductions, changing customer bases, offshore manufacturing and fluctuating fuel costs are among the many challenges they face.

Globalisation trends have significantly increased the scale and complexity of the modern enterprise. The enterprise has been transformed into a global network consisting of multiple business units and functions. The enterprise is exposed to internal and external uncertainties. Examples of internal uncertainties include success prospects of research and development projects due to technological risks; production upsets such as batch failures and plant shutdowns. External uncertainties include pricing related uncertainties for raw materials and products, exchange rate fluctuations, market size and demand uncertainties due to competition and macro-economic factors.

Planning, scheduling and optimisation are forms of decision-making that play an important role in most manufacturing and services industries to resolve the business uncertainty. The planning, scheduling and optimisation functions in a company typically use analytical techniques and heuristic methods to allocate its limited resources to the activities that have to be done in order to manage the uncertainty.

Optimisation challenges in the enterprise begin to answer the question of how to bridge the gap from mathematical modelling and optimisation techniques to practical solutions of enterprise operations. Mathematically distinct from classical supply chain management, this burgeoning research area has proven to be useful and applicable to a wide variety of industries; for example, pharmaceutical, chemical, transportation, and shipping, to name but a few. There is a need for high quality research which may serve as a "one-stop shop" to learn about various industrial problems and logistics challenges, and solution techniques using recent advances in computational optimisation.

This special issue plans to cover areas in planning, scheduling and optimisation in manufacturing and services and systems development and implementation. It is intended for practitioners from industry who use techniques from a wide range of fields: mathematical programming, supply chain and logistics management, and process systems and operations engineering.

Other streams of interest will be practical applications in the form of quantitative and qualitative case studies based on planning, scheduling and optimisation. Finally, papers must also have real value relevance, be primarily focused on real time implementation and the target audience who are researchers, managers, practitioners and consultants.

Contributors are encouraged to submit original manuscripts that have practical relevance, case studies, and focus on, but are not limited to, the following areas related to planning, scheduling and optimisation in manufacturing and service industries:

• Manufacturing models for planning and scheduling
• Service models for planning and scheduling
• Project planning and scheduling
• Machine scheduling and job shop scheduling
• Scheduling of flexible assembly systems
• Economic lot scheduling
• Planning, scheduling and optimisation in supply chains
• Interval scheduling, reservations, and timetabling
• Planning, scheduling and optimisation in sports and entertainment
• Planning, scheduling, optimisation, and timetabling in transportation
• Planning, scheduling and optimisation in healthcare
• workforce scheduling
• Systems design and implementation for planning and scheduling
• Advanced concepts in systems design for planning and scheduling
• Mathematical programming formulations for planning and scheduling
• Exact optimisation methods for planning and scheduling
• Heuristic methods for planning and scheduling
• Constraint programming methods for planning and scheduling
• Selected scheduling systems
• Modelling and managing uncertainty in process planning and scheduling

Important Dates
Manuscript submission: 15 November 2009
Notification of initial decision: 30 December 2010
Submission of revised manuscript: 1 February 2010
Notification of final acceptance: 15 March 2010
Submission of final manuscript: 15 April 2010

Call for papers: Cyber Harassment Impacts on Corporations and Corporate Valuation

A special issue of International Journal of Management and Decision Making

The ability to spread information (and misinformation) over the Internet in blogs and social media websites and has become accompanied by the growing pattern of cyber harassment against corporations. In many cases, harassment may arise from the process of critical discourse or difference of opinion, but increasingly such harassment has a more malevolent motive. In this case that attack is deliberately contrived to harm or extort from the legitimate financial interests of companies, and may include as its weapons defamation, tort interference, or other illegality that can damage corporate valuation. Because these attacks take place over the Internet, recourse through civil litigation may be complicated and expensive, or made difficult in pursuing attackers from abroad or circuitous routes. This leaves the victim in a vulnerable position. As with other types of Internet attacks, the attacker relies on this vulnerability to exploit for personal gain.

The aims of this special issue are to examine the motives of those who harass corporations, to identify the means used by cyber harassment attackers, and peer into the decision making processes within corporations on how to address the attacks, such as whether to ignore (extinguish) them, make attempts to defend against them (punish), or try to placate the attacker (reward) to curry favour. The objectives of the special issue are to:

• identify the range of motives for cyber harassment attacks,
• provide insights into how corporations perceive cyber harassment attacks,
• assess the financial impacts to corporations from these attacks, and
• determine the decision making processes used to combat them

The scope of this special issue examination includes studies on business economic impacts from cyber harassments, decision strategies, and comparative analyses with other forms of cyber attacks, such as cyber bullying and attacks against computer and information systems. The special issue will provide a global perspective from theoretical and applied research and case studies that are academically rigorous.

Suitable topics include but are not limited to:

• Development and validation of theory and models of cyber harassment, motives, factors and outcomes.
• Economic impacts on business from cyber harassment.
• Decision strategies and processes to respond to cyber harassment.
• Legal and legislative aspects related to cyber harassment.
• Effects of social media and other new technology on social or behavioural evolution in cyber harassment.
• Cyber harassment and implications for management and managerial decision processes.

Important Dates
Full paper deadline: 15 July, 2010
Notification of status & acceptance of paper: 15 November, 2010
Final version of paper: 15 January, 2011

Special issue: Computational Intelligence Part 1

International Journal of Modelling, Identification and Control 8(2) 2009

Papers from the International Conference on Modelling, Identification and Control (ICMIC 2008) held in Shanghai, China, 28 June - 2 July 2008

• A modified neural network based predictive control for non-linear systems
• Robust non-linear feedback control for BTT missile with NN-based uncertainty estimation
• RBF neural network-based sliding mode control for a ballistic missile
• Decoupling control of bearingless permanent magnet-type synchronous motor using artificial neural networks-based inverse system method
• Control of fuzzy discrete event systems and its application to air conditioning system
• Exponential stability of cellular neural networks with time-varying delay
• Optimal linear combination of neural networks to model thermally induced error of machine tools
• Application of neural networks in modelling of the transmission hydraulic actuator
• Fuzzy SVM-based chronic fatigue syndrome evaluation embedded in intelligent garment
• Two-stage gene selection for support vector machine classification of microarray data

See also International Journal of Modelling, Identification and Control 7(1) 2009 for other papers from the conference.

Special issue: Advances in market entry mode theory development

International Journal of Trade and Global Markets 2(3/4) 2009

• 'Scatter-gun' or 'Follow-the-leader' behaviour: international strategies of the high-tech SMEs
• The empirical link between entry mode selection and barriers to internationalisation
• Foreign market entry mode choice of Australian firms
• Discretion and internationalisation: impact of environmental determinants of managerial discretion and host country experience on entry mode choice
• Internationalising into an unfriendly environment: designing a new framework for Western Small and Medium Sized Enterprises
• A comparison of market entry strategies adopted by Information and Communication Technology (ICT) firms from major and emerging software exporting nations
• Balancing intermediated relationships in emerging country markets
• Determinants of foreign market entry mode decision: an exploratory study of business organisations in Australia

Special issue: IFIP International Conference on Wireless and Optical Communications Networks 2009

International Journal of Ultra Wideband Communications and Systems 1(2) 2009

• Performance analysis of an optimal resource allocation method for the water-filled channel of the OFDMA cellular network to support multimedia traffic
• Differential decorrelator: a new approach for designing CDMA linear detector
• ADIP: an improved authenticated dynamic IP configuration scheme for mobile ad hoc networks
• On the applications of the space time premise when exploiting location diversity of multiple antenna sites
• A real-time and energy-efficient MAC protocol for wireless sensor networks
• Non-linearity effects and predistortion in optical OFDM wireless transmission using LEDs
• Multiuser channel estimation for closely spaced multipath CDMA signals using the unscented Kalman filter

Newly announced journal: International Journal of Modelling in Operations Management

To begin publication in 2010, International Journal of Modelling in Operations Management will cover operations management knowledge in areas including computer science, management, engineering, information technology, economics, marketing and operations research. In services, the journal will focus on supply chain management, human resource management, information technologies, finance and TQM, and how TQM is applied to the management of technologies and innovations in businesses.

Special issue: The issues and challenges of e-banking application and development in developing and under-developed nations

International Journal of Electronic Finance 3(4) 2009

• Evaluating electronic banking systems in developing nations through Analytic Hierarchy Process model: a case study
• Exploring the security of e-banking systems: questions of theft, fraud, jurisdiction and the shifting sands of time
• A survey of e-banking performance in Thailand
• Data classification process for security and privacy based on a fuzzy logic classifier
• A data model for processing financial market and news data

First issue: International Journal of Pluralism and Economics Education

Pluralism is rapidly gaining currency among economists, with its key elements including respect for diversity and alternative views, toleration, willingness to learn, curiosity and friendliness – all necessary to enable students to forge solutions to today’s complex problems. International Journal of Pluralism and Economics Education will facilitate communication in the development of pluralism and its implementation into the classroom.

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

First issue: International Journal of Financial Markets and Derivatives

Addressing the advancement of contemporary research in the field of financial markets and derivatives International Journal of Financial Markets and Derivatives is an internationally competitive, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to serve as the primary outlet for theoretical and empirical research in all areas of international markets and derivatives.

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

First issue: International Journal of Business Continuity and Risk Management

With particular emphasis on decision making using a multidisciplinary approach International Journal of Business Continuity and Risk Management provides a professional and scholarly forum in the essential field of business continuity and risk management. Organisational resiliency through risk assessment, contingency planning, systems security, crisis and disaster management, and recovery planning, as well as public policy regarding infrastructure and security, are integrated in the journal’s coverage.

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

First issue: International Journal of Rapid Manufacturing

The Rapid Response to Manufacturing (RRM) environment is developed through integrating technologies such as feature-based CAD modelling, knowledge-based engineering for integrated product and process design and rapid manufacturing concepts. International Journal of Rapid Manufacturing publishes research results and application descriptions that deals with the advancement of RRM, especially engineering design and rapid manufacturing in an integrated form.

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

First issue: International Journal of Experimental Design and Process Optimisation

With a core interest in statistical modelling and optimisation for process improvement International Journal of Experimental Design and Process Optimisation provides an international forum for work describing the latest research and innovative applications of a broad coverage of applied experimental statistics and experimental design for understanding and enhancing processes or systems in the physical, chemical, engineering sciences, and cross-disciplinary problems, including quality, manufacturing, healthcare, human factors, pharmaceuticals, and service systems.

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

First issue: International Journal of Education Economics and Development

Publishing papers that promote the advancement of education economics, encompassing all domains of costs and finance International Journal of Education Economics and Development contributes to the theory, practice and research in education economics applicable to primary, secondary, collegiate and higher education.

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

Newly announced journal: International Journal of Business Competition and Growth

To begin publication in 2010, International Journal of Business Competition and Growth will aid practitioners in managing global competition in products and services through papers in the areas of competitiveness and business leadership research, highlighting systems thinking and business modelling issues. It will cover contemporary marketing practices with reference to the competitive strategies, core competencies, tactical approaches, behavioural dynamics of markets, decision metrics and sustainability of firms.

Newly announced journal: International Journal of Multimedia Intelligence and Security

Beginning publication in 2010 International Journal of Multimedia Intelligence and Security will integrate the disciplines of intelligent computing, information security, biometrics, multimedia processing, communication and their applications.

Call for papers: Computational Methods for Financial Engineering

A special issue of International Journal of Financial Markets and Derivatives

In recent years, computational methods and techniques have become an important tool for the support of financial decisions. New statistical procedures, mathematical models, numerical algorithms and heuristics are continuously developed and used by an increasing number of firms, traders and financial risk managers across various industries.

This special issue covers the rapidly growing and diversifying field of financial engineering; it is an attempt to explore and bring together practical, state-of-the-art applications of computational techniques in financial problems, including risk analysis, asset pricing and portfolio management. Authors are invited to submit high-quality papers describing original, unpublished research in related scientific areas. All contributions should have an engineering, problem-solving approach detailing how mathematical and computational techniques can effectively overcome practical difficulties often encountered in real-life applications. In this way, this issue bridges the gap between theory and practice in financial engineering and will be of interest to both researchers and practitioners.

Topics of interest include, but not limited to:

• Econometric and computational models for risk and correlation analysis
• Asset pricing and factor models
• Computational techniques for complex portfolio optimisation problems
• Derivatives valuation techniques
• Credit risk and credit rating
• Numerical and statistical approximation of stochastic differential equations with applications in finance
• Automated trading systems
• Statistical arbitrage
• Financial applications of computational intelligent (neural, fuzzy or evolutionary) methods

Important Date
Deadline for manuscript submission: 15 January, 2010

Call for papers: Voluntary International Income Transfers: the Determinants and Impact of Development Aid and Migrant Remittances

A special issue of International Journal of Public Policy

Foreign aid and migrant remittances are voluntary provisions of funds to many developing countries. They provide a means of easing liquidity constraints on the recipient at both micro and macro levels. However, both aid and remittances are motivated not just by altruism, but also self-interest. They may also be classified as arrangements that are mutually beneficial to both the donor and the recipient. The magnitude of these international income transfers is significant, amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars globally each year.

Studying the effects and determinants of these flows are important both on their own and together. Clearly, remittances and aid may interact on several fronts, all of which should be important to policy makers. For example, if remittances provide insurance against negative income shocks, then they may mitigate the impact of reductions in transfers of aid. Conjointly, if remittances fall as aid increases, then the beneficial impact of aid may not be as pronounced.

This special issue will publish papers discussing topics related to foreign aid, migrant remittances, and the possible interaction between the two.

[For additional information, please see the call for papers under “Notes” in the Winter (February) 2010 issue of Journal of Economic Perspectives.]

Suitable topics include but are not limited to:

• Foreign aid flows to developing countries
• Migrant remittances to poor countries
• The issues of altruism, self interest, and mutually beneficial arrangements
• The determinants and efficacy of aid flows
• The determinants and impact of migrant remittances on the destination country
• Interaction between foreign aid and remittances, through the questions of substitution, complementarity, allocation, or development
• Public policy towards foreign assistance and remittances

Important Dates
Submission of papers by: 1 May, 2010
Editorial decision based on referees' reports by: 1 July, 2010
Final drafts of revised (or accepted) papers by: 1 September, 2010

Newly announced journal: International Journal of Information Technology, Communications and Convergence

Beginning publication in 2010, International Journal of Information Technology, Communications and Convergence will address the various theories and practical applications of future generation information technology (FGIT), which involves communications and convergence.

Special issue: Performance and the city in the ICT age

International Journal of Arts and Technology 2(3) 2009

• Mediaturgy: a conversation with Marianne Weems
• Strategies of subversion: the power of live performance within the walls of a Renaissance city
• Walking Los Angeles: from documentation to performance
• Santa Monica's Third Street Promenade as near-Utopia

Additional paper

• Human-computer-intuition? Exploring the cognitive basis for intuition in embodied interaction

Special issue: Issues and challenges in wireless communications and networks

International Journal of Wireless and Mobile Computing 3(3) 2009

Papers from the 20th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications (AINA 2006), held in Vienna, Austria, 18-20 April 2006

• Hierarchical, multi-spanning architecture for managed wireless networks
• An on-demand key establishment protocol for MANETs
• Prevention of management frame attacks on 802.11 WLANs
• ARM: anonymous routing protocol for mobile ad hoc networks
• AODV-based multipath routing protocol with preferential path selection probabilities
• Multi-agent-based clustering approach to wireless sensor networks
• Using buffer management in 3G radio bearers to enhance end-to-end TCP performance
• Multi-hop mesh networking for UWB WPANs with QoS support
• Performance modelling of IEEE 802.11 DCF using equilibrium point analysis

Submitted Paper

• Optimising server performance for location-aware client applications in mobile commerce: the repository manager's formula

Special issue: Stochastic systems and applications

International Journal of Modelling, Identification and Control 8(1) 2009

• Using proportional and different controller to control chaos in non-autonomous mechanical system
• Approach of context-aware computing with uncertainty for ubiquitous active service
• Adaptive sliding mode observer for non-linear stochastic systems with uncertainties
• Guaranteed cost control with accommodation of position and rate limits in the second-order actuators
• A brief summary on the control recovery of time-varying K-G systems
• Two-class M/G/1 queue under workload control
• The CVaR constrained stochastic programming ALM model for defined benefit pension funds
• Study on anti-synchronisation between spatiotemporal chaos system and temporal chaos system
• Disturbance detection using an improved hit-or-miss transform
• Stochastic system identification of unknown flexible cantilever beam under turbulent flow
• The modelling and road simulation test of a hydraulic engine mount
• Simulation research on braking performance of hydrodynamic torque converter and retarder based on automatic shifting rules

Call for papers: Design and Control of Unmanned Ground Vehicles

A special issue of International Journal of Vehicle Autonomous Systems

Focused on autonomous unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) systems, this special issue aims to present a unique source with a theme of autonomy research associated with military commissions, homeland security and scientific explorations. The objective of the special issue is to promote emerging technologies, up-to-date achievements and pioneer techniques in the sector of design and control of intelligent robotic platforms with superior mobility and functionality.

Topics of interest including but not confined to the following technical areas:

• Autonomous operating systems for mobile robotic platforms
• Sensor-based situation awareness and dynamic route planning algorithms
• Modelling and control of UGV systems in virtual environment
• Environmental impacts on the performance of UGV systems
• Modelling and simulation of UGV-terrain interactions
• Mobility and survivability of UGV over certain/uncertain terrains
• Dynamic analysis and performance evaluation of UGV systems
• Steering control and stability analysis of UGV systems
• UGV subsystems, including powertrain, chassis, mechatronics, etc.
• Dynamic communication/interaction between UGV subsystems
• UGV system state estimation and configuration optimization
• Tools/methodologies for integrating, testing and prototyping UGV systems

Important Dates
Submission of full paper before: 15 February, 2010
Completion of first review (Notification of Acceptance): 15 June, 2010
Submission of revised paper: 15 August, 2010
Completion of final review: 15 September, 2010
Final paper due: 15 October, 2010

Special issue: Strategic human resource management with European perspectives

European Journal of International Management 3(4) 2009

• Will you cite me? The emerging strategy of academic publishing
• Sustainability and human resource management: reasoning and applications on corporate websites
• What companies pay for: the strategic role of employee competencies
• Departmental status in light of a growing proportion of female staff: the case of human resource management
• Human capital and structural position in knowledge networks as determinants when classifying employee groups for strategic human resource management purposes
• Public sector human resource management reform across countries: from performance appraisal to performance steering?

Call for papers: Computational Intelligence in Biomedical Informatics

Special issues of
International Journal of Computational Biology and Drug Design,
International Journal of Functional Informatics and Personalised Medicine

Advances in information technology techniques have facilitated, accelerated, and promoted the research on molecular biology and medicine in the past few decades. To discover more new knowledge in biomedical areas and to improve the quality of healthcare and medicine, the techniques and applications of artificial intelligence, machine learning, data mining, and high performance computing are extremely useful. This special issue aims to attract state-of-the-art solutions and novel attempts in the area of computational intelligence in biomedical informatics.

Please note that although this announcement is being sent to the research community at large, authors who have published papers in IIBM 2010 will have a higher priority. (IIBM 2010 is the International Workshop on Intelligent Informatics in Biology and Medicine , to be held February, 15-18, 2010, Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski Cracow College Krakow, Poland.)

Papers will be published in either the International Journal of Computational Biology and Drug Design or the International Journal of Functional Informatics and Personalised Medicine.

Papers to be included in these special issues should be focused on computational intelligence in one or more of the following subjects (n.b. the list is indicative rather than exhaustive):

• Gene expression analysis
• Gene identification and annotation
• Protein/RNA structure prediction
• RNAi and microRNA analysis
• Sequence and structural motifs
• Microarray analysis
• Modelling of biochemical pathways
• Drug design
• Genomics and proteomics
• Systems biology
• Medical signal/image processing
• Computer assisted surgery
• Medical/healthcare informatics
• Biomedical text mining and information extraction

Important Dates
Submission: 1 June 2010
Notification: 25 July 2010
Camera ready papers: 20 August 2010

Call for papers: Laws, Regulation and New Product Development – the Role of the Regulatory Framework for the Management of Technology and Innovation

A special issue of International Journal of Technology, Policy and Management

Innovations do not fall like manna from heaven but are generated by pioneering activities of human beings. These activities have to take place via interaction with all kind of institutions and the regulatory framework of their individual business environments. Traditional innovation theory embedded in growth theory or industrial economics often neglects the influence of the regulatory framework on innovations.

In the context of the growing importance of institutions like the World Bank or the European Union, the influence of laws and all kinds of regulation keeps on growing. Hence, regulation is often seen as a substantial barrier for innovative activities. But, especially in growing research fields like environmental innovation, empirical evidence has shown a strong positive influence of regulatory measures on encouraging innovative activities. The same can be expected for other regulated markets such as., for example, health services. And regulation may also be relevant in more traditional markets, e.g. due to the increasing role of consumer protection and policy. In particular, environmental protection encourages innovation as for instance car manufacturers must think about new ways of driving concepts in the light of permanently increasing energy costs, changing consumer perceptions and increasingly limited natural resources worldwide. Therefore, the aim of this special issue is to clarify the role of regulation in innovation processes and to assess its impacts.

Potential authors are invited to submit contributions analyzing the role of regulatory issues in the management of technology and innovation. The goal is to prepare a reference issue that could be of immediate use to those interested in the management of technology and innovation and its implications, whether they are academics, practitioners or researchers.

Suitable topics include, but are not limited to

• Environmental innovations
• Institutions and innovation
• Role of regulation in specific branches, e.g. banking, telecom, etc.
• Conceptualization of regulatory-push/pull
• Frameworks for the management of regulatory influences
• Influence of laws on product development
• Business model generation and evaluation
• Innovation in the service sector
• Economic performance of innovative firms
• Technology screening and forecasting
• Regulation and innovation management in different cultures and in multinational enterprises

Important Dates
1-2 page abstract due: 15 January 2010
Notification to authors: 28 February 2010
Submission of manuscripts due: 15 July 2010
Notification to authors: 15 October 2010
Final drafts of papers: 31 December 2010

Special issue: Knowledge management in the project work context

International Journal of Knowledge Management Studies 3(3/4) 2009

• Intelligent participation: communicating knowledge in cross-functional project teams
• The social learning character of projects and project teams
• Knowledge sharing in different project work environments analysed by the holistic concept of man
• Who cares about project deadlines? A processual relational perspective on problems with information sharing in project environments
• Knowledge integration between the change program and the parent organisation
• Knowledge creation during cross-functional projects: lessons from a case study of a French bank
• Knowledge and experience sharing in projects-based building maintenance community of practice
• Knowledge integration in a multinational setting – a study of a transnational business project
• Knowledge management in projects: insights from two perspectives
• Integration in project business: mechanisms for knowledge integration
• A qualitative inquiry into organisational culture's moderating effect on knowledge management projects in the aerospace and defence industry
• Shared knowledge in project-based companies' value chain

Special issue:Stimulating personal development and knowledge sharing

International Journal of Continuing Engineering Education and Life-Long Learning 19(4-6) 2009

Articles based on selected papers presented at the First TENCompetence Workshop ‘Stimulating personal development and knowledge sharing’, held in Sofia, Bulgaria, 30–31 October 2008

• Social sharing in LearnWeb2.0
• A context-based methodology for integrating Web 2.0 services in learning scenarios
• Building a knowledge repository for life-long competence development
• The TENCompetence EPIQ's business demonstrator development
• Web-service architecture for tools supporting lifelong e-learning platforms
• Social support system in learning network for lifelong learners: a conceptual framework
• Learner reflexivity, technology and 'making our way through the world'
• Improving the unreliability of competence information: an argumentation to apply information fusion in learning networks
• Effect of adaptive learning style scenarios on learning achievements

Call for papers: Global Financial Crisis and its Impact on Global Financial Regulation

A special issue of International Journal of Monetary Economics and Finance

The deregulation of the financial markets that occurred in the 1980s altered the architecture of national financial markets and led to the development of a new global financial system. Central to this process was the enhanced importance of new financial instruments or, more correctly, the extensive use of financial instruments whose origins can be traced back to the 1920s. The deregulation of national banking systems and the development of new financial instruments including securitization produced a crisis in mortgage lending that has been labelled the sub-prime crisis or the credit crunch. This process has undermined the stability of national financial systems as banks have been increasingly unwilling to lend to one another. Heavily leveraged banks or banking systems have suffered and this has led to a situation in which national governments have had to intervene to underwrite private sector banking.

Papers that explore the financial crisis and its consequences are especially welcomed. Papers on all other aspects of research on services are also welcome. Papers can be conceptual, empirical or methodological. We welcome studies from social, geographical, business, economic, policy and management sciences, and particularly interdisciplinary approaches.

Potential papers are encouraged in areas which include but are not limited to:

• The forms of direct public sector intervention in the private sector
• Policy responses to market failure on national and international level including Basel II
• Impacts of the financial crisis on Islamic banking sector
• The national or local consequences of the financial crisis
• Role of e-banking & commerce after financial crisis

Important Date
Deadline for receipt of manuscripts: 30 September 2010

Call for papers: Future of Emerging Markets and Islamic banking after the Global Financial Crisis

A special issue of International Journal of Economic Policy in Emerging Economies

After at least a decade of easy credit, the wheels came off the global finance system in the summer of 2007. The deregulation of national banking systems and the development of new financial instruments including securitization produced a crisis in mortgage lending that has been labelled the sub-prime crisis or the credit crunch. This process has undermined the stability of national financial systems as banks have been increasingly unwilling to lend to one another. Heavily leveraged banks or banking systems have suffered and this has led to a situation in which national governments have had to intervene to underwrite private sector banking Economies across the globe are starting to feel the effects of this ‘regime shift’ and the purpose of this Special Issue is to invite scholars from around the globe to explore the causes, implications, etc. of the credit crunch as well as discussing future trends in global banking, with particular emphasis on emerging markets and Islamic banking.

Potential papers are encouraged in areas which include but are not limited to:

• Integration and globalization of banking systems
• Consolidation and its consequences for banking and financial services
• Islamic banking
• Islamic financial market instruments and trade
• Policy responses to market failure on national and international level
• The national or local consequences of the financial crisis: do we need a new global system of banking regulation?
• Is sub prime a consequence of poor regulation and/or a lack of understanding?
• How should governments/central banks respond to a banking crisis?
• Increasing role of e-banking & commerce
• Efficiency and technological progress
• Financial innovation
• Financing decisions of banks

Important Date
Deadline for receipt of manuscripts: 30 September 2010

Call for papers: Health, Disease, Environment and Longevity

A special issue of International Journal of Society Systems Science

One of the great successes in human society over the last few decades has been the increased proportion of the elderly. People in many countries can now expect to live into their 70s or 80s, if not longer. Despite concerns over pensions and so on, this is to be celebrated.

However, threats to longevity still persist. These threats include such Malthusian checks as floods and famine, drought and persistence of traditional disease vectors. But these are now compounded by such neo-Malthusian risks as global warming/climate change, global pandemics such as SARS, HIV/ AIDS and H1N1, and over-consumption of tobacco, alcohol and other drugs.

The aims of this special issue are to explore the linkages between health, disease, environment and longevity in order to identify patterns, processes and policies of relevance to human society.

Topics such as, but not limited to, the following are welcomed:

• The persistence of Malthusian threats locally, nationally, globally
• The rise of neo-Malthusian threats, at different scales
• Linkages between factors of health, disease and longevity
• Health and disease modelling
• Policy development that might prove effective in meeting these and future threats

Important Dates
Receipt of papers: 31 May 2010
Peer review completed: 3 September 2010
Final drafts received: 26 November 2010

Special issue: Biopattern analysis using machine learning methods

International Journal of Knowledge Engineering and Soft Data Paradigms 1(3) 2009

Extended versions of papers from a special session on ‘Application of machine learning in constructing biopatterns and analysing bioprofiles' at the 2008 International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications (ICMLA '08) held in San Diego, California, USA, 11-13 December 2008.

• Cancer profiles by affinity propagation
• Distance metric learning and support vector machines for classification of mass spectrometry proteomics data
• Error bounds of decision templates and support vector machines in decision fusion
• Image classification of artificial fingerprints using Gabor wavelet filters, self-organising maps and Hermite/Laguerre neural networks
• Evaluation of missing data imputation in longitudinal cohort studies in breast cancer survival
• Survival analysis in cancer using a partial logistic neural network model with Bayesian regularisation framework: a validation study

Special issue: Modelling and simulation of systems security

International Journal of Information and Computer Security 3(2) 2009

• A testbed for power system security evaluation
• Weighted trust evaluation-based malicious node detection for wireless sensor networks
• Mitigating routing vulnerabilities in ad hoc networks using reputations
• Design and simulation on data-forwarding security in sensor networks
• Modelling and simulations for Identity-Based Privacy-Protected Access Control Filter (IPACF) capability to resist massive denial of service attacks

Special issue: Incorporating the affective loop into learning technologies

International Journal of Learning Technology 4(3/4) 2009

Papers from the Modelling and Scaffolding Affective Experiences to Impact Learning workshop held at the 13th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education in Los Angeles, USA, 9 July 2007.

• Affect-aware tutors: recognising and responding to student affect
• Multimethod assessment of affective experience and expression during deep learning
• Supporting affective communication in the classroom with the Subtle Stone
• Modelling affect expression and recognition in an interactive learning environment
• The role of learner attributes and affect determining the impact of agent presence

Call for papers: Interaction between Software Engineering Methods/Tools and Manufacturing Production Systems/Processes

A special issue of International Journal of Product Lifecycle Management

Management of product life cycles may be viewed as an achievement of industrialisation for a systematic approach to production systems. It provides at every level of enterprises a scientific methodology for work. The operational level work first focused on various CAD systems. Coordination was then addressed by (1) providing tools to share information about product and, (2) tools to assist project management. PLM should master a holistic view of manufacturing and production systems. PLM is applied to the extended enterprise which is a complex set of relationships between companies, services and human actors. The corresponding interactions are either contractual based or based on trust between actors. If some processes are modelled and orchestrated via process management systems, many interactions remain informal.

Software engineering followed a parallel and quite disconnected evolution. After the initial step where computation was a direct interaction with hardware, several abstraction levels were created to ease the control of software leading to increased complexity of such systems. From the functional decomposition of software through object oriented techniques, software engineering evolved towards new methods such as service oriented approaches and model driven engineering. Service oriented approaches organise the development of complex and large-scale software applications by definition of contractual and loosely coupled interfaces. Model driven engineering uses a strategy where software development is led by series of modelling steps; a step is viewed as a model transformation. An underlying process is then constructed.

Both PLM of manufactured product and software engineering develop strategies to organise the complexity of a production system. In one case, the final product is executable software while in the second case physical parts and systems must be produced and are the output of the last model transformation. Obviously a parallel may be defined between these two processes but in order to apply methods and tools from one domain into the other one, many important issues must be addressed. In this perspective, software engineering seems to be more formalised and structured than classical production systems. Therefore, many strategies try to model manufactured production systems to well-defined processes which must be led by an adequate information system. However, even if information systems are increasingly widely used to support product development and production management systems, it is time to study

• the granularity of information systems required to manage complex manufacturing and production systems ,
• the cutting-edge where computer science does not improve the efficiency of the manufacturing systems and
• how the practice of manufacturing systems might influence the evolution of computer science technology.

This special issue welcomes both innovative and practical contributions addressing:

• How can granularity of information systems dedicated to manufactured product development and production be improved?
• How to determine when computer science is no more an efficient support to manufacturing practices?
• How can the practice of development and production in production processes influence evolution of computer science technology?

The proposed (or related topics), quantitative or qualitative methods and tools, surveys, reviews, or case studies are the focus of this issue. Technological models and computational architectures that have been developed for PLM are welcome, as well as new developments both in theory and in application are also appropriate.

By addressing both theoreticaland application problems, this special issue hopes to point out research challenges and future research directions. The main intent is to make practitioners aware of similarities between software engineering and other engineering domains specifically production and produce development systems and to promote a better understanding and collaboration between the two fields.

This issue addresses PLM from several viewpoints, such as, but not limited to, the following:

• Applications of SOA for PLM
• Applications of MDE for PLM,
• Ontologies, interoperability and its relevance to PLM
• Non-formal methods and practice that requires assistance
• Methods and tools to create computer support for PLM (KBE, etc).
• Models of relationships between strategic levels and operational levels.
• Models for the extended enterprise as a network of relationships between companies
• Modelling collaborative activities
• Software engineering requirements for the next generation PLM systems

Papers that provide a critical review of past intelligent computational systems developed for PLM applications are also welcome.

Important Dates
Full Paper Due: 15 December, 2009
Notification of Acceptance: 15 February, 2010
Final Version of Paper Due: 15 Apri, 2010

Special issue: Key concepts in sport management

International Journal of Sport Management and Marketing 6(2) 2009

• Institutional pressures, government funding and provincial sport organisations
• Power trip: sport and media
• Outside the fields of praise: women's rugby in Wales
• Comparative analysis of football efficiency among two small European countries: Portugal and Greece
• Market size and attendance in English Premier League football
• Research on voluntary sport organisations: established themes and emerging opportunities

Special issue: Business firms and the political environment

International Journal of Business Environment 2(4) 2009

• Mobilisation of issue networks: the case of fighting heart disease in Finland
• Political embeddedness of technological development – the IgY case
• Impact of international political units on small business firms' relationships – the case of EU and Swedish small firms
• Understanding legitimacy in the foreign market entry process
• Multinational enterprises and their linkage effects on local socio-economic environments in emerging markets
• Complexity and interdependency in firm's internationalisation: when the state becomes the partner

Special issue: Nanoparticles: a state-of-the-art in scientific research

International Journal of Nanoparticles 2(1-6) 2009

Further papers (over 60) from the International Conference on Nanotechnology: Opportunities and Challenges (ICON008) held in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, 17-19 June 2008

Other papers are published in
International Journal of Nano and Biomaterials 2(1-5) 2009
International Journal of Nanomanufacturing 4(1-4) 2009