Special issue: Doing business in developing/emerging economies: cases in management, business and marketing

International Journal of Economics and Business Research 2(3/4) 2010

• Negative image: developing countries and country of origin – an example from Zimbabwe
• Privatisation and corporate governance in emerging economies: What went wrong with Aguas Argentinas S.A.?
• Social Capital Theory and the internationalisation process of Czech SMEs
• Comparative analysis of the entrepreneurial activities in Croatia and countries in the region
• The development of Renewable Energy industries in emerging economies: the role of economic, institutional, and socio-cultural contexts in Latin America
• E-consumer and the drive behind customer satisfaction: the Chinese online
• Serving the poor by marketing information: developing a sustainable village phone model in Bangladesh
• Analysis of gains and pains of SEZ in Indian scenario

Special issue: New governance approaches at different policy levels

International Journal of Public Policy 5(4) 2010

• Full employment abandoned: shifting sands and policy failures
• European governance, policy entrepreneurship and the discourse of reform: an institutionalist assessment
• Welfare regimes and macroeconomic regime constellations: explaining the Scandinavian anomaly
• Employee-friendly labour time: a key element to a sustainable pattern of production and consumption
• Governance strategies in local government: a study of the governance of municipal corporations in a Swedish municipality
• Employment relations in German multinational companies in the UK and the future of the German model: empirical evidence on country-of-origin effects and industry internationalisation
• Endogenous determination of FDI growth and economic growth: the OECD case
• Born lucky – or just lucky to be born rich? A note

Special issue: Vocabularies, ontologies and rules in the enterprise

International Journal of Business Process Integration and Management 4(4) 2009

Includes papers from the first Vocabularies, Ontologies and Rules for The Enterprise (VORTE) workshop held in Enschede, the Netherlands, 20 September 2005 , in conjunction with the 9th IEEE International EDOC Conference.

• Preliminaries to a DOLCE ontology of organisations
• A software process ontology as a common vocabulary about software processes
• Using ontology for the representational analysis of process modelling techniques
• A cooperative framework for XML database-as-a-service
• A predictive admission control algorithm for user advance reservation in equipment grid

Call for papers: Computational Intelligence and Health Technologies

A special issue of International Journal of Bioinformatics Research and Applications

Health technologies research brings together complementary interdisciplinary research skills in the development of innovative medical devices and biotechnology processes for health technology applications. The focus of this issue is on the study of health and disease processes, and the development of new medical devices and advanced biotechnology applications for early detection, diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation of lifestyle diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes mellitus, neurological disorder, cancer, etc. The scope of this issue includes neural computation, fuzzy systems, support vector machine, evolutionary computation, swarm intelligence, and other computational intelligence methods or hybrid computational intelligence approaches. Applications of these computational intelligence methods to health technologies are the main focus of the special issue.

We are soliciting contributions which cover, but are not limited to, the following applications:

• Intelligent wheel chairs
• Protein-ligand conformation
• Analysis of heart rate dynamics, cardiovascular disease, diabetes mellitus, neurological disorders
• Non-invasive instrumentations
• Early detection of cancer
• Biomedical signal and image processing, monitoring, and control
• Physiological modeling

Important Dates
Manuscript submission deadline: 15 December 2010
Review notification: 15 April 2011
Revised version submission: 15 May 2011
Final notification: 15 Jun 2011

Call for papers: Reverse Engineering

A special issue of International Journal of Collaborative Enterprise

The engineering design process includes a set of activities arranged in a specific order with the clearly identified inputs and outputs. The objective of this process is to satisfy customer requirements and management objectives. This process is considered efficient when output of the process satisfies general customer and defined requirements, meets management objectives and customer deadlines, and all these with less costs and resources. This process is based on forward engineering life cycle.

Reverse engineering is the process of disassembly, measurement, analysis and documentation of all features of components associated with an existing product. The results of the RE process could be a CAD model, strength or weaknesses of the current design, new design specifications and other design related issues. Reverse engineering has been used widely in a variety of industries such as electronics, aerospace, medical and auto. Examples of why RE can be used are:

• Original manufacturer of a product no longer produces the same product
• Inadequate documentation of the original design
• Bad features of a product need to be improved.
• Competitive benchmarking
• The original CAD model is not sufficient to support design, etc.

The purpose of this special issue is the publication of research reports and application descriptions in the advancement of RE methods and technologies and its impact on the engineering design including manufacturing for the 21st century’s customer focused product.

Suitable topics include but are not limited to:

• Methodologies and techniques for RE
• Reverse engineering life cycle
• Geometric modelling and GD&T considerations
• Input methods and analysis: contact and non-contact
• Design optimisation and CAD/CAM/CAE
• Application of available technologies
• New technologies
• Additive manufacturing and RE
• Mass customisation and RE
• Medical applications and RE
• Case studies and other related topics

Important Dates
Full paper submission: 3 May, 2010
Notification of reviews: 15 June, 2010
Revised manuscript submission: 16 July, 2010
Notification of acceptance: 30 July, 2010
Final Paper Revision and submission to the editor: 30 August, 2010

Call for papers: Viral DNA Analysis and Rational Vaccine Design

A special issue of International Journal of Bioinformatics Research and Applications

Application of information theory to biological systems leads to understanding genetic details and facilitates research to discover neoteric knowledge in medical sciences for quality healthcare and making of preventive medicine. As is well-known, the gamut of bioinformatic techniques in vogue involves genomic sequence analysis, data-mining etc. via analytical modelling and/or high performance computing. Also, concurrent wet-lab details provide for model verifications.

This special issue is conceived and specifically intended to gather state-of-the-art solutions and novel techniques tailored to comprehend genetic details of viral DNA with the objective to create rational vaccine designs thereof. Its scope is to address innovative research and development aspects on solutions in bioinformatics and computational biology of viral DNA and their applications in vaccine-related preventive healthcare.

Relevant efforts on viral DNA genomics, associated dynamics of bioenergetics in folding/hairpin-bending (toward stability), entropic profiles of underlying (biological) information, making of sequences rationally for vaccine designs etc. are general topics of interest. Both theoretical/computational efforts as well as relevant wet-lab details for bioinformatic applications will be pertinent. Researchers are invited to submit their original papers to this special issue. In addition, review papers on the state-of-the-art topics and directions for future research will also be considered.

Scope of this special issue focuses on, but is not limited to, the following subjects:

• Gene expression analysis: application to viral DNAs and RNAs
• Complex kinetics of viral single-strand DNA folding/hairpin bending
• Modeling bioenergetic landscape of hairpin transfer in viral DNA replication
• Application of nearest-neighbour thermodynamics to Watson-Crick base-pairs in viral (single-stranded) DNAs
• Sequence and structural motifs of viral DNA sequences
• Modelling of nucleotide sequence and genome organization in viruses
• Systems biology, data-mining and bioinformatics of viral genomics
• Bioinformatics of the interplay between anti-ssDNA binding autoantibodies and viral DNA
• Rational vaccine designs and viral-specific therapies: bioinformatic perspectives and modelling
• Virus-related medical/healthcare informatics and text-mining
• Hydrolytic and cytotoxic anti-DNA antibodies: relation to viral diseases
• Catalytic antibodies: concept of abzyme kinetics
• Possible role of microbial/viral DNA hydrolysis: evolution models
• Structure and function of non-structured proteins vis-à-vis evolutionary related organisms (with high subtype variability)

Important Dates
Submission: 15 June 2010
Notification of first round-review: 15 August 2010
Final notification: 15 September 2010
Camera ready papers: 15 October 2010

Newly announced journal: International Journal of Sustainable Materials and Structural Systems

To begin publication in 2011, International Journal of Sustainable Materials and Structural Systems will deal with sustainable materials, components, structures, and infrastructural systems, with emphasis on technical advances in sustainable materials and structural systems. It will covers both basic and applied research in physics, engineering and materials science over different time and space scales and also industrial applications.

Newly announced journal: International Journal of Satellite Communications Policy and Management

To begin publication in 2011, International Journal of Satellite Communications Policy and Management aims to improve the state-of-the-art of worldwide research in the areas of satellite systems, networks, components, policy, management and services by publishing high-quality papers in this area, and by exposing the readers to the various methodologies, tools, techniques, algorithms, results, applications involved.

Newly announced journal: International Journal of Web Science

To begin publication in 2011, International Journal of Web Science aims to improve the state-of-the-art of worldwide research in the areas of web theories, services, applications and standards by publishing high-quality papers in this area. It is committed to deepening the understanding of enabling theories and technologies for applying and developing the web as a global information repository.

Call for papers: Corporate Responsibility, Sustainability, and Stewardship within Sport

A special issue of International Journal of Sport Management and Marketing

An understanding that the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR), in both theory and practice, has evolved in a relatively short period of time allows us to be forgiving of the currently fragmented literature on the topic. However, efforts to move the field forward in understanding and practice must be aggressively pursued. At all levels of companies in all manner of industries, initiatives guided by the current buzz-words such as those in this special issue title are being pursued, yet a wide array of stakeholders remain unclear as to the motives, outcomes, and best practices of such endeavours.

Within the sport-business context, research has emerged that is beginning to provide an understanding of these various corporate practices. Some have focused on bottom-line outcomes similar to those in other contexts, while others have looked variously at issues such as corporate motives and customer reactions. As of yet, we have not accumulated a systematically organized body of work that would allow us to truly claim that we are, as an academy, “on the cutting edge” of this phenomenon. Yet the industry forges ahead with or without us, and, in doing so, may reshape the nature of the industry and its stakeholder relationships. In many ways the initiatives evident in sport can be easily seen as reactions to demands brought about by stakeholders emboldened by management failures in the not-too-recent past. However motivated, the demand for change will not likely go away, and, in that respect, the very nature of business is being challenged.

Recently, several prominent journals have dedicated special issues to the topic of corporate social responsibility (e.g., Business & Society, Case Research Journal), including in our own discipline [Journal of Sport Management 23(6)]. To continue this important discussion, this special issue of IJSMM seeks to invite manuscripts that are forward-looking in nature, in an attempt to shape the industry in how it might contemplate its role and place in society. In doing so, these manuscripts should also aim to shed light on not only the concepts themselves, but also on the specific strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that may exist within the various sectors of the sport industry. Qualitative, quantitative, and conceptual approaches are equally encouraged.

Appropriate perspectives for this special issue may include (but are not limited to):

• Economic
• Environmental
• Sociological
• Health
• Ethics
• Strategy
• Organizational behaviour
• Marketing
• Communication
• Political science/public policy
• Philosophy
• Globalization
• Technology

Appropriate research foci may include (but are not limited to):

• Tests of existing theoretical models within sport
• Extensions of previous sport-based CSR work
• Level of analysis examinations
• Measurement/construct analysis
• Triple bottom line reporting
• Agency relationships
• Case studies
• Managerial best-practices

Important Date
Deadline for submission: 2 August, 2010

Special issue: Open innovation: creating products and services through collaboration – selected papers from the XIX ISPIM Conference

International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management 11(4) 2010

The XIX International Society for Professional Innovation Management (ISPIM) Conference was held in Tours, France, 15-18 June 2008

• Implementing open innovation: cultural issues
• Innovation preferences and framing effects: comparing East and West
• Exploring the relationship between incumbency and radical innovation: the case of business to consumer e-commerce applications
• Rewarding in open innovation communities – how to motivate members
• Simulating the effects of radical innovation with the help of system dynamics

Special issue: Being a small entrepreneur in a globalised economy: traditional and innovative firms competing in an open world

International Journal of Globalisation and Small Business 3(4) 2009

• Revisiting Stinchcombe's 'liability of newness': a systematic literature review
• The role of board of directors in the internationalisation process of small and medium sized family businesses
• Competitiveness in new technology-based firms: between local high-tech clusters and global technological markets
• International sourcing effectiveness in the fashion industry: the experience of Italian industrial districts
• An appraisal of CSR in SMEs in a globalised context: an empirical study of a ceramic cluster in Morbi, India
• Family business: institutional framework and entrepreneurial power

Call for papers: Recent Advances in Complex and Large-Scale Project Analysis and Evaluation

A special issue of International Journal of Engineering Management and Economics

Complex and large-scale projects present a number of characteristics that make their analysis and evaluation a difficult and often unsuccessful task:

• they are inherently risky because of long planning horizons and complex interfaces;
• the technology they implement is often non-standard;
• decision-making and planning are often multi-actor processes with conflicting interests;
• the project scope often changes significantly over time;
• the project complexity and scale are usually associated to a large number of (interdependent) variables to consider in the evaluation model.

Consequently,

• the analysis of duration, cost, and other parameters of projects becomes increasingly complex due to the multiple risks and uncertainties inherent in most projects;
• unplanned events are often unaccounted for, leaving budget contingencies inadequate;
• uncertainty about costs, benefits, and risks is the norm;
• alternatives are not systematically explored and worked out at an early stage.

Further, projects are often considered in isolation, and interdependencies and network relations between different projects tend to be underestimated.

Approaches, methodologies, and tools commonly adopted for the analysis and evaluation of projects may not be successful with complex and large-scale projects and cost overruns and/or benefit shortfalls for the majority of this category of projects is the rule. In particular, they do not take into account critical issues of project analysis and evaluation which can have tremendous significance for project performance :

• the flexibility (or inflexibility) of the technology involved with these large projects;
• uncertainties related to the possible variations and random errors in the values of the parameters and their estimates;
• uncertainties related to alternatives not taken into account;
• the predictably faulty judgments or cognitive biases due to heuristics and rules of thumb adopted to simplify decision-making.

This special issue will provide an international forum to investigate, exchange novel ideas and disseminate knowledge covering the broad area of analysis and evaluation of complex and large-scale projects. Experts and professionals from academia, industry, government and the public sector are invited to submit papers on their recent research and professional experience on the subject. High quality papers reporting on relevant reviews of existing literature,theoretical studies, case studies, surveys, experiences, success stories, real world examples and practice are all very welcome. Interdisciplinary research is also encouraged.

The themes appropriate for consideration include, but are not limited, to:

• Benchmarking and performance measures
• Capital budgeting techniques
• Cost and benefit measurement models
• Economic and financial evaluation techniques and methodologies
• Economic value added (EVA)
• Engineering vs economical approach
• Forecasting and estimation techniques and methodologies
• Human judgment and decision-making under uncertainty in project evaluation
• Learning-based project evaluation techniques
• Mathematical methods
• Monte Carlo simulation techniques
• Multicriteria and table methods
• Probabilistic cost-benefit analysis
• Project evaluation in an adaptive framework
• Project financing
• Project modelling approaches and methods
• Project selection techniques
• Public-sector vs private-sector projects
• Quantitative and qualitative risk analysis methodologies
• Real option theory
• Relevance and decision trees
• Uncertainty, ambiguity and risk management
• Unconventional approaches and methodologies for project analysis and evaluation

Important Dates
Submission of a two-page abstract: 30 April, 2010
Feed-back to authors: 20 May, 2010
Submission of full paper: 1 September, 2010

IJIDSS is a media partner for Network Centric Warfare Europe 2010

International Journal of Intelligent Defence Support Systems is to be a media partner for the Network Centric Warfare Europe 2010 conference to be held in Brussels on 23 - 24 June 2010.

Special issue: Particulate air pollution in urban environments

International Journal of Environment and Pollution 41(1/2) 2010

• Ultrafine particle and gas contamination of urban air in Seoul, Korea, during winter
• Particulate matter and particle-bound polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in the Dapu road tunnel in Shanghai
• Atmospheric lead concentrations near roadways in a suburban part of Istanbul
• Geochemical behaviour of the aerosol sampled in a suburban zone of Sfax City (Tunisia)
• Seasonal apportionment of the sources of ambient air particulates in the city of Trieste
• Time series analysis of PM2.5 and PM10−2.5 mass concentration in the city of Sao Carlos, Brazil
• A numerical analysis of the aspiration efficiency of a personal sampler
• Characteristics and expected health implications of annual PM10 concentrations in Athens, Greece
• Air pollution and restricted activity days among New Zealand school children and staff
• Comparison of tethered balloon vertical profiles of particulate matter size distributions with lidar ceilometer backscatter in the nocturnal urban boundary layer
• Mesoscale controls on particulate matter pollution for a mega city in a semi-arid mountainous environment: Tehran, Iran

Special issue: Innovative information technology in the service sector

International Journal of Services Sciences 3(2/3) 2010

• Innovative information technology in the service sector: RFID technology applications in retailing and healthcare
• Creating ambient intelligent space in downstream apparel supply chain with radio frequency identification technology from lean services perspective
• Railway freight operator service and planning profile
• An effective opportunistic maintenance policy for a global service
• Agent-based decision support for maintenance service provider
• Exploring technology acceptance across countries: case of mobile services adoption in the USA and Turkey
• Digitally-enhanced services for the elderly
• CRM technology: can adoption increase service quality and perceived value in maintenance services?

Special issue: Security and privacy in RFID systems

International Journal of Security and Networks 5(2/3) 2010

• An RFID grouping proof protocol exploiting anti-collision algorithm for subgroup dividing
• Analysing security risks in computer and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) networks using attack and protection trees
• Trust in RFID-enabled Supply-Chain Management
• On the security of RFID devices against implementation attacks
• Secure and efficient data transmission in RFID sensor networks
• Security and privacy on low-cost Radio Frequency Identification systems
• Looking at a class of RFID APs through GNY logic
• Radio frequency identification: a case study of healthcare organisations
• A ubiquitous mobile telemedicine system for the elderly using RFID
• Perceived barriers to the widespread commercial use of Radio Frequency Identification technology

Additional papers

• Enhanced McCullagh-Barreto identity-based key exchange protocols with master key forward security
• Security assessments of IEEE 802.15.4 standard based on X.805 framework
• Experimental analysis of application-level intrusion detection algorithms

Special issue: Web based research networks and learning communities

International Journal of Web Based Communities 6(2) 2010

• Evaluating the development of a community of e-learning researchers: from short-term funding to sustainability
• Designing, managing and assessing a Web 2.0 learning community to enhance inquiry based learning
• WikiVet: building a community of practice to support a self-sustaining wiki for veterinary education
• Leadership in a virtual community
• Learning to share knowledge for global agricultural progress

Special issue: Computer applications in research and development of complex mechanical systems

International Journal of Computer Applications in Technology 37(2) 2010

• Development of a web-based quotation expert system for machined parts
• Optimal illuminator design for automatic optical inspection systems
• Laser remanufacturing based on the integration of reverse engineering and laser cladding
• Shape-based search of mechanical CAD models for product data management
• Optimisation for the loading paths of T-part by hydroforming
• System design and simulation of constant temperature box using semiconductor refrigeration device
• Projecting curves onto free-form surfaces
• Design and application of hybrid fuel cell engine powertrain test platform

Newly announced journal: International Journal of Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Beginning publication in 2011, International Journal of Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation will provide valuable insights into successful business techniques and strategies in the emerging field of social entrepreneurship. It will include theoretical perspectives, cutting-edge research, and actionable solutions to identified problems of particular interest to policy makers in government and international agencies, academics and researchers.

Call for papers: Enabling Technologies for Sustainable Vehicle Electrification: Control, Optimisation and Diagnostics

A special issue of International Journal of Vehicle Design

Electrification of vehicle systems has received increasing attention from governments, industry, and public around the world due to the growing concerns on global warming, fossil fuel shortage, as well as passenger vehicle safety. With much smaller carbon footprints and significantly improved fuel economy, electric vehicles (EV), hybrid electric vehicles (HEV), plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV), and fuel cell vehicles (FCV) potentially define the landscape of future ground transportation systems.

Vehicle electrification demands a paradigm shift from conventional technologies predominantly focusing on internal combustion engine coupled with hydraulic speed shifting mechanisms. This revolutionary shift demands the development of advanced energy storage systems, electric motors, power electronics and associated control and diagnostic technologies. While vehicle electrification presents great opportunity, major technological and economic hurdles still need to be overcome in order to promote sustainable growth and market penetration of the electrified vehicles, in the areas of system integration and control, design optimisation, and mechanical and electrical system diagnostics and prognostics.

The primary objective of this special issue is to compile state-of-the-art research and development efforts on sustainable ground vehicle electrification technologies with low cost, high efficiency, low emission and satisfactory passenger safety. The main focuses will be on system design optimisation, system dynamics and control, diagnostics and prognostics.

The specific topics of interest within the scope of this special issue include but are not limited to the following:

• Modeling, Analysis, Control and Optimisation of EV/HEV/PHEV/FCV
• Energy and power management of EVs, HEVs, PHEVs and FCV
• Multidisciplinary dynamic analysis and control of the electrified powertrain
• Intelligent power management control with integration of telematic, intelligent transportation system and driver-aware technologies
• Intelligent grid network monitoring and control for electric loads balancing of PHEVs and EVs
• Energy Storage and Motor/Power Electronics Systems
• Advanced battery management systems
• Active cooling and thermal management systems
• Control and diagnostics of motor and power electronics
• Battery SOH monitoring and prognostics
• Energy storage for mechanical/hydraulic hybrid systems
• Electrified Propulsion and Advanced Vehicular Systems
• On-board diagnostics, prognostic and fail-soft strategy and system design
• Active safety technologies and navigation assist vehicle control
• Failure mode analysis and fault management strategy of powertrain and vehicle systems
• Control and integration of APU (Auxillary Power Unit) for Range-Extended Electric Vehicles

Important Dates
Manuscript Submission Deadline: 31 October, 2010
Reviewers' Reports and Decisions: 31 January, 2011
Revised Manuscript Submission: 15 March, 2011

Special issue: Crisis management

International Journal of Sustainable Strategic Management 2(1) 2010

• Sustainability: a new and complex 'challenge' for crisis managers
• A look to the future: emerging trends in crisis management
• 'Lighting tomorrow with today': towards a (strategic) sustainability revolution
• Crisis aversion and sustainable strategic management (SSM) in emerging economies
• Crisis management: a strategic and tactical leadership imperative for organisational sustainability
• A new species of global corporate risk: social issues, international firm expansion theory and crisis avoidance in the energy industry
• Governance of inherently dangerous territories: strategies of adaptation and perspectives of evolution

Special issue: Experiences from MMVE 2009

International Journal of Advanced Media and Communication 4(2) 2010

The Second International IEEE Workshop on Massively Multiuser Virtual Environments (MMVE09) was held in conjunction with IEEE Virtual Reality 2009 (IEEE VR 2009) in Lafayette, Louisiana, USA, 15 March 2009.

• Design issues for Peer-to-Peer Massively Multiplayer Online Games
• QuON: a quad-tree-based overlay protocol for distributed virtual worlds
• Deadline-Driven Auctions for NPC host allocation in P2P MMOGs
• Middleware mechanisms for interaction interoperability in Collaborative Virtual Environments
• HyperVerse: simulation and testbed reconciled
• On using Content Delivery Networks to improve MOG performance

Special issue: Biotechnology and Bioinformatics Symposium (BIOT-2008)

International Journal of Bioinformatics Research and Applications 6(2) 2010

BIOT 2008, the 5th Bioinformatics and Biotechnology Symposium, was held in Arlington, Texas, USA, 17-18 October , 2008

• Deterministic graph-theoretic algorithm for detecting modules in biological interaction networks
• Assessing and improving the accuracy of detecting protein adaptation with the TreeSAAP analytical software
• Flavitrack analysis of the structure and function of West Nile non-structural proteins
• An algorithm for the reconstruction of consensus sequences of ancient segmental duplications and transposon copies in eukaryotic genomes
• Strategies for enhanced annotation of a microarray probe set
• Ranking through integration of protein-similarity for identification of cell-cyclic genes
• Scalable biomedical Named Entity Recognition: investigation of a database-supported SVM approach
• Mining Cytochrome b561 proteins from plant genomes
  

Special issue: Materials processing technology

International Journal of Materials and Product Technology 38(2/3) 2010

• An integrated simulation system for glass pressing
• Modified erosion wear characteristics of glass-polyester composites by Silicon Carbide filling: a parametric study using Taguchi technique
• Optimisation of sheet metal forming processes by the use of adaptive intelligent sampling scheme based metamodelling method
• Influences of loading paths on thickness of aluminium alloy cup with Hydro-mechanical Deep Drawing
• Die structure analysis of stress distribution during High-Strength Steel stamping process and experimental validation
• Synchronous finish module using completely inserted finish-tool on hole-wall surfaces
• Research on Continuous Multi-Point Forming technology for three-dimensional sheet metal
• FE simulation of shape accuracy using the Multi-Point Stretch-Forming process
• Application of neural networks in complex forging die design
• A simplified 2-D model for the linear GTA welding of stainless steel plates
• Workability studies on Al-5% and 10% SiC P/M composites
• A hybrid approach of Case-Based Reasoning and Group Technology for injection-mould design
• A study on the bending of a trough-shaped profile using a roller and PUR pad
• Effect of different processes on the microstructure and mechanical properties of the Al-8.5Fe-1.3V-1.7Si/SiCP composite sheet
• Optimisation of extrusion flat die design and die wall temperature distribution, using Kriging and response surface method
• Research on the influences of material properties and forming parameters in T-shaped closed cold ring rolling process

Special issue: Algebraic and combinatorial coding theory

International Journal of Information and Coding Theory 1(2) 2010

• On the construction of bent vectorial functions
• Differential properties of power functions
• Constructions of self-dual codes over finite commutative chain rings
• Binomial moments for divisible self-dual codes
• There is no Euclidean self-dual quaternary [18,9,7] code
• MDS self-dual codes of lengths 16 and 18
• Enumeration of AGL(m/3, double struck capital Fp³)-invariant extended cyclic codes

Special issue: Progress in tourism service and sustainable development

International Journal of Services Technology and Management 13(3/4) 2010

• Grasslands as a sustainable tourism resource in Germany: environmental knowledge effects on resource conservation preferences
• Effects of population migration on rural tourism
• The resolution of conflict between ecotourism and community interests in China: basis on the Pigovian tax design
• Measuring the service quality of Indian tourism destinations: an application of SERVQUAL model
• Cognitive image change and loyalty in destination branding
• Developing integrated e-tourism services for cultural heritage destinations
• The effect of public participation on resource exploitation in heritage sites and national parks: case study of Western China
• The Dao of the sceptic and the spiritual: attitudinal and cultural influences on preferences for sustainable tourism services in the domestic Chinese tourism market
• Visitors' involvement, perceived value, satisfaction and behavioural intention on tourist express trains in Taiwan

Call for papers: Advances in Modelling and Optimization of Materials and Manufacturing Processes

A special issue of International Journal of Materials Engineering Innovation

An ever increasing variety of materials is available today, with each having its own characteristics, applications, advantages, and limitations. Many issues, such as better utilization of raw materials and energy, integration of design and manufacturing activities requiring the invention of suitable new manufacturing processes and techniques, still need to be dealt with. Today's manufacturing processes are caught between the growing need for quality, high process safety, minimal manufacturing costs, and short manufacturing times. Manufacturing process modelling and optimization not only remains an ongoing activity but has also becoming increasingly important in industry in the drive towards ‘agile manufacturing’.

In order to meet these demands, manufacturing process setting parameters have to be chosen in the best possible way, according to demand on quality. For such optimization, it is necessary to represent the manufacturing processes in a model. Due to the enormous complexity of many manufacturing processes and the high number of influencing parameters, however, conventional approaches to modelling and optimization are no longer sufficient. Accuracy and possibility of determining global optimum solution depend on the type of modelling technique used to express the objective functions and constraints in terms of the decision variables.

Accurate and reliable models of manufacturing processes can compensate for the inability to completely understand and adequately describe the process mechanism. Formulation of an optimization model is the most important task in the optimization process. It involves identifying the decision variables to be optimized, expressing the objective functions and constraints as function of decision variables, setting up of feasible ranges for decision variables (known as variable bounds), and finally expressing the optimization problem as a mathematical model in a standard format, which can be directly solved by an optimization algorithm. As the manufacturing processes get more and more complex, the process models are possibly discontinuous, non-differentiable, or non-explicit with the design variables. To solve the related optimization problems, one must resort to advanced modelling and optimization techniques.

This special issue invites the submission of high quality research articles related to advanced modelling and optimization of various materials and manufacturing processes. The issue encourages submissions from all over the world that expand the frontiers of the fundamental theories and concepts underlying materials and manufacturing processes and their modelling and optimization techniques.

Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Advanced modelling and optimization techniques
• Materials and manufacturing processes:
• Materials
• Materials behaviour
• Casting processes
• Joining processes
• Forming processes
• Powder metallurgy processes
• Modern machining processes
• Manufacturing processes for polymers and composites
• Manufacturing processes for ceramics and glasses
• Micromachining processes
• Nano-finishing processes
• Ecological manufacturing processes

Important Date
Submission: 31 March 2011

Call for papers: Recent Advances in P2P Systems: Trust, Reputation and Security

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

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) systems are decentralized, self-organizing distributed systems that cooperate to exchange data. A P2P network offers a scalable and fault-tolerant means of locating nodes anywhere on a network without maintaining a huge amount of routing state. This permits for a variety of applications beyond simple file sharing. Millions of users now participate in these systems and the user bases are diffusing broadly. P2P computing is perhaps the most significant development in computing since the emergence of web.

So far, the success of P2P paradigms has been primarily in traditional wired network environments. With the advance of modern wireless and mobile communications, there is a growing interest for mobile users to participate in P2P services anywhere anytime through their mobile handheld devices. However, the open and anonymous nature of P2P network makes it an ideal medium for attackers to spread malicious content. As a result, widespread and unrestricted deployment of P2P systems exposed a number of security vulnerabilities. Furthermore, a number of trust and reputation issues occur in P2P networks as trust is a fundamental consideration for growth and stability of systems. Hence, making P2P systems more “secure” is an important challenge.

The research topics related to the P2P require development of new methods and techniques, which offer clients an efficient and secured access to resources, proficient distribution of resources, decentralization and self-organization. Innovations of P2P systems proffer many interesting avenues of research in a variety of areas in computing. For this special issue, we are pleased to invite original and high quality submissions addressing recent developments in P2P computing with special focus on trust, reputation and security issues such as free riding, Sybil attacks, authentication, nature-inspired approaches etc.

Topics to be covered in this special issue include but are not limited to:

• Trust and reputation in P2P systems
• Semantics, interpretations and ontologies of trust
• Metrics for trust and reputation in P2P
• Trust based protocols and computational models for P2P
• Risk Management, Decision making and trust in P2P
• P2P business models and trust
• Security and privacy in P2P systems
• Routing and fault-tolerance in P2P systems
• Resource discovery/management in P2P systems
• Self-organization and self-management in P2P environments
• Cloud systems and P2P
• P2P and social networks
• P2P video on demand, P2P IPTV, P2P storage, P2P streaming
• Localized P2P
• P2P middleware
• P2P economics
• Mobile P2P, P2P over wireless networks
• Service-oriented P2P
• Digital rights management of P2P
• Semantic P2P
• P2P content distribution networks
• Overlay networks for P2P systems
• JXTA-based P2P applications
• P2P data mining
• Load balancing in P2P Systems
• P2P SIP based communication systems
• P2P communication systems for vehicular systems
• P2P grid
• P2P radio and audio streaming
• Nature-inspired algorithms for P2P
• Mobile P2P and mobility management
• P2P based sensor networks
• P2P virtual networks
• P2P games, online auction
• Modelling altruistic behaviour of peers
• Legal and regulatory issues
• Novel perspectives on trust, security and privacy for P2P systems

Important Dates
Submission deadline: 30 May, 2010
First rejection/revision/acceptance notice: 1 August, 2010
Revision submission deadline: 1 September, 2010
Final acceptance/rejection notice: 30 September, 2010
Final manuscript due: 20 October, 2010

Newly announced journal: International Journal of Work Innovation

Beginning publication in 2010, International Journal of Work Innovation will publish papers on working practices such as online work collaboration, virtual working, work outsourcing and other emerging working practices. It has developed from the open access journal, Journal of eWorking, whose archive is still freely available.

Newly announced journal: International Journal of Cloud Computing

Beginning publication in 2011, International Journal of Cloud Computing will address the most innovative developments, research issues and solutions in cloud computing and its related technologies and services.

Special issue: Emergency communications and alerting (Wireless RERC conference issue: Making emergency information accessible)

International Journal of Emergency Management 7(1) 2010

Papers from the Wireless Emergency Communications State of Technology Conference held in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, 21-23 September 2009.

• Communicating critical information using mobile phones to populations with special needs
• Communication in times of natural or man-made emergencies: the potential of speech-generating devices
• Evaluation of emergency egress information for persons who are blind
• Accessibility of emergency communications to deaf citizens
• Inclusive wireless technology for emergency communications in the UK
• Leveraging online social networks for people with disabilities in emergency communications and recovery
• Enabling the disabled: media use and communication needs of people with disabilities during and after the Sichuan earthquake in China
• Mobile emergency alerting made accessible
• State emergency plans: assessing the inclusiveness of vulnerable populations

Special issue: Parallel and distributed systems, applications and architectures

International Journal of High Performance Systems Architecture 2(2) 2009

Papers from the 9th Workshop em Sistemas Computacionais de Alto Desempenho (WSCAD-SSC 2008) held in Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil, 29 October-1 November 2008.

• A pattern based instruction encoding technique for high performance architectures
• Online mapping of MPI-2 dynamic tasks to processes and threads
• An evaluation of the performance impact of generic group communication APIs
• An architecture for DICOM medical images storage and retrieval adopting distributed file systems
• FPGA implementation and performance evaluation of an RFC 2544 compliant Ethernet test set
• Applying reinforcement learning to scheduling strategies in an actual grid environment

Special issue: Terrain topology: measurement, analysis and applications

International Journal of Vehicle Systems Modelling and Testing 4(4) 2009

• A framework for terrain-induced uncertainty quantification in vehicle dynamics simulation
• Properties of random component of longitudinal road profile influenced by local obstacles
• Pavement profile analysis using ensemble empirical mode decomposition
• Decomposing pavement surface profiles into a Gaussian sequence
• Developing stable autoregressive models of terrain topology
• Terrain profile modelling using stochastic partial differential equations

Newly announced journal: International Journal of Lifecycle Performance Engineering

To begin publication in 2011, International Journal of Lifecycle Performance Engineering aims to promote the philosophy of lifecycle performance oriented design and construction of civil engineering structures.
Topics will include the assessment of time dependent safety loss, time dependent environmental hazard analysis, maintenance planning, on-line permanent health monitoring, and application of control and smart systems.

Special issue: How globalisation is shaping the Asia-Pacific: multi-disciplinary perspectives

International Journal of Business and Globalisation 4(3) 2010

Papers from a conference: ‘How globalisation is shaping the Asia-Pacific: multi-disciplinary perspectives’ held in Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia, September 2008.

• The pursuit of Asian hegemony: a comparison of Chinese and Indian strategic objectives and containment policies
• Sino-Turkish relations in a globalising Asia-Pacific
• Harmonisation of intellectual property: issues in the South Pacific
• Averting Armageddon: in search of nuclear governance
• D-company: a study of the crime-terror nexus in South Asia

Additional Papers

• Developments of SMEs in Singapore's services and wholesale and retail sectors: issues and prospects
• The threat of chain stores to the character of an historic city's main street

Special issue: The path of responsive manufacturing

International Journal of Industrial and Systems Engineering 5(3) 2010

Papers from the 4th International Conference on Responsive Manufacturing (ICRM2007) held in Nottingham, UK, 17–19 September 2007.

• Development and evaluation of a production planning, scheduling and control re-design Toolkit
• Methodology for dynamic scheduling and control in biological manufacturing systems
• A computer integrated unified modelling approach to responsive manufacturing
• A parametric approach to logistic control within manufacturing simulation
• Empirical model-building: an integral part of optimising the high frequency tube welding process
• A mesh curvature point planning method for on-machine inspection systems
• An integrated framework for new product development using who-when-where-why-what-how (5W1H), theory of inventive problem solving and patent information – a case study
• Implementation of Cosserat theory into haptic sensing technology for miniaturised systems
• An ontology-based knowledge management system to support technology intelligence

Special issue: Modelling and management of knowledge in collaborative networks

International Journal of Services and Operations Management 6(3) 2010
Selected papers from the 8th IFIP International Working Conference on Virtual Enterprises (PRO-VE’2007), held in Guimarães, Portugal, 10-12 September 2007 and the 8th IFIP International Conference on Information Technology for Balanced Automation Systems (BASYS’2008), held in Oporto, Portugal, 23-25 June 2008

• Managing multiple ontologies in a virtual breeding environment context
• The management of ontologies in the VO breeding environments domain
• Increasing collaboration preparedness and performance through VO inheritance
• A framework for learning collaborative networked organisations
• A framework to create a virtual organisation breeding environment for small and medium enterprises
• Software agents and virtual organisations: consent and trust
• Agile professional virtual community inheritance via the adaptation of social protocols

Special issue: Knowledge-driven product innovation and enterprise management

International Journal of Computer Applications in Technology 37(3/4) 2010

• Knowledge integration based on roadmapping and conceptual framework approach to ease innovation management
• Linking design and manufacturing domains via web-based and enterprise integration technologies
• Customer requirements mapping method based on association rules mining for mass customisation
• Reliability evaluation of conceptual colour design based on rough sets
• Fine grain associative feature reasoning in collaborative engineering
• Research on design structure matrix and its applications in product development and innovation: an overview
• Synchronisation of heterogeneous design models of manufactured products by the formulation of business knowledge
• Supplier-involved collaborative product development in PLM
• A knowledge-based approach for calculating setup times
• Modelling and simulation of new product diffusion with negative appraise based on system dynamics: a comparative perspective
• Multi-level contextual product development knowledge management in PLM
• A hybrid decision support system for slow moving spare parts joint replenishment: a case study in a nuclear power plant
• R&D partnership contract coordination of information goods supply chain in government subsidy

Special issue: Towards new challenges for entrepreneurship and innovation management

International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management 11(3) 2010

Papers from the European Research on Innovation and Management Alliance's European Symposium on Innovative Management Practice (ERIMA07) held in Biarritz, France, 15-16 March 2007 .

• Innovation in cross-national alliance ecosystems
• A resource-based view on entrepreneurship and innovation
• Management of university incubators in China and in France: a comparative analysis
• About the transferability of behavioural skills
• A framework for applying innovation concepts in collaborative R&D projects
• Innovation in the organisation of management systems in Portuguese SMEs
• Balancing environmental and economic performance in the food processing industry
• A conceptual and computational approach to support learning and education in wide organisations
• Developing business networking opportunities for SMEs through business ecosystem and ICT

Special issue: Complexity, synergy and emergence in tribo-systems: toward thermodynamic-based prediction of wear

International Journal of Materials and Product Technology 38(1) 2010

• Analysis of a grease-lubricated contact from an energy point of view
• Effects of working parameters on the surface roughness in belt grinding process: the size-scale estimation influence
• Relation between entropy, free energy and computational energy
• Local coefficient of friction, sub-surface stresses and temperature distribution during sliding contact
• Model of the effect of local frictional heating on the tribodesorbed gases from metals in ultra-high vacuum
• A new model of the heat transfer in materials: the surfacic potential algorithm
• Influence of frictional energy dissipation on wear regime transition in dry tribo-systems
• Thermodynamic approaches in sliding wear: a review

Call for papers: Sustainability and China: Challenges and Opportunities for the Middle Kingdom and the World

A special issue of Interdisciplinary Environmental Review

The People's Republic of China occupies a little more than six percent of the Earth's land surface, but is home to nearly twenty percent of its human population. According to an analysis undertaken by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, China surpassed the United States as the world's largest CO2 emitter in 2006, although its per capita emissions remain far below those of the West. Its economy is expected to overtake that of the United States as the world's largest by as early as 2020. For millennia, the Chinese have excelled at using certain types of resources efficiently, especially in agriculture, but also have a centuries-old tradition of undertaking epic public works projects with equally epic environmental impacts. A half century of rapid industrialization has left China reeling from a precipitous decline in environmental quality, which has sparked sometimes violent citizen protests throughout the country in recent years. According to the World Bank, sixteen of the world's twenty most polluted cities are in China.

This special issue will be devoted to how best to prepare students in environmental degree programs to engage in the holistic, adaptive management of the health and resilience of the systems at the human-natural interface necessary to support stewardship of the natural environment and long term improvement in the human condition. In that spirit, this issue seeks to explore the history and current status of these systems in China, and the prospects for managing them holistically and adaptively so as to achieve both ecological stewardship and human quality of life goals for the Chinese people and the world. As the century unfolds, the prospects for achieving sustainability in China promise to have increasingly palpable impacts on the futures of us all.

The list of suitable topics includes but is not limited to the following, as long as the approach is interdisciplinary and the focus invokes both sustainability and China:

• Agricultural, aquacultural, and silvicultural systems
• Atmospheric and climatic systems
• Business administration and organizational leadership systems
• Ecological systems
• Economic and socioeconomic systems
• Energy systems
• Hydrological systems
• Ideological and cultural systems
• Industrial and manufacturing systems
• Natural resource extraction systems
• Political, legal, public administration, and other public governance systems
• Social systems
• Technological systems
• Transportation systems
• Waste management systems

Important Date
Deadline for submissions: 1 October, 2010

Call for papers: Commercialisation Processes and Open Innovation

A special issue of International Journal of Innovation and Regional Development

Since innovation has become an increasingly important source of competitive advantage and business investment in R&D and innovation has risen, innovative firms have become increasingly dependent on external sources of knowledge rather than in-house research. Intensified competition, need for rapid market entry/time to market (shorter product life cycles) and need for an access to additional competence (expanded technological opportunities) force them to innovate more quickly and focus their R&D expenditures, while seeking privileged and rapid access to complementary new knowledge in the public and private sectors.

A result of these driving forces has been the emergence of a new type of organisation of industrial research that is less centred in individual firms, based more on networks and markets, and in some cases, is more reliant on high technology firms. Therefore , rather than relying on internal resources for processes such as commercialisation, firms are increasingly participating in ‘open innovation’ (see Chesbrough 2006), i.e. active innovation-related collaboration between business partners, which may help firms to realize the value of new products, e.g. by acquiring technologies from external sources (Lichtenthaler 2008b).

Therefore, potential challenges may be related to factors such as the creation of partnerships with external technology providers and other partner companies (thus building a network of inter-organisational R&D that provides a means to coordinate diverse actors – including small technology firms, universities and science parks – that can all contribute specific competences and technological assets to the commercialisation process in high technology industries (Pellikka 2007, 2009).

The purpose of this Special Issue is to bring together papers which contribute to the understanding of the specific features of commercialization processes and open innovation models in high technology fields. Manuscripts are invited from both practitioners and management researchers and they may be purely theoretical or based on empirical research.

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

• Open innovation and high technology sectors
• Commercialization processes and open innovation
• Regional innovation systems and open innovation
• Knowledge-intensive business services and regional innovation systems
• Inter-organizational relations and open innovation models
• Open innovation business models for SMEs
• Open innovation strategy in high technology industry
• Firm-related growth and open innovation
• Internationalization and open innovation

Important Dates
Deadline for submission of manuscripts: 1 September 2010
Notification of acceptance/rejection to authors: 1 December 2010
Submission of final manuscript: 1 March 2011