Special issue published: "Information and Coding Theory for Distributed Data Storage"

International Journal of Information and Coding Theory 3(4) 2016

• Outer bounds on the storage-repair bandwidth trade-off of exact-repair regenerating codes
• Cooperative repair of multiple node failures in distributed storage systems
• Integrated interleaved codes as locally recoverable codes: properties and performance
• Cyclic LRC codes, binary LRC codes, and upper bounds on the distance of cyclic codes
• Updatable encryption in distributed storage systems using key-homomorphic pseudorandom functions

Call for papers: "Understanding and Promoting Well-being in Organisations: Theoretical, Cultural and Managerial Challenges"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Environment and Health.

In all ages and places, the pursuit of well-being seems to be one of the most constant and tenacious aims of human beings (Russell, 1930). Well-being has been a central concern in philosophy, psychology, sociology, medicine, law, literature and religion. Following the Second War, thanks to the huge progress in scientific and medical knowledge, the well-being movement began and gained increasing attention in both everyday life and scientific domains. Terms similar and/or related to the notion of wellbeing (wellness, happiness, quality of life, life satisfaction and work satisfaction) became very common.

 

In 1948, the World Health Organisation (WHO) was the first to introduce the term well-being in a holistic definition of health: "Health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity". Over the last seventy years, the issue of well-being has gradually permeated the daily life of a wide variety of social spaces, in particular workplaces and organisations. As humans spend much of their life at work, fostering organisational well-being, in turn, promotes individual and social well-being. On one hand, the pursuing of organisational well-being involves several and heterogeneous benefits (medical, economic, psychosocial): lower turnover, lower absenteeism, lower accident rates and reduced health care costs, higher job satisfaction, higher job performance, increased productivity, more intense creativity, enhanced market positioning, and a more responsible sustainable behavior. On the other hand, practitioners and scholars are increasingly aware of the worrying risks and costs related to an organisational misbehavior (i.e. bullying behavior, mobbing, burn-out, unfair discrimination): health problems, lower job satisfaction, lower job performance, decreased productivity, reduced creativity, distrust, increased turnover and absenteeism, increase in conflicts and legal disputes. Worrying risks and costs because of which the organisation is likely to collapse.

 

For all the reasons above, well-being in workplaces and organisations is more and more drawing the attention of managers and scholars. Since the seminal Hawthorne experiments (1920s-1930s) both practitioners and organisational researchers have been fascinated by the hypothesis that organisational-level performance and employee's well-being are mutually interdependent and reinforcing each other. However, despite the several theoretical and empirical efforts, the understanding and pursuing of well-being in workplaces and organisations still remain challenging goals for scholars and managers. Indeed, although it is now quite accepted that workplaces play a crucial role in social well-being and health promotion, over the last decades, the challenges to occupational well-being have become more and more difficult because of the dramatic changes of work conditions. The diffusion of information and communication technology at work, the rise of globalisation and the intensification of strategic competition, the increase of outsourcing and downsizing, the need for a more flexible workforce and the related fear of job insecurity. All together these changes have shaped a more a more unpredictable and complex environment. The workforce suffers the increasing management and shareholders' pressures to keep pace and to save the organisational effectiveness. Under this conditions, organisational attempts to promote employees' well-being are likely to fail or to not be credible in the every-day life of work. Actually, the risk is that well-being is used as a managerial tool to get employees' colonisation. A new way to control the workforce at the so called "third" (unconscious) level (Perrow, 1986; Kunda 1992). In this view, further researches are required to deeper understand the true purposes and effects of the organisational well-being.

 

The special issue would like to shed light on these dramatic tensions and aims to offer academics as well as managers and policy makers who are interested in the current organisational challenges deeper insights in understanding and promoting occupational and social well-being. The wish is that we could contribute to the rise of an intercultural co-operation and we hope that it will be acknowledged as a successful experiment of interdisciplinary reflections contributing to the progress in the field of management.

 

Suitable topics include, but are not limited to:

• The evolving challenges of well-being: Do we need new mental approaches?
• U-Theory: leading from the emerging future
• Achieving organisational wellness: leadership, organisational facilitators and happiness at work
• The role of organisational citizenship behavior in promoting a wellness-based organisation
• Wellness at work and organisational climate
• Motivation and organisational wellness: theoretical and practical insights of a complex relationship
• Well-being and organisational performance
• Measuring organisational well-being: instruments, models and critical issues
• Diversity management: theoretical models and practical implications
• Designing well-being based organisations: the human factor
• The dark side of occupational well-being: Happiness or illusion?
• A viable systems approach to well-being
• Conflict management
• Industrial archeology and social wellness: the future life from the past
• Wellness and labour market
• From health protection to health promotion: the evolutional path of health at work place
• Occupational health psychology (OHP)
• Occupational psychiatry
• Stress, burnout and mobbing: how to prevent and counteract the enemies of occupational well-being
• Stress, burnout and mobbing: individual and social costs

 

Important Dates

Submission of manuscripts: 31 March, 2017

Notification to authors: 31 May, 2017

Final versions due: 15 September, 2017

Special issue published: "Small Business Financing"

International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business 29(3) 2016

• Effects of bank loan constraints on trade credit use: evidence from micro data of Vietnamese firms
• Small business access to bank leverage under crisis circumstances
• Small business and cohesion policy - statistical evidence from the Czech Republic
• Earnings management across publicly traded and privately held French SMEs
• An econometric study of the determinants of high tech private equity investment in Europe
• The influence of functional and relational proximity on business angel investments

Special issue published: "Bringing Sustainable Agendas Successfully into Organisations"

International Journal of Sustainable Economy 8(4) 2016

• Drivers of and barriers to eco-innovation: a case study
• Sustainability and regenerative leadership in the viticulture industry: a case study in the transformation of a leading California winery and vineyard
• The Kiel maturity model as a future-oriented mindset for sustainable knowledge management processes 
• The organic food purchasing behaviour: the verification of explanatory power of the theory of reasoned action
• Connecting culture to creativity and innovation: how trust and other variations of corporate culture influence innovative behaviour

Special issue published: "Emerging Economic and Social Perspectives"

World Review of Entrepreneurship, Management and Sustainable Development 12(4) 2016

Extended versions of papers presented at the Second International Conference on Emerging Research Paradigms in Business and Social Sciences (ERPBSS).

• The challenge of globalisation: a world-wide investigation of public attitudes on individual vs. government responsibility
• Authentic transformational leadership and its role in driving strategic corporate social responsibility: a contextual framework
• Market orientation in a non-profit organisation
• Social self-defence: where grievances, opportunities and protests collide

Additional papers

• Travel agency referral and retailer competition
• Privatisation, stakeholder power, and weak institutions: the case of the Democratic Republic of Congo
• A study on financial inclusion: excluded segments of Dhaka city experience

Special issue published: "Innovative E-Marketing Products and Management: Customer Behaviour and Service"

International Journal of Electronic Customer Relationship Management 10(1) 2016

• Business process automation in Greek telecommunications companies and marketing strategies
• Determinants of consumers' behaviour toward alcohol drinks: the case of Greek millennials
• Viral marketing analysis and evaluation: the case of the Greek consumer market
• The impact of leadership type, employee motivation and job satisfaction on the performance of Greek Lifelong Learning Training
• Green marketing as a strategic tool for the sustainable development of less favoured areas of Greece: women's agro-tourism cooperatives
• The relationships among information systems, knowledge sharing, and customer relationship management in banking industry

Special issue published: "Management and Complexity"

International Journal of Business and Globalisation 17(4) 2016

• Reflexions on an improved method of gaining scientific insights - why we should take uncertainties seriously
• Locating complex responsive process research in the approaches of theorising about organisations 
• Powerful individuals and their dominant role in organisations: time for reflexivity 
• Our Kafkaesque world
• Routine innovation: complex processes from policy development to implementation
• The ritualisation of change in the public sector: a discourse - complexity approach
• Customer orientation: a social rich multifaceted complex phenomenon
• Phronetic judgement, an essential competence for a project manager in a complex project environment!

Special issue published: "Recent Financial Developments in Vietnam"

Afro-Asian Journal of Finance and Accounting 6(3) 2016

• Finance in Vietnam - an overview
• Key determinants of inflation and monetary policy in the emerging markets: evidence from Vietnam
• Testing the existence of transfer pricing in Vietnam
• Accessibility to credit of small medium enterprises in Vietnam
• Foreign direct investment into real estate and macroeconomic instability in Vietnam

Additional paper

• The influence of corporate governance on corporate performance: evidence from Palestine

Special issue published: "External Costs in Transportation and Logistics"

International Journal of Shipping and Transport Logistics 8(6) 2016

• Transportation research trends in environmental issues: a literature review of methodology and key subjects
• Estimating externality of population health exposure to near-road vehicular emissions
• Influence of external costs on the optimisation of container fleets by operating under motorways of the sea conditions
• Method of assessing the role of short sea shipping in sustainable development of transport
• Exploring the viability of an emission tax policy for ships at berth in Taiwanese ports

Call for papers: "Sports Marketing Agenda Revisited"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Sport Management and Marketing.

The sports business industry is increasingly growing at a faster pace than global GDP generating revenues of approximately $700 billion yearly (Collignon & Sultan, 2014).

Sports marketing is the decisive business operation which not only brings together but also address a variety of complex issues regarding all major stakeholders, as individual actors as well as components of relationships, that comprise the sports ecosystem namely the:

• leagues that want to secure their fan bases, the popularity of their sport and their sponsorships in order to protect their revenues and their respective distribution to the clubs
• sports clubs, whose primary consideration is increasing ticketing, merchandising and sponsorships
• sponsors who link their names to sports products expecting to leverage their investments,
• media outlets that crave for advertising, high viewership/ traffic and subscriptions on the basis of their sports products in order to secure their viability and ability to pay TV rights to leagues and teams
• players, whose salaries are dependent on the respective sports market but also have a standalone value as endorsers and celebrity brands
• sporting goods and sports services i.e. health and wellness clubs that crave for customers in a highly competitive market and ultimately
• fans whose behaviour needs to be investigated in order for marketers to be able to segment, target and successfully position their sports offerings to them.

This special issue will focus on the advances in shaping the sports marketing agenda towards the seamless integration of actors and actions. We envisage the papers to provide insights regarding contemporary issues in sports marketing and to offer fresh perspectives. Quantitative (including experimental design), qualitative (including netnographies), mixed-method and conceptual approaches are all encouraged. Submission of inter- and cross-disciplinary papers is particularly welcome.

The issue will carry revised and substantially extended versions of selected papers presented at the 5th International Conference on Contemporary Marketing Issues 2017, but we also strongly encourage researchers unable to participate in the conference to submit articles for this call.

Suitable topics include, but are not limited to:

• Antecedents and consequences of consumer behaviour towards sport offerings
• Consumer based brand equity of athletes and teams
• Marketing strategy of the actors, co-opetition and competiveness
• Market and marketing research
• Marketing communication strategies and tactics
• The relationship marketing approach to team and sport affiliation
• Scale development and validation or meta-analyses of existing scales
• The business agenda of social identification through sports (e.g. economic, financial and market consequences of phenomena like sport and team identification, rivalry, stereotyping etc.)
• Mega-events and their effects on tourism and destination branding
• Sport, team, athlete and event marketing in the web 2.0 era
• On and offline sport brand communities
• Sports celebrities as brands
• The dark side of sport marketing (e.g. promoting hooliganism, tribalism, fan misbehaviour, marketing to vulnerable consumers)
• Co-branding, sponsorship and endorsement revisited

Important Dates
Manuscripts due by: 31 March, 2018

References
Collignon, H., & Sultan, N. (2014). Winning in the Business of Sports, The Business of Sports: A.T.Kearney.

Special issue published: "Efficient and Secure Algorithms for Ubiquitous Computing"

International Journal of Ad Hoc and Ubiquitous Computing 23(3/4) 2016

• Effective algorithms for vertical mining probabilistic frequent patterns in uncertain mobile environments
• Improving the QoS of IEEE 802.11e networks through imprecise computation
• A novel key pre-distribution approach for high security and efficiency using LU-decomposition of matrix
• Improved algorithm for secure outsourcing of modular exponentiations with high checkability
• Collaborative 'many to many' DDoS detection in cloud
• CG-Fuzzing: a comprehensive fuzzy algorithm for ZigBee

Additional papers

• Service composition with quality of service management in environmental sensor networks
• A reliable and energy-efficient outdoor localisation method for smartphones

International Journal of Computational Vision and Robotics to publish expanded papers from 2017 International Conference on Mechatronics and Intelligent Robotics

Extended versions of papers presented at the 2017 International Conference on Mechatronics and Intelligent Robotics (25-26 March 2017, Kunming, China) will be published by the International Journal of Computational Vision and Robotics.

Call for papers: "Collaborative Manufacturing Paradigms and Practices for Industry 4.0"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Intelligent Enterprise.

Collaborative manufacturing (CM) is advantageous as an infrastructure for the emergence and validation of innovative approaches from developers and researchers.

The CM concept may be used to impart holistic knowledge in the particular engineering and manufacturing processes and their co-operation within the supply chain, as well as to develop personal competencies to handle future challenges in the industrial environment. The CM emphasises the application of efficient production technologies and processes, innovative steering concepts, methods and instruments of the advanced industrial engineering global context, in the scope of Industry 4.0, based on methods and instruments of operational excellence, planning tools of digital and virtual engineering and also the application of agile methods in production, administration, logistics and the entire supply chain - always against the backdrop of an intensive tie between theory and practice.

The issue will carry revised and substantially extended versions of selected papers presented at the Sixth International Conference on Business Sustainability 2016: Management, Technology and Learning for Individuals, Organisations and Society in Turbulent Environments and the Fifth International Conference on Virtual and Networked Organizations Emergent Technologies and Tools, but we also strongly encourage researchers unable to participate in the conference to submit articles for this call.

Suitable topics include, but are not limited to:

• Collaborative manufacturing (CM) paradigms
• CM organisations
• CM models
• CM methods and tools
• CM management
• CM industrial applications
• CM definitions
• CM behaviour
• CM epistemology for industy 4.0

Important Dates

Manuscripts due by: 30 September, 2017

Special issue published: "Nanomanufacturing in Energy"

International Journal of Nanomanufacturing 12(3/4) 2016

• Effects of solvents on the band energetics of nanostructured BaTiO3 electrodes for dye sensitised solar cells
• Porous N-doped carbon microfibres derived from cattail as high-performance electrodes for supercapacitors
• Preparation of TiO2 nanorod arrays decorated with CdS nanoparticles exhibiting enhanced photoelectrochemical and photocatalytic properties in visible light
• Synthesis of nitrogen-doped reduced graphene oxide as metal-free electrocatalyst for oxygen reduction reactions
• In-situ environmental scanning electron microscopy for probing the properties of advanced energy materials
• The structure transformation and electrochemical mechanism of cathode material Li0.86V0.8O2
• Optical absorption modulation in ZnO hemisphere nanorod arrays fabricated by nanoimprint lithography
• Atom-diffusion enhanced electrocatalytic activity toward glucose oxidation on atacamite nanorods
• Efficiency enhance the photoluminescence of ZnO nanowires array by the surface plasmonic effect of Au nanoparticles
• Review of inorganic semiconductor based ultraviolet photodetectors with high internal gain and fast recovery speed
• Recent progress of ZnO hierarchical nanostructure for photovoltaic application
• Study on the origin of the open-circuit photovoltage enhancement in TiO2 nanotube-based dye sensitised solar cells
• Cu2-xS nanocrystals prepared by solvothermal method for highly efficient quantum dot sensitised solar cells
• Thermal stability of dye-sensitised solar cell at 80 degree centigrade under light soaking
• A study of hysteresis in perovskite solar cell
• A transparent flexible thin-film triboelectric nanogenerator for scalable electricity generation
• Supercapacitor based on few-layer MoO3 nanosheets prepared by solvothermal method

Free sample articles newly available from International Journal of Education Economics and Development

The following sample articles from the International Journal of Education Economics and Development are now available here for free:

• Determining the economic literacy of introductory economic students in South Africa
• The relative collegiate experiences and outcomes of international students in the USA
• Education services and reallocation of government expenditure
• Using complementary teaching and assessment methods in promoting active learning of econometrics in a graduate class: an experiment
• Determinants of public education expenditure: evidence from Indian states

New Editor for International Journal of Semantic and Infrastructure Services

Prof. Bhekisipho Twala from the University of Johannesburg in South Africa has been appointed to take over editorship of the International Journal of Semantic and Infrastructure Services.

Special issue published: "Structuring and Restructuring the Automotive Industries (Third Part)"

International Journal of Automotive Technology and Management 16(2) 2016

• China's auto industry: success despite policy
• The role of national champions in the evolving footprint of vehicle production in Europe - 1990-2013
• Electric revenge after 100 years? Comparing car market patterns around 1900 and 2000
• Studying strategic choices of carmakers in the development of energy storage solutions: a patent analysis
• The last frontier: prospects and policies for the automotive industry in Africa

Inderscience is media partner for Network Enabled Capability Technology 2017

Inderscience is a media partner for Network Enabled Capability Technology (1-2 February 2017, Rome, Italy).

The journals involved are:

• Int. J. of Autonomous and Adaptive Communications Systems
• Int. J. of Intelligent Defence Support Systems
• Int. J. of Smart Grid and Green Communications
• Int. J. of Security and Networks
• Int. J. of Ultra Wideband Communications and Systems
• Int. J. of Wireless and Mobile Computing

Call for papers: "Recent Progress in Clean Coal Research"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Oil, Gas and Coal Technology.

Coal is the most widely distributed fossil fuel. It has several important uses including the generation of electricity. However, it must be utilised effectively and sustainably in order to protect the environment. We aim primarily to accumulate some of the quality research and review papers on different topics of clean coal research. We want to focus on various issues related to the resource quality assessment and advancement in processing, beneficiation and utilisation technologies of coal around the world. We also intend to have an emphasis on the value addition of low-quality coal, coal-related environmental issues, and efficient utilisation of coal waste/by-products, such as coal fly ash management. The special issue will have a broader impact on the coal research communities.

Suitable topics include but are not limited to:

• Clean coal initiatives
• Advancements in coal beneficiation
• Coal Combustion and Carbonisation
• Coal chemistry, geochemistry and mineralogy
• Value addition to coal
• Utilisation of low-quality coal
• Fly ash management and environmental impacts of coal-based industries
• Advances in coal mine designing and mine planning
• Issues related to coal mining and occupational health
• Acid mine drainage
• Coal gasification and liquefaction
• Coal mine rejects and eco-restoration of mine dump
• Application of nanoscience in coal

Important Dates

Submission of manuscripts: 31 March, 2017
Notification to authors: 31 May, 2017
Final versions due: 30 July, 2017

How best to share a taxi ride

Researchers in Uruguay have developed an evolutionary algorithm to allow a smart city to facilitate efficient taxi sharing to cut an individual’s transport costs as well as reduce congestion and traffic pollution. Details are outlined in the International Journal of Metaheuristics.

Transportation planning will play a critical role in the design and development of the smart cities of the future especially in light of the “sharing economy” of consumer-to-consumer services such as ride-sharing schemes and home and office rental schemes. In the absence of sufficient car-sharing schemes, there will remain a need for hired personal transport in the form of taxis. Now, Renzo Massobrio, Gabriel Fagúndez and Sergio Nesmachnow of the Universidad de la República in Montevideo, have found a way to route shared taxis more efficiently. Tests on real GPS data for taxi journeys shows that the algorithm can reduce delays and travel costs for the group of passengers.

The team reports that, smart cities use information and communications technologies to improve the quality and performance of urban services. “In this way, it is possible to reduce costs, increase efficiency in the use of resources, and allow a more active participation of citizens,” they say. Carpooling has come to the fore as an alternative to public transport and conventional taxi use.
“Sharing vehicles among people with similar travel needs has both economical and environmental benefits, at individual and collective levels. This practice allows minimising the travel costs for passengers while simultaneously reducing the number of vehicles on the streets and pollution,” the team explains. Indeed, several companies have latched on to this trend to launch well-known services to accommodate the transport needs of city dwellers. In parallel with carpooling and private drivers transporting private citizens, sharing conventional taxi journeys offers similar benefits. The team is developing an online application for end users.


Massobrio, R., Fagúndez, G. and Nesmachnow, S. (2016) ‘Multiobjective evolutionary algorithms for the taxi sharing problem‘, Int. J. Metaheuristics, Vol. 5, No. 1, pp.67-90.
via Inderscience – Science Spot http://ift.tt/2d62ETs

Special issue published: "Materials Design and Development in Tribology"

International Journal of Materials and Product Technology 53(3/4) 2016

Includes extended versions of papers presented at the Malaysian International Tribology Conference 2015 (MITC2015).

• Tribological behaviour of aluminium/boron carbide (B4C)/graphite (Gr) hybrid metal matrix composite under dry sliding motion by using ANOVA
• FEM simulation for determining suitable parameters for dimple structure fabrication in turning process 
• The relation between the tribological test results and tactile response
• An experimental study of friction in fibre-fibre contacts
• Compressive properties of green rubber foam from reclaimed rubber glove
• Selection of natural fibre reinforced composites using fuzzy VIKOR for car front hood
• TRIZ approach for machining process innovation in cryogenic environment
• Experimental study of the shot peening treatment effect on austenitic stainless steel

Additional Papers

• Effect of lauric diethanolamide on biodegradability and performance characteristics of mineral hydraulic oil
• The effect of surface dispersants on electrodeposited antimony nanoparticles
• Evaluation of the residual stresses and corrosion resistance of shot-peened 7075 aluminium alloy under different states

Call for papers: "Security for Smart Grid and Internet of Things Applications"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Internet Technology and Secured Transactions.

Today, Internet of Things (IoT) is a novel paradigm in the development and evolution of the internet. The IoT is able, via modern wireless telecommunications, to identify and co-operate digitally with physical objects (or ‘things’) in order to exchange data between physical and virtual worlds. Due to recent developments in IoT related to electronics, software, sensors, actuators, there is active research interest in the connection between IoT and smart grid. With active and passive attacks, this connection makes the attacker’s task easier to disrupt the network and disclose the object privacy.

However, the smart grid with IoT cannot be widely deployed without considering the security requirements, namely, authentication, integrity, non-repudiation, access control, and privacy.

This special issue will address the latest advances and challenges in novel techniques, algorithms, architectures and experiences within the field of security, privacy and trust for smart grid and internet of things applications.

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

• Intrusion detection system (IDS)/intrusion prevention system (IPS)
• Game theoretical models of smart grid security
• Cryptography, key management, authorisation and access control for IoT
• Sensor networks and RFID security
• Secure software development for IoT
• IoT security issues in P2P, distributed, and parallel systems
• Privacy-preserving systems
• Protocol security for IoT
• Embedded systems security for IoT

Important Dates

Manuscripts due by: 30 April, 2017

International Journal of Emergency Management to publish expanded papers from TIEMS DCEM II conference 2016

Extended versions of papers presented at the TIEMS DCEM II conference 2016 (11-14 October 2016, Kiev, Ukraine) will be published by the International Journal of Emergency Management.

Call for papers: "Research Methods in International Management"

For a special issue of the European Journal of International Management.

The purpose of this special issue is to explore quantitative and qualitative research methods in international management by considering both new methods and new ways of using traditional methods. New research methods in management may emerge in response to the definition of a problem or the research conducted by other scholars. The emergence of new tools, techniques and software as well as changes in the environment under study that require new sources of information also offer opportunities to develop and employ new methods.

Many researchers believe that good theory followed by bad methods hinders their ability to create theory by generalising findings to other temporal and geographical contexts (Lewin, 1945; Tsoukas, 1989). For example, real-world relationships are often asymmetrical, and although multiple regression analysis is effective at identifying symmetric relationships, it sometimes fails to capture relationships of asymmetry. Qualitative comparative analysis can help overcome this problem (Fiss, 2011; Mendel and Korjani, 2013). Each management method is a lens that allows us to interpret one or more forms of management and to seek a variety of solutions to new or existing problems. Hence, a critical review of these methods and careful analysis of the resulting conclusions is crucial. Management in different economies, sectors and businesses depends on the results arising from different methods.

Scientific research uses different quantitative and/or qualitative methods to provide different answers to problems. In management, the language used in research is important to enable communication between academia and researchers during both data collection and the dissemination of findings. Contrasting different studies (or even the same study) using different methods reduces the gap between theory and practice because it leads to the generalisation of findings and ensures that the theory can become more widely used.

We welcome management research papers that present new solutions using quantitative approaches, qualitative analysis as an alternative to traditional quantitative methods, and examples and applications of new methods. We aim to provide high-quality empirical evidence using multiple methods and to present papers that discuss different empirical perspectives.

Papers that combine different research methods are particularly welcome. We are open to imaginative and interesting ideas that fit within the scope of this call for papers.

Although a description of the method is optional, its empirical applications and the potential methodological advancements that demonstrate its usefulness in management research and practice should be emphasised, as should the method’s limitations.

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

• Perspectives and techniques in management research
• Quantitative and qualitative methodological proposals by researchers
• Comparisons between quantitative and qualitative methods
• Consolidation and application of the most relevant methods and criticism of certain aspects of other methods (e.g. their implications or even their fundamental proposals)
• New methods (if applicable) and new forms and applications of traditional methods in management research
• Tools and techniques in content analysis, including text analysis software applied to different settings and topics
• Predictive validation testing of models using hold-out samples and testing for causal asymmetry in previous studies
• Forms of hybridisation between qualitative and quantitative techniques in management research
• Differences in methodology and concepts when comparing approaches across different empirical studies
• Discrepancies, criticism and debate of papers published in refereed journals
• Other new qualitative research methods or techniques and new ways of applying traditional quantitative methods in management research

Important Dates

Manuscripts due by: 31 March, 2018

References

Fiss, P.C. (2011). Building better causal theories: A fuzzy set approach to typologies in organization research. Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 54, 393-420.

Lewin, K. (1945). The research center for group dynamics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Sociometry, Vol. 8, 126-135.

Mendel, J.M. and Korjani, M.M. (2013). Theoretical aspects of Fuzzy Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA). Information Sciences, Vol. 237, 137-161.

Tsoukas, H. (1989). The validity of ideographic research explanations. Academy of Management Review, Vol. 14, 551-561.

Special issue published: "Recent Advances in Wireless Sensor Networks with Environmental Energy Harvesting"

International Journal of Sensor Networks 21(4) 2016

• A group-based wireless body sensors network using energy harvesting for soccer team monitoring
• Energy harvesting for wireless sensor networks: applications and challenges in smart grid
• An efficient power conservation scheme in non-zero-sum duty-cycle game for wireless sensor networks
• Energy-aware probing period dimensioning algorithms for mobile WSN-HEAP

Additional paper

• Cluster-based energy-aware routing scheme (CBEARS) for wireless sensor network

Inderscience is media partner for Asia Pacific Commercial Vehicle Summit 2016

Inderscience is a media partner for the Asia Pacific Commercial Vehicle Summit 2016 (5-6 December 2016, Singapore).

The journals involved are:

• Int. J. of Aerodynamics
• Int. J. of Aerospace System Science and Engineering
• Int. J. of Alternative Propulsion
• Int. J. of Automotive Composites
• Int. J. of Automotive Technology and Management
• Int. J. of Electric and Hybrid Vehicles
• Int. J. of Electronic Transport
• Int. J. of Heavy Vehicle Systems
• Int. J. of Human Factors Modelling and Simulation
• Int. J. of Ocean Systems Management
• Int. J. of Powertrains
• Int. J. of Space Science and Engineering
• Int. J. of Sustainable Aviation
• Int. J. of Vehicle Autonomous Systems
• Int. J. of Vehicle Design
• Int. J. of Vehicle Information and Communication Systems
• Int. J. of Vehicle Noise and Vibration
• Int. J. of Vehicle Performance
• Int. J. of Vehicle Safety
• Int. J. of Vehicle Systems Modelling and Testing
• World Review of Intermodal Transportation Research

More information on this event is available here.

Inderscience is media partner for 3rd Asia Pacific Reman Summit 2016

Inderscience is a media partner for the 3rd Asia Pacific Reman Summit 2016 (17-18 November 2016, Kuala Lumpar, Malaysia).

The journals involved are:

• European J. of Industrial Engineering
• Int. J. of Abrasive Technology
• Int. J. of Additive and Subtractive Materials Manufacturing
• Int. J. of Agile Systems and Management
• Int. J. of Applied Systemic Studies
• Int. J. of Automotive Composites
• Int. J. of Complexity in Applied Science and Technology
• Int. J. of Computational Materials Science and Surface Engineering
• Int. J. of Computational Vision and Robotics
• Int. J. of Computer Aided Engineering and Technology
• Int. J. of Computer Applications in Technology
• Int. J. of Design Engineering
• Int. J. of Enterprise Network Management
• Int. J. of Forensic Engineering
• Int. J. of Forensic Engineering and Management
• Int. J. of Industrial and Systems Engineering
• Int. J. of Information and Operations Management Education
• Int. J. of Integrated Supply Management
• Int. J. of Intelligent Systems Technologies and Applications
• Int. J. of Internet Manufacturing and Services
• Int. J. of Inventory Research
• Int. J. of Lifecycle Performance Engineering
• Int. J. of Logistics Economics and Globalisation
• Int. J. of Logistics Systems and Management
• Int. J. of Machining and Machinability of Materials
• Int. J. of Manufacturing Research
• Int. J. of Manufacturing Technology and Management
• Int. J. of Masonry Research and Innovation
• Int. J. of Mass Customisation
• Int. J. of Materials and Product Technology
• Int. J. of Materials and Structural Integrity
• Int. J. of Materials Engineering Innovation
• Int. J. of Mechanisms and Robotic Systems
• Int. J. of Mechatronics and Manufacturing Systems
• Int. J. of Microstructure and Materials Properties
• Int. J. of Molecular Engineering
• Int. J. of Nano and Biomaterials
• Int. J. of Nanomanufacturing
• Int. J. of Nanoparticles
• Int. J. of Nanotechnology
• Int. J. of Operational Research
• Int. J. of Planning and Scheduling
• Int. J. of Precision Technology
• Int. J. of Process Management and Benchmarking
• Int. J. of Process Systems Engineering
• Int. J. of Product Development
• Int. J. of Productivity and Quality Management
• Int. J. of Radio Frequency Identification Technology and Applications
• Int. J. of Rapid Manufacturing
• Int. J. of Remanufacturing
• Int. J. of Service and Computing Oriented Manufacturing
• Int. J. of Services and Operations Management
• Int. J. of Strategic Engineering Asset Management
• Int. J. of Structural Engineering
• Int. J. of Supply Chain and Operations Resilience
• Int. J. of Surface Science and Engineering
• Int. J. of Sustainable Design
• Int. J. of Sustainable Manufacturing
• Int. J. of Sustainable Materials and Structural Systems
• Int. J. of Value Chain Management

More information on this event is available here.

Free sample articles newly available from International Journal of Diplomacy and Economy

The following sample articles from the International Journal of Diplomacy and Economy are now available here for free:

• Foreign investment and economic growth interactions in Eurasia: 1960 to 2011
• EU in the struggle for global governance: geopolitical ethics
• Impact of institutional investors on financial market stability: lessons from financial crisis
• Disinflation and economic integration in emerging European economies
• Negative effects of the WTO - the case of automotive industry in Russia
• Anti-corruption versus political security: reflection on the Vietnamese context
• China's approach to economic diplomacy and human rights
• Economic diplomacy and security: linkages, trends and changes

Cimate change as a social problem

We cannot rely on governments, businesses or the public to adopt technological solutions to solve the problem of climate change, instead, social solutions must be put in place, according to research published in the International Journal of Sustainable Society.

According to Stephen Axon of the School of Natural Sciences and Psychology, at Liverpool John Moores University, UK, addressing real and present climate change has looked to technological solutions. However, this has to a large extent not led to immediate action to address the severity of the imminent crisis of rising global temperatures and associated problems due to the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations due to human activity. Indeed, there has been an over-reliance on seeking out technological responses and only minimal attention paid to the role of social solutions that might actually get sufficient numbers of people engaged in the problem.

Axon suggests that following the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris in December 2015 there has been increased awareness of the growing problem of climate change among members of the public. There is now a need for people to demonstrate unity, use social media to garner support and attention and to ensure our young people are also educated and empowered with regards to the problem. Such social changes will help to ensure that those in power are sent a clear signal that climate change must be addressed and also show the so-called “denialists” that the public opinion expects the problem to be addressed and not ignored or rebuffed.

The transition to a sustainable society in which we have faced up to climate change and found ways to ameliorate the problems it is bringing and perhaps even halting the rise in temperatures will be characterised by social and behavioural solutions and these must be tailored to the needs of individuals and communities, shaped and reshaped in response to individual need, Axon suggests. A community-led, grassroots response is the way forward. By demonstrating a united front against climate change within and beyond communities, mirroring rhetoric with action and empowering young people to engender new sustainable habits it might be possible to remove barriers to action and make sustainability acceptable in more meaningful ways to individuals.


Axon, S. (2016) ‘Sustaining public engagement with addressing climate change and the role of social solutions‘, Int. J. Sustainable Society, Vol. 8, No. 3, pp.185-205.
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Special issue published: "Web Mining and Pervasive Computing in Cloud-Based Environments"

International Journal of Web and Grid Services 12(3) 2016

Includes extended versions of papers presented at the 2015 International TKU-UoA Bilateral Workshop.

• A GA-based approach for finding appropriate granularity levels of patterns from time series
• A cloud-based type-2 diabetes mellitus lifestyle self-management system
• A cloud-based system for dynamically capturing appliance usage relations
• A seamless repository for pervasive teamwork
• Cloud computing adoption decision modelling for SMEs: a conjoint analysis
• Building the search pattern of web users using conceptual semantic space model

Inderscience is media partner for China (Kunming) Southeast Asia & South Asia Fire Safety and Emergency Rescue Technology 2016

Inderscience is a media partner for China (Kunming) Southeast Asia & South Asia Fire Safety and Emergency Rescue Technology Expo (9-11 November 2016, Kunming, China).

The journals involved are:

• Int. J. of Critical Infrastructures
• Int. J. of Emergency Management
• Int. J. of Electronic Security and Digital Forensics
• Int. J. of Human Factors Modelling and Simulation
• Int. J. of Nuclear Safety and Security
• Int. J. of Vehicle Safety

More information on this event is available here.

Call for papers: "Emotion and Decision Making in a Connected Society"

For a special issue of the International Journal of the Digital Human.

‘Emotion’ comes from the Latin words e=ex=out and movere=move. ‘Motivation’ also comes from movere. Thus, motivation-action-emotion constitutes a cycle and this cycle is repeated. Decision making is carried out to determine the way to effectively allocate our available resources to make an adequate action. Thus, emotion and decision making are deeply associated. An increasing move towards the connected society calls for faster and adaptive decision making to cope with the frequently changing situations. The importance of decision making with due consideration to emotion is rapidly increasing. Up until now, industries have focused mainly on external motivation or on how they can provide good products. However, customer expectations are quickly moving towards how their intrinsic motivations will be satisfied, or in other words, they are looking more for emotional satisfaction. How these needs can be satisfied in a digitalising society is an imminent issue.

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

• Emotion and decision making in design
• Emotion and decision making in human behavior
• Brain science and neuroscience approach
• Brain and body co-ordination
• Experience digitalisation and creation
• Intrinsic motivation
• Multi-sensory motivation and experience

Important Dates

Manuscripts due by: 1 August, 2017
Notification to authors: 1 September, 2017
Final versions due by: 1 October, 2017

Free sample articles newly available from International Journal of Banking, Accounting and Finance

The following sample articles from the International Journal of Banking, Accounting and Finance are now available here for free:

• Target valuation complexity and takeover premiums
• CEO risk incentives and the riskiness of securitisation transactions in the financial industry
• Bank loan analysis of family firms: evidence from S&P 500 firms
• Volatility analysis of REITs: empirical evidence for the EU peripheral countries
• Foreign ownership and dividend policy - the case of Vietnam

Special issue published: "Contributions of Trade, Foreign Direct Investment and Local Business Sector to Economic Development"

International Journal of Economic Policy in Emerging Economies 9(3) 2016

Extended versions of papers presented at the SIBR-Thammasat 2014 Conference on Interdisciplinary Business and Economic Research.

• Impact assessment of international policy coordination with the WTO technical barriers to trade agreement and foreign financial assistance upon the intent to comply with the agreement: findings of a cross-sectional study of mango exporters in Pakistan
• Inequality in Laos and the role of FDI
• Educational status, the social demonstration effect and inclination to save: a cross-sectional model of Pakistan
• Trade and sustainability: how strong are the empirical linkages between trade structures and sustainability performance?
• A study of home-based enterprises and street vendors of Assam, India

Inderscience Editor re-appointed to chair Undergraduate Awards

Dr. James S. Etim, Editor in Chief of the International Journal of Gender Studies in Developing Societies, has been re-appointed as the Education Panel Chair 2016-2017 for the Undergraduate Awards, the world's largest academic awards program.

Inderscience is media partner for International SAP Conference for Manufacturing 2016

Inderscience is a media partner for the International SAP Conference for Manufacturing (3 - 4 November 2016, The Hague, Netherlands).

The journals involved are:

• Int. J. of Internet Manufacturing and Services
• Int. J. of Rapid Manufacturing

More information on this event is available here.

Special issue published: "Quenching and Control of Distortion"

International Journal of Microstructure and Materials Properties 11(3/4) 2016

• Relationship between the quench delay time and tensile properties for various section thicknesses of AA 7075 Al alloy
• Influence of cooling medium and cooling conditions on hardness and distortions after steel quenching
• Investigation of the effects of transverse inertia on SHPB experiments
• Heat transfer and quench performance of aqueous CuO nanofluids during immersion quenching
• Performance assessment of vegetable oil and mineral oil blends during heat treatment of medium carbon steel
• Inverse quench-hardening phenomena in steels and their origin
• Determination of heat transfer coefficients for complex spray cooling arrangements
• Sound emission phenomena analysis at boundary layer during steel quenching
• Flow conditioning in heat treatment gas quenching
• Liquid quenchant database: determination of heat transfer coefficient during quenching
• Estimation of temporospatial boundary conditions using a particle swarm optimisation technique
• Different ways of monitoring the main quenching parameters will ensure the quality of heat treatment process

International Journal of Internet Technology and Secured Transactions to publish expanded papers from ICRTCCM'17

Extended versions of papers presented at the Second International Conference on Recent Trends and Challenges in Computational Models (3-4 February 2017, Tindivanam, India) will be published by the International Journal of Internet Technology and Secured Transactions.

New Editor for International Journal of Intercultural Information Management

Dr. Jengchung Victor Chen from National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan has been appointed to take over editorship of the International Journal of Intercultural Information Management.

Special issue published: "Metaheuristics Applications"

International Journal of Metaheuristics 5(1) 2016

• A multi-objective dynamic programming-based metaheuristic to solve a bi-objective unit commitment problem using a multi-objective decoder
• Comparison of two metaheuristics to solve a 2-D cutting stock problem with set-up cost in the paper industry
• Simultaneous feature selection and parameter optimisation of support vector machine using adaptive particle swarm gravitational search algorithm
• Multiobjective evolutionary algorithms for the taxi sharing problem

Call for papers: "Recent Advances in Active Safety Control Systems for Commercial Vehicles"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Heavy Vehicle Systems.

Commercial vehicles continue to be the dominant mode of road transportation in North America and Europe. Compared with other road vehicles, commercial vehicles exhibit various performance limitations and greater safety risks due to their unique physical and dynamic characteristics. These include poor manoeuvrability at low speeds and unstable motion modes at high speeds such as jack-knifing, rollover and trailer swing. Crashes involving commercial vehicles continue to be of traffic safety concern.

Over the past decades, the advancements in mechatronics and system integration technologies has promoted the development and implementation of various active safety systems (such as electronic stability control, roll stability control and active trailer steering system) for commercial vehicles to achieve enhanced handling, stability and safety performance. The current stability control systems, however, rely heavily on prior knowledge of various properties of vehicle and its subsystems. Commercial vehicles, however, confront wide variations in various operating conditions and thereby the dynamic characteristics, which pose considerable challenges parameters and state estimations, and controllers syntheses. Designing smart control strategies which not only identify the changes in vehicle and environment conditions but also adapt to these changes would constitute a promising solution.

The objective of this special issue is to compile recent research and development efforts in active safety control of commercial vehicles, including stability status monitoring and warning, vehicle parameter and state estimations, performance measures or targets, analytical and simulation techniques, advanced control techniques and their applications. We welcome contributions on state-of-the-art in active safety controls for heavy vehicles, driver behaviour and modelling, advanced driver assist systems, collision avoidance systems and automated driving.

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

• Holistic control methodologies and architecture
• Vehicle state monitoring, risk assessment and driver warning
• Vehicle parameter and state estimation, system identification
• Brake based active safety systems including swing and rollover warning, avoidance and mitigation, yaw stability control
• Active trailer steering systems
• Motion control and optimal tire force distributions
• Integration of active braking and active steering
• Driver-vehicle-road closed loop system simulations and analysis
• Emergency braking and collision avoidance control system
• Advanced control techniques applied in vehicle safety control system

Important Dates

Submission of manuscripts: 6 April, 2017

Could hackers put your lights out?

The development of the smart power grid and the smart meter in our homes to accompany it brings several benefits, such as improved delivery and more efficient billing. Conversely, any digital, connected technology also represents a security risk. Writing in the International Journal of Smart Grid and Green Communications, UK researchers explain how a malicious third party that hacked into the metering system could manipulate en masse the data being sent back to the smart grid and perhaps trigger a power generation shortfall.

Carl Chalmers, Michael Mackay and Aine MacDermott of Liverpool John Moores University, explain how the implementation of the smart grid brings many improvements over the traditional energy grid by making use of the vast interconnected infrastructure that allows two-way communication and automation throughout the entire grid, from generator to consumer and back.
“A smart grid is a complex modern electricity system which utilises sensors, monitoring, communications, and automation, to improve the electricity system,” the team writes. “Smart grids fundamentally change the way in which we generate, distribute and monitor our electricity. They dramatically improve the efficiency, flexibility and reliability of the existing electricity infrastructure,” they add.

The researchers point out that a critical difference between the old “passive” electricity grid and the new smart grid, is the presence of the advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) which provides the two-way communication between consumer and generator. The flow of data between consumers and generators allows the power generation companies to match demand with generation, to spot patterns in changing demand on a day to day basis or through the changing seasons and more.

However, as the UK has shifted focus from coal- and oil-fired electricity generation to being more reliant on natural gas as the fuel of choice (irrespective of wind, solar, nuclear and other alternatives), this makes the electricity grid somewhat vulnerable to accidental and incidental problems with the flow of data and to malicious manipulation for the sake of sabotage, criminal or online military/terrorist action.

The team adds that, “Critical infrastructures in particular, present a tempting target for terrorists, military strikes and hackers wanting to cause disruption, steal information or incapacitate a country remotely.” The team suggests that now we are forewarned of the possible worst-case scenario with regard to the smart grid and smart meters, we must put in place security measures to protect the infrastructure and maintain that security as the hackers advance to stay at least one step ahead of the threat.


Chalmers, C., Mackay, M. and MacDermott, A. (2016) ‘Securing the smart grid: threats and remediation‘, Int. J. Smart Grid and Green Communications, Vol. 1, No. 2, pp.166-190.
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Special issue published: "Policy Strategy and Modelling, Assessment and Analysis: the Contribution of Systems Dynamics"

International Journal of Applied Systemic Studies 6(3) 2016

• 'Representing' value creation: a combined approach of system dynamics and integrated reporting for the airline sector
• Which strategic orientation for systemic integration? A study on the organic olive oil industry
• Applying system dynamics and systems thinking methods to the development of robust workforce policies for the health and social care system in England
• Studying pension systems and retirement age: a simple system dynamics model for a complex issue 

Call for papers: "Cultural Finance"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Behavioural Accounting and Finance.

Cultural finance deals with how values, norms and beliefs affect financial decisions of countries and companies. Traditional finance theory assumes economic agents are pure rational human beings, thus, it disregards social aspects that are related to cultural values. These cultural values are formed as a result of common language, religion, or geographic proximity. Cultural values are essential elements in situations related to human decisions among them are financial decisions. Therefore, the traditional theory of finance should consider cultural aspects in addition to the traditional economic and financial factors when analysing financial decisions. Despite the globalisation of financial markets and their interrelatedness, differences in international financial practices are still not fully explained by traditional finance models. Cultural aspects can offer an explanation to the internationally divergent behaviour in financial practices.

 

During the last decade there has been a growing interest in “culture and finance” research which is still in its early stages of development. The aim of this special issue is to add to our understanding how culture affects the economic behaviour of individuals, firms and nations. We invite authors to submit high-quality theoretical or empirical papers that contribute to this young field of research i.e. cultural finance.

 

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

• Culture and dividend policy
• Culture and capital structure
• Culture and capital budgeting
• Culture and mergers and acquisitions
• Culture and cash holdings
• Culture and corporate investment
• Culture and corporate governance
• Culture and insider trading
• Culture and assets allocation
• Culture and investment strategies

 

Important Dates

Submission of manuscripts: 28 February, 2017

Notification to authors: 1 May, 2017

Final versions due: 31 July, 2017

Special issue published: "Technologies and Models for High Power Density Geared Powertrains"

International Journal of Powertrains 5(3) 2016

• Spur gear model for prediction of fatigue damage initiation in contact zone
• Influence of addendum modification on spur gears stability
• Transmission characteristics of injection moulded polymer spur gears: experimental and numerical evaluation
• Durability of injection moulded asymmetric involute polymer spur gears
• FEA-based design study of a gear tooth crack-growth monitoring sensor for high-reliability powertrains
• Analysis and design of a dynamic gear testing apparatus using high stiffness thermo-hydraulic actuators

Making MOOCs that stay the course

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are popular with educational establishments as an efficient way to deliver their materials. Unfortunately, student engagement does not match the enthusiasm of the educators and the number who complete any given course is disturbingly low, according to research published in the International Journal of Learning Technology. The authors of the paper, suggest that an engagement model for MOOCs needs to be implemented and simple steps taken to improve completion rates.

Jane Sinclair and Sara Kalvala of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Warwick, Coventry, UK, explain that the advent of MOOCs over the last few years has seen millions of people signing up for courses, hoping to improve their education, skills, job prospects, and their lives, in general. For instance, Coursera, one of the leading MOOC platforms has a portfolio of more than 1000 courses and some 22 million registered students while the not-for-profit edX platform provides access to 300 courses to more than three million students.

Attrition and low completion rates are often cited as failures of MOOCs, but in the absence of other measures of success of such courses, the team points out that the criticism is to some extent unfair. Completion of a course, is not necessarily the only measure of its success given that students who ultimately drop out may have gathered what they needed to know or have been inspired to take a different path when only part of the way through the course. There are other positive outcomes that a low completion rate would not take into account, such as the formation of new contacts and friendships among students.

There is an intrinsic problem in using MOOCs for many students. “It appears that learners on many MOOCs are spending much of their learning time on activities which are not generally associated with high learning gain,” the researchers report. “When time is limited, it may well be the more time-consuming reflective and interactive activities that are skipped.” One might assume that inefficient learning in a MOOC as in conventional education might lead to students failing to keep up with coursework and fall back in their understanding as they work through subsequent modules, all of which can lead to disenchantment with a course and ultimately a student dropping out.

However, the problem with assessing and developing MOOCs perhaps lies in the fact that they are really only distant relatives of conventional face-to-face lecture and classroom education. They are also only really kissing cousins to other types of online course. “We need to consider further the nature of the courses and the activities they incorporate,” the team says. “One approach to this is to consider them (and participants’ interaction with them) in terms of the level of meaningful, high impact, engagement activity.” In coming to that conclusion the researchers make the case for the need to understand MOOCs from the student engagement perspective and so improve outcomes and increase completion rates.


Sinclair, J. and Kalvala, S. (2016) ‘Student engagement in massive open online courses‘, Int. J. Learning Technology, Vol. 11, No. 3, pp.218-237.
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Research Picks Extra – September 2016

In this edition of Inderscience Research Picks, David Bradley reports on a way to reduce landfill or improve bioethanol productiong, involving domestic drying of food waste, an indoor pedestrian tracking system for safety and security and even social networking applications, a way to deal with the problem of tardy patients in hospital outpatient clinics, and finally how to reclaim valuable cobalt from spent lithium-ion batteries.

Dry food waste
Could a domestic device that desiccates food waste reduce the burden on landfill where local authorities do not have the facilities to compost or otherwise process such material for use as biomass or fertiliser? Researchers in Greece suggest that the mass of domestic food waste could be reduced by almost 80% by drying and volume reduced to less than two-thirds. Such an approach to waste pre-treatment would reduce refuse collection fuel bills as well as landfill volume requirements. The same pre-treatment might also facilitate the production of bioethanol from food waste where such a facility existed locally because drying does not destroy the requisite carbohydrate content. Moreover, desiccated waste could be stored for future use in this regard.
Sotiropoulos, A., Bava, N., Valta, K., Vakalis, S., Panaretou, V., Novacovic, J. and Malamis, D. (2016) ‘Household food waste dehydration technique as a pretreatment method for food waste minimisation’, Int. J. Environment and Waste Management, Vol. 17, Nos. 3/4, pp.273–286.

Where are they now?
A multisensor system for tracking pedestrians in the indoor environment has been developed by researchers in Spain and the USA. The system hooks into smart phones without relying on global navigation satellite systems, GPS, which do not function indoors. The system detects and counts steps on floors and stairs using the standard movement sensor in the phone, which are commonly used by individuals for fitness tracking and other applications. The system can recognises changes of direction and floor and so might be used in safety and security control of pedestrian flow in large shopping malls, office buildings, hospitals or other workplaces. Tracking people in such places could be useful for bringing people together in a timely manner or even keeping them apart as well as helping to ensure safety and security of a building perhaps during busy times or in the event of an emergency. Tests with Android phones were more than 90% accurate, the team reports.
Marron, J.J., Labrador,M.A.,Menendez-Valle, A., Fernandez-Lanvin, D. and Gonzalez-Rodriguez, M. (2016) ‘Multi sensor system for pedestrian tracking and activity recognition in indoor environments’, Int. J. Ad Hoc and Ubiquitous Computing, Vol. 23, Nos. 1/2, pp.3–23.

The trouble with patients
Patients are rarely patient, especially when the call of “The doctor will see you now” is a long time coming. However, research from a team at a large hospital in China suggests that it’s rarely the doctor’s fault even if they spend longer than the allotted time with their outpatient, the real problem lies with patients who are late for their appointment. The study found that extended consultation time can cause delays but the time that all patients will have to wait is minimised the more of them that arrive punctually. The team has developed a new model appointment system that would reduce the impact of tardy patients on others waiting for their appointment. Their model leads to a reduction of just over a third in patient waiting times overall.
Luo, L., Zhou, Y., Han, B.T., Shi, Y., Song, Q., He, X. and Guo, Z. (2016) ‘A simulation model for outpatient appointment scheduling with patient unpunctuality’, Int. J. Simulation and Process Modelling, Vol. 11, Nos. 3/4, pp.281–291.

Reclaiming metals from old batteries
Cobalt is an important metal in the cathode of lithium-ion batteries. Retrieving the valuable metal from spent batteries could be a useful part of reclamation and recycling of waste electrical goods and gadgets. Researchers in Bangladesh have investigated different acid leaching methods for the selective extraction of this metal from batteries. With just 1.5 molar hydrochloric acid (which is weaker than standard “bench” acid used in university teaching laboratories, they saw 93% dissolution by mass of cobalt. It took just one hour at 90 degrees Celsius to extract the metal to that degree as measured by atomic absorption spectrophotometry (AAS). X-ray diffraction (XRD) was used to look at the chemical structure of the battery cathode before and after leaching in order to inform future work aimed at optimising and improving the process for recycling.
Khan, M.Z.H., Alam, M.I., Khatun, M.S., Hasan, M.R., Al-Mamun, M.R., Islam, M.F., Khan, M., Aktar, S., Akther, S. and Fatema, K. (2016) ‘Co recovery from spent Li-ion battery by acid leaching – a comparative study’, Int. J. Environment and Waste Management, Vol. 17, Nos. 3/4, pp.203–215.


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International Journal of Additive and Subtractive Materials Manufacturing to publish expanded papers from CPIE-2016

Extended versions of papers presented at the IVth International Conference on Production and Industrial Engineering (19-21 December 2016, Jalandhar, India) will be published by the International Journal of Additive and Subtractive Materials Manufacturing.

Newly announced journal: International Journal of Spatio-Temporal Data Science

The rapid pace of data growth through proliferating, disparate location-sensing sources has given rise to a paradigm shift in how new age spatio-temporal (big) data is processed. Confidence in existing/traditional data engineering capabilities is gradually fading, triggering an urgent need for the next generation data management and analytical frameworks to deal with scalable spatio-temporal big data. The International Journal of Spatio-Temporal Data Science addresses the issues/challenges increasingly posed by overly complex and geographically distributed spatio-temporal data, a rapidly growing area in the realm of big data.

Free sample articles newly available from International Journal of Advanced Media and Communication

The following sample articles from the International Journal of Advanced Media and Communication are now available here for free:

• Patterns in the distribution of digital games via BitTorrent
• Content-based search overviews and exploratory browsing of movies with MovieClouds
• Digital clip gift shops as scenarios for collaborative architectures for monetising broadcast archive content: an evaluation from a technical and business viewpoint
• MOETA: a novel text-mining model for collecting and analysing competitive intelligence
• Innovation-related benefits of social media in Business-to-Business customer relationships

Call for papers: "High-Performance Computing Technologies and Emerging Services for IoT Systems"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Internet Technology and Secured Transactions.

A view of internet of things (IoT) is as a network of items embedded with sensors that are connected to the internet. It is a networked connection of objects including computers, smartphones, sensors, humans, etc. The application areas of the IoT for sharing and communicating information on the internet are including but not limited to smart technologies, industrial automation, mobile communication networks (3G/4G/LTE/5G), high performance computing (HPC), cloud computing, green communication and applications, wearable health care systems and environmental monitoring and control. This special issue aims to prove high-quality and unpublished research papers on all of the facets and challenges of IoT services and HPC technologies. High-quality review and survey papers are welcomed as well.

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

• System architectures for the IoT
• Network-based computing: cloud computing; high performance computing
• Mobile applications, services and integrations
• Emerging IoT applications in 5G networks
• Novel distributed techniques (e.g. edge/fog computing)
• Software defined solutions for IoT
• Energy efficiency and energy harvesting in IoT
• Efficient resource allocation schemes, QoS, and QoE in IoT
• Data processing and anomaly detection for IoT networks
• Relay, multi-hop, and cooperative communication in IoT
• Adaptive and autonomic computing in the IoT
• Security and privacy in pervasive IoT scenarios
• Innovative Big Data processing for IoT

Important Dates

Submission of manuscripts: 31 March, 2017

Special issue published: "Critical Infrastructure Computer Technology and Protection"

International Journal of Critical Computer-Based Systems 6(3) 2016

• Intrusion detection systems and techniques: a review
• Two-level medium access control in cyber physical system-based smart wireless networks
• Risk assessment and attack graph generation for collaborative infrastructures: a survey

Additional paper

• Control consistency as a management tool: the identification of systematic security control weaknesses in air traffic management

Inderscience is media partner for SAP Product Lifecycle Management Conference 2016

Inderscience is a media partner for SAP Product Lifecycle Management Conference (3-4 November 2016, The Hague, Netherlands).

The journals involved are:

• Int. J. of Product Development
• Int. J. of Product Lifecycle Management

More information on this event is available here.

Call for papers: "Advanced Power Electronics for Distributed Generation and Microgrids"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Power Electronics.

The capacity and size of conventional power systems are critical for economic installation and operation. Distributed generation (DG) is the new trend to accommodate various renewable power sources including micro hydro, biomass, biogas, solar power, wind power, and geothermal power etc. DG systems generally refer to small-scale electric power generators that produce electricity at the sites close to end users and are tied to grid.

Another trend is the modern and localised microgrid, which is also small-scale on contrary to the centralised electric network. A microgrid can operate either independently or interconnected with the area electric power system. Since microgrids increasingly employ a mixture of DGs, it is important to be considered together to represent the future grid solution.

Power electronics plays an important role for both DGs and microgrids. Power electronics are essential for controlling voltage conversion and power flow in different levels of DGs and microgrids. It becomes a timely and essential research subject to lead the energy solution with high efficiency and high reliability. The objective of this special issue is to attract quality submission addressing the various aspects of the advances of power electronic systems for both DGs and microgrids.

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

• System architecture:
• Modular configuration for high reliability
• Advanced configuration for high efficiency
• Architecture for the highest renewable energy harvest
• Converter topology for high efficiency:
• Grid-side converters
• Load side converters
• PV side converters
• Battery side converters
• Turbine side converters
• Using the latest semiconductor technologies, such as wide-band gap devices
• Safety and protection:
• Over current protection
• Over voltage protection
• Ground fault protection
• Advance of control and coordination:
• System coordination, optimisation and balancing
• Voltage regulation
• Current regulation
• Dynamic modelling and simulation
• Modulation technology
• Maximum power point tracking of renewable energy source
• Other subjects:
• Microgrid and hybrid power and energy systems
• Microgrid power flow analysis
• Power quality enhancement
• Reliability analysis
• Environment impact

Important Dates

Submission of manuscripts: 31 March, 2017
Notification to authors: 31 June, 2017
Final versions due: 31 July, 2017

Special issue published: "Advanced Technologies and Theories in Future Convergence Telecommunications"

International Journal of Advanced Media and Communication 6(1) 2016

• Advanced assessment model for improving effectiveness of information security measurement
• Unsupervised method of word sense disambiguation for real time associated word identification in human-robot interaction
• Swing analysis by body type with golf shot analysing device
• Using circular dot pattern code tag for medical information on the round type medical package
• Pedestrian-to-vehicle communication-based safety message transmission for the elderly in the conflict area
• MAP task allocation strategy in an ARM-based Hadoop cluster by using local storage as split cache
• Design and implementation smart device control system based on indoor positioning
• A Unity3D-based mobile fashion coordination system
• Verification of the performance of respiratory synchronisation radiation switchgear by using imaging technique

Inderscience is media partner for Pre-Filled Syringes Europe 2017

Inderscience is a media partner for Pre-Filled Syringes Europe (18-19 January 2017, London, UK).

The journals involved are:

• Int. J. of Biomedical Engineering and Technology
• Int. J. of Biotechnology
• Int. J. of Environment and Health
• Int. J. of Healthcare Technology and Management

More information on this event is available here.

Inderscience is media partner for Energy from Waste 2016

Inderscience is a media partner for Energy from Waste (8-9 December 2016, London, UK).

The journals involved are:

• Int. J. of Energy Technology and Policy
• Int. J. of Environment and Waste Management
• Int. J. of Environmental Engineering
• Int. J. of Environmental Technology and Management
• Int. J. of Global Energy Issues
• Int. J. of Renewable Energy Technology
• Progress in Industrial Ecology, An Int. J.

More information on this event is available here.

Free sample articles on Global Katrina Effect newly available from International Journal of Emergency Management

The following special issue articles from the International Journal of Emergency Management are now available here for free:

• Lessons from Sidr and Katrina: examining Bangladeshi progress in managing storm surge and some remaining challenges in the northern Bay of Bengal and central Gulf of Mexico regions
• Hurricane Katrina 10 years later: a qualitative meta-analysis of communications and media studies of New Orleans' Black community
• Looking forward 10 years after Katrina: managing climate risk and uncertainty through building systematic resilience in New Orleans post Hurricane Katrina
• Donor countries as aid recipients: the USA, New Zealand and the lessons of Hurricane Katrina
• A systematic review of the international disaster case management literature in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina
• Lessons from Katrina: commanding the military during disaster response - then and now

Call for papers: "People Create Your Innovative Technology – How Do You Manage Them"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Technology Management.

At the end of the day, there are always people behind any new technology or innovation. Representatives of young generations and employees working in R&D and innovation find the atmosphere and content of work highly important (Romero and Pescosolido, 2008). This effects R&D and technology management. There is a lot of discussion on related aspects in technology management literature at the organisational level. However, as Rauffet et al. (2016) indicate, individual competences are important constituents of organisational capabilities. Therefore, people-related issues are rapidly gaining momentum in R&D, innovation, technology development (Frishammar et al., 2015; Hannah and Robertson, 2015; Järvenpää and Majchrzak, 2016; Rau et al., 2016; Ritala et al., 2015; Wendelken et al., 2014).

Technology-oriented organisations are more dependent on knowledgeable, competent employees than ever (Guthrie, 2001). People as employees and entrepreneurs are the initiators and originators of technological developments (e.g., Adler, 1995; Alegre et al., 2013; Camelo-Ordaz et al., 2011; Wright et al. 1994). They are invaluable in generating ideas, collecting and combining information and knowledge, pushing ideas forward, and in accepting suggestions regarding unconventional solutions to more and less surprising problems. At the same time, they present the issue of the "human factor". Individuals are, at the end of the day, unpredictable in many ways (Glaser et al., 2015; Olander et al., 2015). There are numerous motivational, social, cognitive, informative, and other factors that play a role in how innovation processes begin, develop and finally turn out (see, e.g., Hannah and Robertson, 2015; Nickerson et al., 2007). The dispersion of the responsibility of innovation generation (Stovel and Bontis, 2002) further increases complexity.

Many people-related aspects have been addressed in earlier innovation studies. However, in many cases these are addressed from one side only, seeing some activities or features as either positive or negative. There are not many studies examining why the not-invented-here syndrome (e.g., Michailova and Husted, 2003; Antons and Piller, 2015) would be good, why predisposed (biased) views or dominance by a single individual manager (Nickerson et al., 2007) would be beneficial for innovation and organisational developments, or why positive outcomes would stem from employees leaking confidential knowledge outside the organization, for example.

Yet many paradoxical aspects can be found in innovation, and some counterintuitive aspects related to the human factor have already been revealed. For example, in general when employees can make decisions related to innovation themselves, they can act faster when needed and catch chances that would be otherwise missed. However, Glaser et al. (2015) point towards proactivity and initiative of employees to be potentially detrimental for value creation. On the other hand, some contexts may pose challenges in establishing shared understanding between individuals, or differencing interests may impede knowledge sharing for example at newly emerging interfaces (Rau et al., 2016).

Bulgurcu et al. (2010) and Hannah and Robertson (2015) have discussed the issue of people trying to do a good job by bending and breaking their organisation's confidentiality rules, and by sharing knowledge despite the attempts of the firm managers to protect core knowledge. From the management-side, setting up rules and structures provides security and the idea is to increase clarity and ease working, but employees may perceive or interpret these completely differently. Courpasson et al. (2014) suggest that employee resistance - that could generally be seen as an unwanted behaviour - can foster unintended, innovative outcomes for both individuals and the organisation. Yet another example is that high commitment and low employee turnover is not always beneficial; there is a chance that there could be more and more "Lonely wolves" (Husted and Michailova, 2010) type of R&D workers emerging in the future. These and other examples raise questions regarding the role of various human factors, the nature of their relationships, as well as the contingencies that drive these connections.

Against the above described background, we wish to receive submissions that would take a fresh look at managing the people that generate innovative technologies. In particular, we would like to include papers discussing factors that are typically associated with either positive or negative outcomes regarding innovativeness but that can, depending on context, timing, etc., generate varying innovation outcomes - even in paradoxical and counterintuitive ways. In particular, examination of the patterns of when, how, and why specific human factors, management practices, and other such aspects turn out to be positive or negative are of interest.

Theoretical, conceptual and empirical studies utilising a variety of methods from qualitative case studies to quantitative approaches are welcome. We encourage work conducted on data collected from organisations of different sizes (small and medium-sized enterprises, multinational enterprises, individual experts as freelancers etc.), and from different organisational levels - including examination at micro level. We suspect that data from different market areas can provide different kinds of results, and therefore encourage studies comparing different cultural contexts and/or having one particular context of examination.

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

• The role of people for competitiveness and cooperation in technology management
• Unconventional organisational tools for people management in technology management activities
• Organisational strategies for managing R&D employees
• Embracing cultural differences in technology management
• Contradictive issues in legal principles and organisational practices
• Employee turnover: cause of loss of knowledge assets or source of fresh new ideas?
• Innovation management from the viewpoint of strategy and management vs. R&D employees
• Downsides of intra-organisational knowledge sharing for technological developments
• Human factors promoting and/or declining productivity, efficiency, and quality of R&D
• (Over) enthusiastic employees as innovators and gatekeepers of core knowledge
• Complex linkages between external knowledge sharing and protection, and value capture
• Balancing intra-organisational knowledge sharing and protection
• Complexities of Inter-firmR&D and innovation activities
• Issues related to knowledge sharing and protection between individual experts
• The effects of voluntary and involuntary employee turnover for technology management
• Positive aspects of knowledge leakage in technology management
• Sense and emotions in technology management

Important Dates

Manuscripts due by: 10 October, 2017

References

Adler P. (1995). Interdepartmental Interdependence and Coordination: The Case of the Design/Manufacturing Interface. Organization Science, 6,147-167.

Alegre J, Sengupta K, & Lapiedra R. (2013). Knowledge management and innovation performance in a high-tech SMEs industry. International Small Business Journal, 31, 454-470.

Antons, D., & Piller, F. T. (2015). Opening the black box of "Not Invented Here": attitudes, decision biases, and behavioral consequences. The Academy of Management Perspectives, 29, 193-217.

Bulgurcu B, Cavusoglu H & Benbasat I. (2010). Information security policy compliance: An empirical study of rationality-based beliefs and information security awareness. MIS Quarterly, 34, 523-548.

Camelo-Ordaz C, Garcia-Cruz J, Sousa-Ginel E, & Valle-Cabrera R. (2011). The influence of human resource management on knowledge sharing and innovation in Spain: the mediating role of affective commitment. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 22, 1442-1463.

Courpasson, D., Dany, F., & Martí, I. (2014). Organizational entrepreneurship as active resistance: a struggle against outsourcing. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice. DOI: 10.1111/etap.12109, 1-30.

Frishammar, J., Ericsson, K., Patel, P.C., 2015. The dark side of knowledge transfer: Exploring knowledge leakage in joint R&D projects. Technovation 41-42, 75-88.

Glaser, L., Stam, W., & Takeuchi, R. (2015). Managing the risks of proactivity: A multilevel study of initiative and performance in the middle management context. Academy of Management Journal. Published online before print June 25, 2015, doi: 10.5465/amj.2014.0177

Guthrie, J. (2000). Alternative pay practices and employee turnover. Group and Organization Management, 25(4), 419-39.

Hannah DR & Robertson K. (2015). Why and how do employees break and bend confidential information protection rules? Journal of Management Studies, 52, 381-413.

Husted, K. & Michailova, S. (2010). Dual allegiance and knowledge sharing in inter-firm R&D collaborations. Organizational Dynamics, 39(1), 37-47.

Järvenpää, S.L., Majchrzak, A., 2016. Interactive self-regulatory theory for sharing and protecting in interorganizational collaborations. Academy of Management Review 41(1): 9-27.

Michailova, S., & Husted, K. (2003). Knowledge-sharing hostility in Russian firms. California Management Review, 45(3), 59-77.

Nickerson, J.A., Silverman, B.S. & Zenger, T.R. (2007) The 'Problem' of Creating and Capturing Value. Strategic Organization, 5, 211 - 225.

Olander, H., Hurmelinna-Laukkanen, P. & Heilmann, P. (2015). Human resources - Strength and weakness in protection of intellectual capital. Journal of Intellectual Capital, 16, 742-762.

Rau, C. Möslein, K.M., and Neyer, A-K. (2016) Playing possum, hide-and-seek, and other behavioral patterns: knowledge boundaries at newly emerging interfaces, R&D Management, 46, 2, 341-353.

Rauffet, P., Cunha, C. D., & Bernard, A. (2016). Managing resource learning in distributed organisations with the organisational capability approach. International Journal of Technology Management, 70(4), 300-322.

Ritala, P., Olander, H., Michailova, S. and Husted, K. (2015) Knowledge sharing, knowledge leaking and relative innovation performance: An empirical study, Technovation, 35, 22-31.

Romero, E., Pescosolido, A. (2008). Humour and group effectiveness. Human Relations, 61(3), pp. 395-418.

Stovel, M, & Bontis, N. (2002). Voluntary turnover:knowledge management - friend or foe? Journal of Intellectual Capital, 3(3): 303-322.

Wendelken, A., Danzinger, F., Rau, C., and Moeslein, K.M. (2014). Innovation without me: why employees do (not) participate in organizational innovation communities, R&D Management, 44, 2, 217-236.

Wright PM, McMahan GC, & McWilliams A. (1994). Human resources and sustained competitive advantage: a resource-based perspective. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 5, 301-326.