Free sample articles newly available from International Journal of Process Systems Engineering

The following sample articles from the International Journal of Process Systems Engineering are now available here for free:

• Configurations for multiple thermal energy storages in thermal networks
• Analytical and experimental investigation of thermal efficiency improvement of thermochemical water splitting for hydrogen production
• Economic and environmental analysis of a green energy hub with energy storage under fixed and variable pricing structures
• Smart grids vs. storage management
• Heat management in a campus cafeteria with optimal insulation thickness for thermal comfort of a space-variant manikin
• Automotive underbody diffuser for battery thermal management
• Robust hydro-thermal power system controller considering energy capacitor system and wind power source
• Incentives for the reuse of electric vehicle batteries for load-shifting in residences
• Energy and exergy analyses of power generation via an integrated biomass post-firing combined-cycle
• Improving the accuracy of the single diode PV models
• gpuMF: a framework for parallel hybrid metaheuristics on GPU with application to the minimisation of harmonics in multilevel inverters
• Single phase low THD optimised inverter for PV voltage regulation

New Editor for International Journal of Migration and Border Studies

Dr. Idil Atak from Ryerson University in Canada has been appointed to take over editorship of the International Journal of Migration and Border Studies.

Special issue published: "Big Data Intelligence and Knowledge Engineering"

International Journal of Big Data Intelligence 4(1) 2017

• PaloPro: a platform for knowledge extraction from big social data and the news
• Optimising column family for OLAP queries in HBase
• A knowledge-based integrated framework for increasing social management intelligence
• Additional paper
• HCEm model and a comparative workload analysis of Hadoop cluster

Free sample articles newly available from International Journal of Machining and Machinability of Materials

The following sample articles from the International Journal of Machining and Machinability of Materials are now available here for free:

• Experimental investigation of effect of roller burnishing process parameters on surface roughness and surface hardness of C40E steel
• Chip formation characteristics in the machining of titanium alloys: a review
• Morphological investigation of Ti-6Al-4V chips produced by conventional turning
• Experimental investigation on part quality and metallic particle emission when milling 6061-T6 aluminium alloy
• Experimental investigation on electrical discharge machining of RENE80 nickel super alloy
• Prediction of critical thrust force for exit-ply delamination during drilling composite laminates: thermo-mechanical analysis
• Effects of electrode configuration on MRR and EWR during electric discharge machining of Al/10wt%SiCp-MMC
• Influence of process parameters on material removal rate and surface roughness in WED-machining of Ti50Ni40Cu10 shape memory alloy
• Study the effect of black layer on electrode wear ratio in powder mixed electric discharge machining of titanium alloys
• Machinability of carbon/epoxy composites by electrical discharge machining

Call for papers: "Mergers and Acquisitions in the High-tech Industry: Investment Strategies, Value Creation and Innovation"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Management and Enterprise Development.

Mergers and acquisitions (M&As) have been studied using different approaches that have generated a considerable amount of empirical and theoretical studies, resulting in a high fragmentation of points of view (Capasso and Meglio, 2005). This phenomenon is particularly true for high-tech sectors that have been increasingly characterised by a significant expansion of M&As’ activity (Chadam and Pastuszak 2013; Rossi et al., 2013). Furthermore, the very definition of “hi-tech M&A” also presents difficulties. In fact, M&As in high technology sectors concern two different typologies of acquisitions: the acquisition of high-tech companies and acquisitions in which technology is only one component of the acquired firm’s assets (Ahuja and Katila 2001).

The purpose of this Special Issue is to analyse the phenomenon of mergers and acquisitions in high-tech sectors. Recent years have witnessed an impressive wave of M&As, but these operations, despite their popularity, have produced mixed results for their stakeholders and presented no systemic vision (Rossi, 2015).

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

• M&A and value creation
• M&A in different countries,
• M&A in different industries (high-tech vs. traditional)
• M&A as financial choice
• Organisational changes in M&As

Important Date

Manuscripts due by: 30 November, 2017

References

Ahuja, G. and Katila, R. (2001), "Technological acquisitions and the innovation performance of acquiring firms: a longitudinal Study", Strategic Management Journal, Vol. 22 No. 3, pp. 197-220

Capasso, A. and Meglio, O. (2005), "Knowledge transfer in mergers and acquisition: how frequent acquirers lean to manage the integration process", in Capasso, A., Dagnino, G.B. and Lanza, A. (Eds), Strategic Capabilities and Knowledge Transfer within and between Organizations, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham.

Chadam, J. and Pastuszak, Z. (2013), "Acquisitions: how should a project be successfully executed?", Industrial Management & Data Systems, Vol. 113, No. 9, pp. 1270-1285

Rossi, M., Tarba, S.Y. and Raviv, A. (2013), "Mergers and acquisitions in the hightech industry: a literature review", International Journal of Organizational Analysis, Vol. 21 No. 1, pp. 66-82.

Rossi, M., Thrassou, A. and Vrontis, D. (2015), "Biotechnological mergers and acquisitions: features, trends and new dynamics", Journal of Research in Marketing and Entrepreneurship, Vol. 17, No. 1, pp. 91-109

Special issue published: "Advances in Computational Science, Information Technology and Engineering"

International Journal of Computational Science and Engineering 14(1) 2017

• Multimodal approach for non-tagged indoor identification and tracking using smart floor and pyroelectric infrared sensors
• Cloud-assisted data management in wireless body area networks
• A new strategy for bridging the semantic gap in image retrieval
• A scalable Map Reduce tasks scheduling: a threading-based approach

Additional papers

• A resource allocation evolutionary algorithm for OFDM system
• A GPU-based statistical image up-sampling method by using edge templates
• The risk control evaluation for supply chain based on knowledge management
• Combining the IMM with second order debiased converted measurement for detonation control

Call for papers: "Anatomy of Cultural and Creative Entrepreneurship: Past, Present and Future"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business.

Little attention, if any, has been paid to one of the most recent “branches” of entrepreneurship: cultural and creative entrepreneurship. Sometimes, correctly or wrongly confused with social entrepreneurship, creative and cultural entrepreneurship has emerged as an independent research field in the last decades.

From the pioneering article by Paul DiMaggio in 1982, cultural and creative entrepreneurship as a research and teaching field has developed significantly in the last thirty years. In the Netherlands, and in many parts of continental Europe, in North America and Australia, cultural and creative entrepreneurship has flourished and degrees or specific courses are now part of the regular educational offerings by arts, social sciences and business faculties. As an academic field, cultural and creative entrepreneurship knowledge circulates in many well-known international conferences (EURAM, EGOS, IECER, among others) and academic journals are devoting special attention on this nascent field. Looking back at these developments we wish to invite contributions that reflect upon the academic journey of this recent field.

This special issue seeks to identify the epistemological development of cultural and creative entrepreneurship over time. More specifically, the objective is to detect the paradigmatic shifts in this field, to gain an understanding of its evolution, trajectory changes, present state and possible future developments.

The development of the concept of cultural and creative entrepreneurship during the last decades occurred at different levels: intergovernmental or policy and academic level. The United Nations, as well as the European Parliament and European Commission, have all focused on the emergence of a new paradigm in which entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation represent the key drivers of the economy (UNESCO/PNUD Report on the creative economy, 2013, European Parliament, 2013, European Commission, 2010). This specific focus on the creative and cultural activities as a blueprint of the new entrepreneurial dynamics may be explained as a way to understand better the effects of creativity on entrepreneurship and innovation and its relationship to the social, cultural and geographical context. Moreover, it implies the recognition of the role of the cultural and creative entrepreneur to the vitality and health of economies at national and international levels as well.

Richard Caves’s work published in 2000 on creative industries opened up the stream on entrepreneurship studies within the cultural and creative sectors. Several conceptual/theoretical articles (among others, Ellmeier, 2003; Rae, 2005; Swedberg, 2006, Klamer, 2011; Mokyr, 2013; Essig, 2015) and some books (Henry, 2008; HKU, 2010; Henry and De Bruyn, 2011, Lazzeretti, 2013; Kuhlke et al. 2015) have been published on these topics since then. However, looking at this existing literature, we can observe a very fragmented production in which it is hardly possible to discern clear focuses, orientations and approaches. Single pieces focusing on specific - but relevant - aspects are there but the skeleton of the discipline seems to be weak and fragile. Presently, limited knowledge is produced about the emergence, development and current state of cultural entrepreneurship research today (Hausmann and Heinze 2014).

Applying Linneo’s approach, we have species but no clear nomenclature of creative and cultural entrepreneurship. This “nomenclature” and its development in paradigms should be thoroughly investigated first to understand the genealogy, dynamics and implications of this new discipline and second to be able to trace some possible feature developments. Therefore, the purpose of this special issue is to develop a critical reflection on the state of the art of this discipline and understand where we actually are: “As a body of literature develops, it is useful to stop occasionally, take inventory for the work that has been done, and identify new directions and challenges for the future” (Low and MacMillan, 1998, p. 139).

Bearing this in mind, we aim to initiate constructive discussions on selected issues concerning cultural and creative entrepreneurship, which will frame the future research agenda. Moreover, we want to have an interdisciplinary approach including contributions from entrepreneurship and management, sociology, psychology, innovation and creative and cultural industries. We wish to invite contributions that reflect on two main areas: theories and concepts, and education in cultural and creative entrepreneurship.

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

• Theories and Concepts: Is there a theoretical core in cultural and creative entrepreneurship? Are the theories that are used and taught simply re-contextualised entrepreneurship theories? Are there some main ideas and concepts that have emerged over the last decades that could point to an emerging differentiation and a distinct identity for cultural and creative entrepreneurship? To what extent do cultural and creative entrepreneurship differ from other varieties of entrepreneurship? What are the shared grounds of cultural and creative entrepreneurship with the other varieties of entrepreneurship? Focusing on the last two decades, what research themes and trends have been most consistent within the field of cultural and creative entrepreneurship? Why and how can we explain their consistency?
• Cultural and Creative Entrepreneurship Education: How has the cultural and creative entrepreneurship curriculum developed over the last two decades? Are the existing programs capturing the specificity of culture and creativity entrepreneurship or simply reproducing the formats adopted in business school environments for teaching entrepreneurship? Are there significant changes? From an historical perspective, what can we say about the paradigms in cultural and creative entrepreneurship education so far? Are there any relevant links between the theory and the education practice?

Important Dates

Submission of manuscripts: 31 August, 2017

Special issue published: "Refugee (Re)Settlement: Law, Policy and Service Provision in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the UK"

International Journal of Migration and Border Studies 3(1) 2017

• Aspirational yet precarious: compliance of New Zealand refugee settlement policy with international human rights obligations
• Refugee healthcare in Canada: responses to the 2012 changes to the interim federal health program 
• Settling refugees in Australia: achievements and challenges
• The rights of resettled refugees in the UK: lessons for 'new' resettlement states and rights based advocacy for refugees
• Coming and going: the impacts of precarious work and non-citizenship on immigrant in- and out-migration in New Brunswick

Research Picks Extra – January 2017

Amping innovation up to “11”
There are pros and cons to innovation that emerges from the activities of hobbyists according to researchers in Finland who have taken the CreamSound guitar amplifier as a case study. They point out that the product users and the innovators being one and the same are inevitably highly passionate about the work. Conversely, except in rare cases, resources at the disposal of the innovators are limited. The findings add to the small but growing knowledge surrounding customer- and user-centred innovation an increasingly important topic in product development and subsequent marketing of novel products and new designs of old products. The advent of social networking could hobbyist innovators could gain skills and become more effective through greater communication and connectivity.
Salmela, E., Häkkinen, K. and Rantala, J. (2017) ‘Hobbyists as a super group of user-centred innovation – case CreamSound guitar amplifier’, Int. J. Innovation and Learning, Vol. 21, No. 2, pp.223–245.

More power to your elbow
Biomechanics is yet to reach its full potential consistent with improving healthcare delivery, according to researchers in India. The team’s analysis of a persistent and ubiquitous joint problem – elbow pain, often referred to as tennis elbow, or golfer’s elbow depending on the specific location of the problem, has allowed them to show how biomechanics coupled with software might be more efficaciously employed in understanding such a problem. Fundamentally, they have determined the nature of the forces involved in elbow flexion and the angle through which the elbow functions most effectively. While, the specific case offers a good example of an analysis with a biomechanics approach, it also serves as a model for how biomechanics might mature.
Pujari, S., Venkatesh, T. and Kumar, M.D.S. (2016) ‘Analysis of Muscle moment and reaction force of elbow joint during flexion moment’, Int. J. Biomedical Engineering and Technology, Vol. 22, No. 4, pp.370–376

The tourist age
The competitiveness of any given tourist attraction depends on happy visitors who enjoy the visit and feel they got value for money and would consider a return revisit or at the least recommend the attraction to other people. The age of visitors to an attraction is critical to profiling the tourist demographic especially given that certain types of attraction may be broadly of more interest to certain age groups than others. Moreover, the image of a given destination may give potential visitors in different age groups preconceptions about that attraction and either encourage or discourage them from visiting. A US study offers new insights into how age affects satisfaction and points to new approaches to tourist marketing and business practices that could bolster the industry.
Li, J., Ali, F. and Kim, W.G. (2017) ‘Age matters: how demographics influence visitor perception and attitude at the destination level’, Int. J. Innovation and Learning, Vol. 21, No. 2, pp.149–164.

Optimising sperm
Complex problems often require complex answers. However, mimicking natural processes such as the way in which a bee colony seeks out flowers rich in nectar, bats hunt flying insects, or ants control the colony can be a way to find simpler solutions to such problems. Indeed, a whole field has grown out of biomimetic optimisation. Now, a team from Egypt and Yemen has turned to the natural process of how sperm follow a chemical attractant given off by the egg to achieve internal fertilisation as a novel way to optimise certain problems. The team has coded a computer algorithm that mimics the behaviour of many sperm of different “motility” flowing towards the ovum in the reproductive tract guided by a chemoattractant. The algorithm can then solve a global optimisation problem without resorting to much more long-winded trial-and-error approaches commonly used for such engineering problems as design of gear trains or liquid transport containers.
Raouf, O.A. and Hezam, I.M. (2017) ‘Sperm motility algorithm: a novel metaheuristic approach for global optimisation’, Int. J. Operational Research, Vol. 28, No. 2, pp.143–163.

Free sample articles newly available from International Journal of Migration and Border Studies

The following sample articles from the International Journal of Migration and Border Studies are now available here for free:

• Negotiating boundaries at (central) margins: migrants and sex work in a South African border town
• 'Debordering' and 'rebordering': discriminatory and racial discourses of borders under globalisation
• Medico-legal borders and the shaping of health services for Afghans in Iran: physical, social, bureaucratic, and public health conditions of care
• Asylum v. sovereignty in the 21st century: how nation-states breach international law to block access to asylum
• US refugee resettlement policy and international human rights treaty obligations: a mixed record

Inderscience is media partner for Orphan Drugs and Rare Diseases Europe 2017

Inderscience is a media partner for Orphan Drugs and Rare Diseases Europe 2017 (15-16 May 2017, Berlin, Germany).

The journals involved are:

• Int. J. of Behavioural and Healthcare Research
• Int. J. of Cognitive Biometrics
• Int. J. of Computational Biology and Drug Design
• Int. J. of Immunological Studies
• Int. J. of Medical Engineering and Informatics

More information on this event is available here.

Call for papers: "Creativity Management and Engineering"

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

This Special Issue will focus on the areas of creativity management and engineering with a particular emphasis in human resource management and production engineering.

It seeks cultural and geographic diversity in studies of human resource management and engineering and uses that have a special impact on organisational communications, change processes and work practices, reflecting the diversity of societal and infrastructural conditions.

Creativity management and engineering, worldwide, is facing enormous challenges by sweeping political, social and economic changes. Whether we are a manager, an engineer, a policy maker, a strategist, a practitioner, or a researcher, we need to know what is happening, in both national and international environments, to be able to understand and develop effective responses to meet these new demands and challenges.

We aim to increase the knowledge and effectiveness of all those involved in creativity management and engineering whether in the profit or non-profit sectors or in the public or private sectors.

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

• Human resources management
• Culture and organisational behaviour
• Management innovation
• Organisational creativity
• Creativity management
• Sustainable organisational practices and innovation
• Sustainable management
• Production engineering
• Strategic management
• Entrepreneurship
• Business strategy
• Interdisciplinary management
• Decision analysis
• Production management
• Logistics
• Knowledge management
• Operations strategy and planning
• Scheduling and control
• Optimisation techniques
• Statistical and computational methods
• Quality management
• Risk and uncertainty
• Inventory management

Important Dates

Submission of manuscripts: 31 July, 2017

Free sample articles newly available from International Journal of Exergy

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

• Entropy generation in rectangular microchannels
• Thermodynamic analyses and sustainability assessment of solar-based organic Rankine cycle
• Exergy and energy analyses of a sugarcane juice production and clarification unit
• Entropy and exergy analysis of a Ranque-Hilsch vortex tube with two vortex chambers
• Entropy generation analysis for metachronal beating of ciliated Cu-water nanofluid with magnetic field
• Computational study of entropy generation minimisation in continuous stirred tank reactor
• Exergy analysis of two-pass reverse osmosis (RO) desalination with and without energy recovery turbine (ERT)

Special issue published: "Counter-Narratives in and around Organisations in Cross Cultural Environments"

European Journal of Cross-Cultural Competence and Management 4(1) 2016

• The power of myth. The dialectics between 'elitism' and 'academism' in economic expert discourse
• Counter-narration with numbers: understanding the interplay of words and numerals in fiscal storytelling
• The destabilising effect of ethical counter-narrative: a qualitative inquiry in a non-profit setting
• Counternarrative and antenarrative inquiry in two cross-cultural contexts

Call for papers: "Soft Computing Application and Reviews"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Advanced Intelligence Paradigms.

Soft computing plays an important, unique, and highly visible role in bringing a variety of technologies of granular computing, neural networks and evolutionary optimisation under the same roof with a well-articulated intent to support the design and analysis pursuit of intelligent systems. We have been witnessing significant progress in soft computing, being regarded both as a coherent methodologies platform and algorithmic platform. The leitmotiv of soft computing is about the synergy where all individual contributing technologies are seamlessly structured together and we build on their unique strengths and compensate existing limitations. The synergies are formed in several ways, reflecting the diversity of the problems being handled. the ongoing challenges give rise to the plethora of design schemes and make the use of soft computing a highly creative endeavour.

The primary objective of this special issue is to bring forward thorough, in-depth, and well-focused developments of soft computing approaches in various applications. Our ultimate objective is to raise and discuss fundamental questions that create a tapestry of soft computing design and analysis practices of intelligent systems. What are the key design methodologies of bringing all technologies together so that the synergistic linkage could be fully exploited what are the essential challenges? What is the essence of synergies? What are the currently encountered limitations? Where did we witness failures? Why did they happen? What were the key trends reported over the last decades? What are the stumbling blocks hampering or slowing down the progress? What are the applied application domains in which soft computing has assumed a highly visible position? All these are highly intriguing, important and timely questions whose discussion may help foster further progress in the area.

The issue will carry revised and substantially extended versions of selected papers presented at the 7thInternational Conference on Cloud Computing, Data Science and Engineering (CONFLUENCE-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, the following:

• Soft computing: analysis and underlying methodologies
• Main challenges of intelligent system design
• Comparative studies involving design practices supported by soft computing
• Best analysis and development practices of soft computing
• Limitations of technologies of soft computing
• Validation and analysis schemes of intelligent systems
• Applications of soft computing in different domains

Important Dates
Submission of manuscripts: 10 March, 2017
Notification to authors: 10 May, 2017
Final versions due: 10 July, 2017

Free sample articles newly available from International Journal of Computational Systems Engineering

The following sample articles from the International Journal of Computational Systems Engineering are now available here for free:

• An improved fuzzy cellular neural network (IFCNN) for an edge detection based on parallel RK(5,6) approach
• New approach for flexible query using the knowledge discovered in large database
• Discrimination between inrush and fault condition in transformer: a probabilistic neural network approach
• Expert locator using concept linking
• An intelligent system to boost the recommendation for individual and group users in mobile marketplace
• A Hindi speech recognition system for connected words using HTK
• Rules mining from multi-layered neural networks
• Modelling of asset integrity management process: a case study for computing operational integrity preference weights

International Journal of Technology Intelligence and Planning to publish expanded papers from Business and Applied Sciences Academy of North America International Conference

Extended versions of papers presented at the Business and Applied Sciences Academy of North America (BAASANA) International Conference 2017 (16-18 August 2017, Exeter, UK) will be published by the International Journal of Technology Intelligence and Planning.

Special issue published: "Efforts Towards Stability and Growth in the European Union"

International Journal of Diplomacy and Economy 3(2) 2016

• Similarities and differences of IMF conditionality clause in Latin American and Euroarea states: a critical appraisal
• The European Fund for Strategic Investments as a response to the EU's disinvestment crisis: an assessment of the Juncker Investment Plan
• The legal framework for the shadow economy in the European Union
• The impact of the austerity measures to confront the economic crisis on the EU objectives and EU values
• Portfolio investments in an EU country under crisis: lessons from the ICSID decision on the case 'Poštová banka, a.s. and Istrokapital SE vs. The Hellenic Republic' - the Greek PSI case

New Editor for Atoms for Peace: an International Journal

Prof. Tetsuo Sawada from the Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan has been appointed to take over editorship of Atoms for Peace: an International Journal.

Free sample articles newly available from International Journal of Big Data Intelligence

The following sample articles from the International Journal of Big Data Intelligence are now available here for free:

• Privacy models for big data: a survey
• Corporate governance fraud detection from annual reports using big data analytics
• Automated validation of structured large databases: an illustration of material code bulk validation
• Computer network traffic prediction: a comparison between traditional and deep learning neural networks
• Learning-based text classifiers using the Mahalanobis distance for correlated datasets

Call for papers: "Human Resources, Leadership and Public Management"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Public Sector Performance Management.

In social sciences, best practices can improve the foundation of new knowledge and preliminary findings. However, the social and cultural context in which the theory is applied will have an impact on diverse outcomes. We therefore invite research papers exploring this area.

We would recommend that authors submitting to this special issue refer to the following papers:

• Dana, L.P. & Dumez, H. (2015) Qualitative Research Revisited: Epistemology of a Comprehensive Approach,¨ International Journal of Entrepreneurship & Small Business 26 (2), October 2015, pp. 154-170.
• Dana, L.P. & Dana, T.E. (2005) Expanding the Scope of Methodologies Used in Entrepreneurship Research,¨ International Journal of Entrepreneurship & Small Business 2 (1), 2005, pp. 79-88. 

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

• Managing human resources, engaging employees, succession planning and talent management
• Fostering and managing diversity in the workplace
• Civil service, merit system reform and pay reforms
• Leading by example and by process - cases in excellence
• Strategies to stimulate and harness employee motivation
• Improved productivity and efficiency
• Collaborative leadership and governance
• Whistleblower protection
• Performance management in human resource
• Leadership in Public Organisation
• Knowledge management in public sector

Important Dates

Submission of manuscript 30 September, 2017

Notification to authors: 30 November, 2017

Final versions due: 31 January 2018

Special issue published: "Challenges to Cybersecurity in the 21st Century"

International Journal of Business Continuity and Risk Management 6(4) 2016

• The mimetic virus: a vector for cyberterrorism
• Oil prices and the US macroeconomy
• A statistical overview of information system security in application quality assurance
• Towards trajectory anonymisation using multi-dimensional index structures
• Conquering the cyber attacks: analysis and protecting the enterprise resources
• Authenticity, a key to successful consulting engagements

Call for papers: "Remote Sensing Big Data: Theory, Methods and Applications"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Spatio-Temporal Data Science.

In recent times, the geographic information system (GIS) is emerging as a research area for scholars. It is a computer-based tool which helps us to get the spatial information of various geographical scenarios. At the same time, we can create, manipulate, analyse and display the spatial information. The objective of GIS is to create faster, cheaper and a more reliable decision support system.

Therefore, we aim to bring together experts on data science, algorithm development and computer science, as well as environmental engineers and geoscientists, to present state-of-the-art algorithms, tools, and applications oriented to processing and exploitation of a huge amount of remotely sensed data.

We will not only take stock of the trends and developments of the globally competitive environment, but we will also provide future direction to young researchers and practitioners. This special issue would be of immense benefit to researchers, academicians, industry and participants from technical institutes, R & D organisations and students working in the field of big data for remote sensing.

The issue will carry revised and substantially extended versions of selected papers presented at the International Conference on Smart Computing and Communication (SmartTech-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, the following:

• Agricultural informatics and communication
• Applications of remote sensing
• Big data analytics and its application
• Classification algorithms
• Cloud computing
• Community information systems
• Computing vision
• Data visualisation
• Dimension reduction
• High performance computing
• Irrigation Informatics
• Open source GIS
• Real-time systems
• Remote sensing, GIS and GPS
• Spatial resolution
• Supercomputing

Important Dates
Submission of manuscripts: 15 June, 2017
Notification to authors: 15 August, 2017
Final versions due: 15 October, 2017

Inderscience is media partner for Pharmaceutical Freeze Drying Technology 2017

Inderscience is a media partner for Pharmaceutical Freeze Drying Technology (8-9 May 2017 London UK).

The journals involved are:

• Int. J. of Biomedical Engineering and Technology
• Int. J. of Healthcare Technology and Management
• Int. J. of Materials and Product Technology

More information about this event is available here.

Special issue published: "Wine Business and Economics"

International Journal of Economics and Business Research 12(4) 2016

• Foreign affiliates of the multinational firms in the wine and spirits industry: location-specific advantages and cultural distance
• Wineries' contribution to the local community: a stakeholder view
• Sustainable wine tourism development in burgeoning regions: lessons from New Jersey and Connecticut
• Economic determinants of wine consumption in Thailand
• Revisiting the declining price anomaly in wine auctions

Additional papers

• An integrated structural model of buyer-seller relationships in retailing markets
• The implementation of cross-functional teams in SMEs: the impact on the competitive priorities

Inderscience is media partner for Pharmaceutical Logistics 2017

Inderscience is a media partner for Pharmaceutical Logistics (18-19 May 2017, London, UK).

The journals involved are:

• Int. J. of Environment and Health
• Int. J. of Healthcare Technology and Management
• Int. J. of Logistics Systems and Management
• Int. J. of Supply Chain and Inventory Management
• Int. J. of Supply Chain and Operations Resilience

Cyberterrorism could get personal

Cyber terrorism is a controversial term. In considering terrorism, the popular image is of hijacked aeroplanes, buildings and lives destroyed by bombs, multiple shootings and other large-scale life-threatening incidents. It would be easy to marginalise cyberterrorism as nothing more important as a bit of hacking, a few leaked emails and passwords, a website blocked. Unfortunately, one must consider the scenario in which a cyberterrorist takes control of important infrastructure, transport systems, power grids, and defence installations. Where a network of terrorists might organise a large-scale terror attack involving conventional weapons, the cyberterrorist might take control of or even destroy infrastructure on which millions of lives depend.

Writing in the International Journal of Business Continuity and Risk Management, Nicholas Ayres, Leandros Maglaras, Helge Janicke, Richard Smith and Ying He of the School of Computer Science and Informatics, at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK, explain that in cyberterrorism the computer, the digital world, becomes both weapon and target, and the consequences of malicious use in such a context could have global consequences. They point out that the main focus of defence and intelligence agencies when it comes to the diffuse term cyberterrorism is currently critical national infrastructure. However, a very large proportion of the global population is now online. With simple tools, our personal computers and communications devices could be an easier and more tempting target for the cyberterrorist.

The cyberterrorist might, for instance, permanently disable our connectivity at the individual level and cause harm perhaps by blocking access to utilities, health, and emergency services. They might physically damage our homes and other property by taking control of the growing number of Internet of things (IoT) devices used to control heating, refrigeration, lighting, security and other domestic systems, and increasingly our vehicles. Moreover, the concept of distributed denial of service attacks (DDOS) carried out by so-called “zombie” computers operating as part of a botnet have already been used widely in hacking well-known corporate databases. It may well be only a matter of time before a botnet is used to take control or manipulate with malicious intent critical systems in the domestic environment as well as in industry, commerce and defence.

“The postmodern cyberterrorist can deploy a digital weapon such as a virus that can be programmed to ‘explode’ or activate at a specified time or if a specific condition is met,” the team suggests. “A whole new arsenal of digital armaments in order to attack a target that is anywhere in the world and equally can be deployed from anywhere,” the team adds. Given that the primary motive of the terrorist is to instil fear in people, this might be possible on a global level with the threat and demonstration of a sufficiently destructive computer virus that interferes at a critical level in terms of safety, food and water, health and other critical aspects of our daily lives.

In the digital age we have a whole lot more to fear than fear itself Franklin D…


Ayres, N., Maglaras, L.A., Janicke, H., Smith, R. and He, Y. (2016) ‘The mimetic virus: a vector for cyberterrorism‘, Int. J. Business Continuity and Risk Management, Vol. 6, No. 4, pp.259-271.

Free sample articles newly available from International Journal of Advanced Intelligence Paradigms

The following sample articles from the International Journal of Advanced Intelligence Paradigms are now available here for free:

• Similar names in academic literature as a tools to deceive researchers
• Band selection by mutual information for hyper-spectral image classification
• Efficient similarity measure for comparing tree structures
• Handling batch effects on cross-platform classification of microarray data
• Weighted value assessment of linear fractional programming for possibilistic multi-objective problem
• Knowledge-based differential evolution approach to quantisation table generation for the JPEG baseline algorithm
• Facial shape-from-shading using features detection method

Special sections on family businesses and university spin-offs in International Journal of Globalisation and Small Business

International Journal of Globalisation and Small Business 8(4) 2016

SPECIAL SECTION ON FAMILY BUSINESSES IN GLOBAL COMPETITION

• International expansion of family firms: the moderating role of successors and external managers
• Family firms and homeland production: reasoning from agency theory and socio-emotional wealth theory
• Go East! How family businesses choose markets and entry modes when internationalising
• Identifying the barriers of developing rural women's family businesses

SPECIAL SECTION ON UNIVERSITY SPIN-OFFS - PROCESS, CONTEXT AND GLOBALISATION

• Is university-based entrepreneurship successful? The Spanish case
• University spin-off creation in Canada, Spain and Portugal: a comparative analysis from the perspective of the national systems of entrepreneurship
• University spin-offs and their commercialisation through acquisition

Inderscience is media partner for Pain Therapeutics 2017

Inderscience is a media partner for Pain Therapeutics (22-23 May 2017, London, UK).

The journals involved are:

• Int. J. of Biomedical Engineering and Technology
• Int. J. of Behavioural and Healthcare Research
• Int. J. of Bioinformatics Research and Applications
• Int. J. of Work Organisation and Emotion

More information on this event is available here.

Call for papers: "Emerging Pervasive and Ubiquitous Networking"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Ad Hoc and Ubiquitous Computing.

The ever increasing market penetration of smart-phones, tablets, netbooks, Internet of Things and wearable devices, along with the ubiquitous availability of wireless networks are deeply influencing the way people live, work, interact, and socialise. The broad popularity and diffusion of innovative services and applications tailored at mobile users who are both service consumers and big data producers is also raising challenging research issues that require us to rethink available network and services technology solutions to meet the emerging needs of a broader and ever growing user base and voluminous network traffic.

Ubiquitous computing and communications has drawn significant interests from both academia and industry and continues to attract tremendous research efforts due to its promising new business opportunity in information technology and engineering. At their core, all models of ubiquitous computing share a vision of small, inexpensive, robust networked processing devices, distributed at all scales throughout everyday life and generally turned to distinctly common-place ends. This special issue discusses emerging trends on large-scale ubiquitous context analysis, management and value recreation. We are also interested in papers looking at service architectures, protocols, and standards for ubiquitous computing along with the related fundamental issues. Finally, we will explore works on novel applications and real-world services (and practices as well).

The issue will carry revised and substantially extended versions of selected papers presented at the Sixth IEEE International Conference on Selected Topics in Mobile & Wireless Networking (MoWNet'17), 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, the following:

• Cloud computing support for ubiquitous services and applications
• Data center architectures and protocols for ubiquitous data
• Green communications models, architectures, and networking solutions considering edge cloud and mobile cloud
• Ubiquitous self-* networks, services and applications
• Content distribution networks for ubiquitous applications
• Information centric networks
• Social networking solutions for pervasive and mobile environments
• Vehicular communications and vehicular ad-hoc networks
• Wireless-enabled peer to peer services and applications
• Internet of Things and M2M communications
• Ubiquitous sensing (e.g. participatory sensing and crowd sourcing)
• Context-aware middleware design, services and applications
• Security, trust, and privacy in wireless/mobile communications
• Cognitive radio networks (CRN) protocols, algorithms and implementation issues in ubiquitous context
• UAV networks, delay-tolerant wireless networks
• Software-defined wireless networks in ubiquitous context
• Network function virtualisation in wireless networks

Important Dates
Manuscripts due by: 10 September, 2017

Free sample articles newly available from International Journal of Automation and Control

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

• Design of networked polynomial control systems with random delays: sum of squares approach
• Design a Lyapunov control under input constraint for stabilisation of a CSTR
• Mathematical modelling of the simplest fuzzy two-input two-output proportional integral or proportional derivative controller via Larsen product inference
• Speed variable adaptive backstepping control of the doubly-fed induction machine drive
• Joint control of power and rates of wireless networks based on Nash game

International Journal of Telemedicine and Clinical Practices to publish expanded papers from IEEE International Conference on Science, Technology, Engineering and Management (ICSTEM'17)

Extended versions of papers presented at the IEEE International Conference on Science, Technology, Engineering and Management (3-4 March 2017, Coimbatore, India) will be published by the International Journal of Telemedicine and Clinical Practices.

Special issue published: "Mobility of Off-Road Vehicles"

International Journal of Vehicle Performance 3(1) 2017

• Development of a multi-year database to assess off-road mobility algorithms in fine-grained soils
• Full-featured ground vehicle mobility analysis using different soil moisture sources
• Integration of ANCF continuum-based soil plasticity for off-road vehicle mobility in multibody system dynamics
• Predicting wheel forces using bearing capacity theory for general planar loads
• Energy analysis of powertrain and chassis integrated simulation using a military duty cycle

Free sample articles newly available from International Journal of Indian Culture and Business Management

The following sample articles from the International Journal of Indian Culture and Business Management are now available here for free:

• Collaborative and open innovation: supply chain planning as an effective source
• Analysing customer responses to migrate strategies in making retailing and CRM effective
• Effectiveness drivers for Indian information technology managers: an empirical study
• Impact of changing consumer lifestyles and website quality on online satisfaction and loyalty - an emerging market framework
• Evaluating combination of individual pre-purchase internet information channels using hybrid fuzzy MCDM technique: demographics as moderators
• Dilemma of work-life balance in dual-career couples - a study from the Indian perspective

Inderscience is media partner for 6th Annual China Green Vehicle Forum - Non Road Focus

Inderscience is a media partner for 6th Annual China Green Vehicle Forum - Non Road Focus (20-21 April 2017, Shanghai, China).

The journal involved are is the International Journal of Heavy Vehicle Systems.

More information on this event is available here.

Inderscience journals to publish expanded papers from 2nd Social Science & Business Research Network (SSBRN) Symposium

Extended versions of papers presented at the 2nd Social Science & Business Research Network (SSBRN) Symposium (20-21 July 2017, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia) will be published by the following journals:

• Int. J. of Bonds and Derivatives
• Int. J. of Complexity in Leadership and Management

Special issue published: "Numerical Modelling of Masonry Structures"

International Journal of Masonry Research and Innovation 1(4) 2016

• Three-dimensional micromodel of clay block masonry wall
• Numerical simulations of flat-jack test setups for the local shear characterisation of masonry panels
• Numerical analysis of masonry structures by finite-discrete element model
• Overturning of multiple-block stacks - dynamic sensitivity parameters and scaling effect
• Characterisation of pattern formation in constrained multiblock assembly subjected to horizontal harmonic excitation
• Horizontal reaction components of pointed vaults

Call for papers: "Evidence-based Management in Technology Enterprises"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Technoentrepreneurship.

Evidence-based practice means making decisions based on the best accessible facts, i.e. scientific findings and unbiased organisational facts. This is an emerging area in management which is based on critical thinking and the best available contemporary and optimal evidence to be explicitly used in management and decision-making process (Rousseau, 2006). Often it has been observed that evidence-based practices improve the overall quality of managerial decision making through the deliberative use of relevant and best available scientific information. Rousseau and Barends (2011) suggested that critical thinking is essential for business success.

 

Rauch et al. (2009) discussed the significance of evidence-based practices in entrepreneurial orientation and business performance. Since the study of evidence-based practices has emerged from empiricism, we can argue that the field of techno-entrepreneurship can be developed further by applying scientific methods, to improve the managerial decision-making process.

 

The aim of this special issue is to provide a platform for researchers, scholars, academicians and practitioners from different parts of the globe to discuss various methods of evidence-based practices and policies to strengthen the empirical and theoretical bases of techno-entrepreneurship research.

 

We invite scholarly papers are being invited from all over the world.

 

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

• Evidence-based techno-entrepreneurship
• Evidence-based perspectives on high-tech new venture creation and development
• Evidence-based perspectives on product development for high-tech ventures and university technology transfers
• Geographical/regional perspectives, analysis of country/regional context from the perspective of high-tech firms
• Evidence-based perspectives on corporate venturing, alliances in growth-oriented high-tech industries
• Evidence-based perspectives on family business development in technology-intensive environments
• Evidence-based perspectives on innovation issues, including financing; venture capital
• Modelling/ Evidence-based perspectives on Marketing high-tech products and services, commercialisation of high-tech ventures
• Evidence-based perspectives on human resources management of high-skilled labour and workforce creativity
• The emergence of evidence-based techno-entrepreneurship
• Evidence-based perspectives on social media, social innovation and technology for society
• Evidence-based perspectives on business incubators, accelerators and types of entrepreneurs in high-tech companies
• Evidence-based perspectives on policy papers, on technology enterprises and measuring the impact of technologies
• Evidence-based perspectives on entrepreneurship, innovation and economic growth

 

Important Dates

Submission of manuscripts: 30 June, 2017

Notification to authors: 31 August, 2017

Final versions due: 31 October, 2017

 

 

References

Rousseau, Denise M. (2006). Is there Such a thing as “Evidence-Based Management”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 31, No. 2, 256–269.

Rousseau, Denise M. and Barends, Eric G. R. (2011), Provocation Series Papers: HRM in the 21st Century becoming an evidence-based HR practitioner, Human Resource Management Journal, Vol 21 No 3, 221 - 235.

Rauch, Andreas, Wiklund, Johan, Lumpkin, G. T. and Frese, Michael (2009), Entrepreneurial Orientation and Business Performance: An Assessment of Past Research and Suggestions for the Future, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, Volume 33, No. 3, 761–787.

Inderscience is media partner for MilSatCom USA

Inderscience is a media partner for MilSatCom USA (28-29 June 2017, Virginia, USA).

The journals involved are:

• Int. J. of Aerospace System Science and Engineering
• Int. J. of Digital Signals and Smart Systems
• Int. J. of Intelligent Defence Support Systems
• Int. J. of Satellite Communications Policy and Management
• Int. J. of Space Science and Engineering

Free sample articles newly available from International Journal of Water

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

• Anthropogenic influence on hydrological response in Beijing over nearly 20 years
• Quantifying the surface water runoff to the Dead Sea under different climate scenarios. A case study from Wadi Arogut
• Empirical Penman-Monteith equation and artificial intelligence techniques in predicting reference evapotranspiration: a review
• Towards efficient use of water resources management: a case study of the Syrian coastal region
• Evaluation of fluvial flow effects on tidal characteristics of tidal rivers by artificial neural networks and genetic algorithm
• Numerical model for the transport and degradation of pollutants through wetlands

Call for papers: "Scaling Social Entrepreneurial Impact"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Entrepreneurial Venturing.

Social entrepreneurship has been the object of increasing interest, both in research and politics (Spear, 2006; Hockerts, 2006; Defourny & Nyssens, 2008; Short et al., 2009; Bloom & Smith, 2010; Dees, 2012; Hockerts, 2015). In light of growing global challenges, such as climate change, globalisation and demographic change, it is often seen as one of the most promising ways to address societal and environmental problems. Social entrepreneurs tackle these problems by combining for-profit practices with non-profit missions. But, if social entrepreneurship is supposed to generate a real impact on complex societal problems, the question of how to scale social innovations efficiently and effectively is crucial. (Dees et al., 2004; Bloom & Smith, 2010).

Since social businesses seek the triple-bottom-line (Spreckley, 1981; Elkington, 1994), the scaling of social innovations face several additional challenges compared to for-profit ventures. It depends on systemic contexts and the resources that social entrepreneurs can mobilise (Boschee, 2008; Danzin, Danzin & Matear, 2010). Despite a growing number of research on how to scale social impact (Alvord et al., 2004; Sharir & Lerner, 2005; Sherman, 2007; Grant & Crutchfield, 2007; Bloom & Smith, 2010; Hockerts, 2015), more complete theorising and empirical tests on this topic are still needed.

The aim of this special issue is to support further theoretical and empirical research on scaling social impact. We invite papers that examine how social entrepreneurs can overcome barriers to growth as well as papers that focus on positive interrelationships between the success of social businesses and their business model, their founding team, it's supporting infrastructure and alike.

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

• Social business models
• Business strategies and organisational policies
• Turning theory of change into impact evidence
• Structure of and interaction with external ecosystems
• Collaborative capitalism and impact investing

Important Dates

Submission of manuscripts: 15 April, 2017

Inderscience is media partner for ADAS 2017: Advanced Driver Assistance Systems

Inderscience is a media partner for ADAS 2017: Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (28-29 March 2017, Birmingham, UK).

The journals involved are:

• Int. J. of Advanced Mechatronic Systems
• Int. J. of Vehicle Autonomous Systems
• Int. J. of Vehicle Information and Communication Systems
• Int. J. of Vehicle Safety
• Int. J. of Vehicle Systems Modelling and Testing

Special issue published: "Advances in Intelligent Computing and Cyber Systems"

International Journal of Computational Vision and Robotics 7(1/2) 2017

• Machine learning technique for object detection based on SURF feature
• A hybrid differential evolution algorithm for parameter tuning of evolving spiking neural network
• Enhancing pedestrian detection using optical flow for surveillance
• Adaptive pedestrian detection in infrared images using fuzzy enhancement and top-hat transform 
• Analysing the attributes of fiducial markers for robust tracking in augmented reality applications
• An enhanced localisation system for indoor environment using clustering technique
• Pixel distribution-based features for offline Arabic handwritten word recognition
• Novel feature extraction technique for content-based image recognition with query classification 
• Contact angle measurement techniques on micro-patterned surfaces: a comparative analysis 
• Automated path testing using the negative selection algorithm
• Time varying backstepping control for trajectory tracking of mobile robot
• A simple approach for designing a PID controller for an experimental air blower system

Additional paper

• A review and an approach for object detection in images

Call for papers: "New Trends in Agile Manufacturing: The Path to Intelligent, Competitive Manufacturing and Sustainable Growth"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Agile Systems and Management.

For decades, industries in almost all markets have been facing increasing levels of competitiveness. There are many reasons for this, but most of them can be traced to some principal trends: pressure from global competitors, shortening product life cycles, customers demanding products with more features, higher quality, lower cost and the demand for more and more customised products.

 

However, many organisations are nowadays interested in adopting an agile manufacturing strategy that would enable them to compete in this competitive globalisation market. Agile manufacturing is a manufacturing philosophy that focuses on a systematic approach to co-operate with competitors, organizing to manage change, uncertainty and complexity and leveraging people and information.

 

We aim to bring together leading academic scientists, researchers, practitioners, educators and research scholars to exchange, discuss and share their experiences and research results on recent innovations, trends, and concerns as well as the practical challenges encountered and the solutions adopted in all aspects of agile manufacturing, trends in strategic development for system agility as well as global supply chains agility.

 

Objectives:

To address and deliberate on the latest technical status and recent trends in the research and applications of agile manufacturing and industrial technologies

To interact and exchange their new ideas and research outcomes for future collaboration

To motivate the next generation of researchers to promote their interests in agile manufacturing and industrial technologies and their applications

 

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

• Agile manufacturing technologies
• Agile organisation
• Product design and development
• Design for manufacturability and assembly
• Production process planning and development
• Strategic development for system agility
• Production planning and control systems
• Quality engineering and management
• Green manufacturing
• Agile information system
• Trends in manufacturing systems
• Global supply chains agility
• Complexity and uncertainty in supply chains
• Innovation and collaborative networks

 

Important Dates

Submission of manuscripts: 1 July, 2017

Notification to authors: 1 October, 2017

Final versions due: 1 December, 2017

Get down with the digital

To industrial designer Gustavo Ostos Rios, music improvisation is all about the emotion but he and his two supervisors in the Department of Industrial Design at Eindhoven University of Technology in The Netherlands have now found a way to understand the complex interactions that take place between instrumentalists and singers during a jam with the aim of using those insights to add greater emotional expression to a performance involving digital instruments.

“In human-computer-interaction (HCI), we are more and more moving away from designing interactions for single users, towards designing interactions for networked groups of single users; we move from a ‘one user-one technology’ paradigm towards a ‘multiple users-multiple technologies’ paradigm,” Mathias Funk, one of the co-authors explains in the International Journal of Arts and Technology. Examples of this shift include the familiar social media and social networking sites, like Twitter and Facebook, many people use on a daily basis as well as the likes of Wikipedia and other collaborative ventures, such as citizen science projects including GalaxyZoo and SETI@Home.

In the department of Industrial Design, Funk and his colleague Bart Hengeveld research novel musical instruments that translate this idea towards musical performance. Much emphasis is placed on the solo performance or endeavour in some of the creative arts, such as painting and sculpture and the audience is usually detached from the art, viewing it and interacting with the “product” some time after the creative process has ended. Live music is different, there is usually more than one person involved in creating a performance and the audience is present the whole time. As such, there is a shared emotional response that can, in the case of improvisational performance, take the music in new directions. More commonly, the changes in direction are driven by the musicians and how they interact with each other, but audience response can nudge them too.

The team has developed a three-layer model that illuminates the relationship between band members and the audience as a system, where emotions, expressivity and generation of sound give shape to improvisation. The team has used this model to focus specifically on how individual emotional arousal can be used as input to control as a group their digital musical instrument, EMjam. The system, the team says, “builds on the construct that when paying attention at a concert it is possible to see performers’ expressions; a guitarist playing a solo and reaching a peak at a certain point of it; a bass guitar player following with his face the lines played; a drummer making accents with the whole body; and in addition to this, the audience responding to the performance.”

The instrumentalists receive a wrist band with skin conductance sensors that can in a sense measure the musician’s emotional state. The percussionist has a wristband controlling the rhythm generated by the EMjam, the bass guitarist has harmony controller and the guitarist or keyboard player a controller for melody. EMjam then uses the music software Ableton Live to add a parallel second layer of sound as a result of every individual input. The team adds that the same approach might be used to add expression to a light show or other visuals to accompany the music.

Ostos Rios, G., Funk, M. and Hengeveld, B. (2016) ‘Designing for group music improvisation: a case for jamming with your emotions’, Int. J. Arts and Technology, Vol. 9, No. 4, pp.320-345.

Inderscience is media partner for Drones 2017: Accident and Investigation

Inderscience is a media partner for Drones 2017: Accident and Investigation (21 February 2017, Cranfield, UK).

The journals involved are:

• Int. J. of Automation and Control
• Int. J. of Emergency Management
• Int. J. of Engineering Systems Modelling and Simulation
• Int. J. of Intelligent Defence Support Systems
• Int. J. of Intelligent Systems Technologies and Applications
• Int. J. of Risk Assessment and Management

New free sample article added to Editor's Picks for International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business

The following article from the International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business is now available - along with the journal's other sample articles - here for free: 

Entrepreneurship as a community phenomenon; reconnecting meanings and place

Call for papers: "Sustainable Inventory Management"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Inventory Research.

Over the past decades, inventory management has become a well-studied area from an economic point of view. While inventory systems are optimised to reduce costs, the social and environmental impacts of inventory systems are ignored. However, in the last few years, growing pressure from customers as well as governments leads inventory systems to address sustainability issues. In fact, being more sustainable is a crucial issue in inventory systems. Optimising an inventory system by considering the triple bottom line (TBL) (i.e. financial, environmental, and social) is a challenge from both academic and applied point of views.

 

This special issue is seeking original, unpublished works that discover recent advances in various aspects of sustainability in inventory management. We aim to publish state-of-the-art research concerning sustainability issues in inventory management systems. Papers on theory, method, and modelling with methodologies including mathematical modelling, simulation and conceptual framework formulation as well as on applications and case studies are all invited. Review articles are also welcomed. Contributions reporting real-world case studies are particularly appreciated.

 

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

• Sustainable order quantity
• Green issues in inventory systems
• Sustainable supply chain inventory planning
• Green issues in multi echelon inventory systems
• Social issues in inventory systems
• Sustainable logistics and warehousing
• Reverse logistics inventory planning
• Closed-loop inventory systems
• Clean warehousing and logistics
• Corporate social responsibility and inventory management
• Consumer environmental awareness and inventory management
• Cap and trade programs and inventory management
• Triple bottom line in inventory systems evaluation
• Sustainable lot sizing problems
• Risk management in sustainable inventory systems
• Multi criteria decision making for sustainable inventory management
• Green warehousing and distribution systems

 

Important Dates

Submission of manuscripts: 30 April, 2017

Notification to authors: 20 June, 2017

Final versions due: 20 July, 2017

Special issue published: "e-Technologies' Effects on Users' and Businesses' Behaviours and Attitudes"

International Journal of Information and Communication Technology 10(1) 2017

Extended versions of papers presented at the Internet Technologies and Society Conference Series and International Conference on Educational Technologies Conference Series.

• Virtual teamwork training: factors influencing the acceptance of collaboration technology
• Law students' perspectives of the affect of academics' use of technology
• Learner autonomy, microcredentials and self-reflection: a review of a Moodle-based medical English review course
• An ontology development approach using concept maps driven by automatic term extraction
• Propagation analysis of MIMO ad hoc network in hybrid propagation model and implement less propagation loss algorithm to find the minimum loss route
• Reversible image watermarking in the integer wavelet domain
• Preserving atomicity and isolation for multi-row transactions in column-oriented heterogeneous distributed databases

New Editor for World Review of Science, Technology and Sustainable Development

Professor Walter Leal Filho, from the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, has taken over as Editor in Chief of the World Review of Science, Technology and Sustainable Development from January 1, 2017.

Special issue published: "Bioenergy and Biofuels in Asia and Europe"

International Journal of Oil, Gas and Coal Technology 14(1/2) 2017

Extended versions of papers presented at the Asian Bioenergy Conference 2015 (IBSCE 2015).

• Is GHG mitigation policy enough to develop bioenergy in Asia: a long-term analysis with TIAM-FR 
• Performance of a water gas shift unit processing tar-rich product gas from a commercial biomass steam gasification plant operating at partial load
• Combination of aqueous pre-treatments with oxygen-alkali extraction for the enhancement of kenaf core fibre hydrolysability into fermentable sugars
• A novel photobioreactor system for hydrogen sulphide biogas clean-up
• Study on process production of furfural and other chemicals from sugarcane bagasse in the phosphoric acid-tetrahydrofuran system
• Oilseed pressing and vegetable oil properties and upgrading in decentralised small scale plants for biofuel production
• The standardisation, production and utilisation of biomethane in Europe and China - a comprehensive analysis
• Wheat straw hydrolytic pretreatment using maleic acid to enhance ethanol production from sugars

Additional papers

• Impact of proppant diagenesis on shale gas productivity
• Effective energy efficient methods for heat duty reduction for amine-based post-combustion capture process based on the theoretical reactions energy calculation
• Study of the effects of hydraulic fracturing at different dip angles for the development of coalbed methane: a case study in the southeast part of Qinshui Basin, China

Inderscience is media partner for 1st GCC Forensic Science Conference

Inderscience is a media partner for the 1st GCC Forensic Science Conference (14-15 November 2017, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates).

The journals involved are:

• Int. J. of Biometrics
• Int. J. of Electronic Security and Digital Forensics
• Int. J. of Forensic Engineering
• Int. J. of Liability and Scientific Enquiry

More information on this event is available here.

New free sample article available from International Journal of Business and Globalisation

The following sample article has been added to the Editor's Picks for the International Journal of Business and Globalisation:

Evaluating the impacts of corruption on firm performance in developing economies: an institutional perspective

This, along with the journal's other free sample articles, is available here.

Call for papers: "Fuzzy Based Approaches in Big Data Analytics"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Fuzzy Computation and Modelling.

In recent trends, the processing of large volumes and the variety of data requires high-performance analytics, which has introduced a new technique called big data analytics. This technique can analyse large volumes of data and isolates the valuable information immediately from big data. This methodology is not effectively possible in traditional methods.

 

These types of huge data sets are formerly examined and managed using ad-hoc network based approaches. This results in a complex environment which makes the data mining itself a difficult task. To solve this issue on data mining, fuzzy sets and fuzzy logics are introduced. Hence modelling with this fuzzy logic enables simple and flexible infrastructure to solve complex issues. In this context of solving big data problems, fuzzy modelling is utilised to overcome various big data issues by classifying and clustering data, discovering various subgroups in data etc. This advanced technique leads to achieve a greater advantage in trending approaches.

 

This special issue welcomes original and unpublished research papers that exhibit state-of-the-art on fuzzy based modelling for big data analytics. Additionally, it can also explain about the fuzzy based algorithms which can be utilised for information extraction available from big data information.

 

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

• Fuzzy approaches for big data systems
• Algorithms for fuzzy based systems
• Scalability of fuzzy algorithms
• MapReduce programming models
• Performance evaluations for fuzzy algorithms
• Big data management using ubiquitous fuzzy techniques
• Novel fuzzy approaches
• Fuzzy modelling designs in big data analytics
• Fuzzy based classification and clustering systems for big data analytics
• Fuzzy techniques for big data sets in smart networks, health informatics etc.
• Applications of fuzzy approaches to big data: business, finance, cyber security etc.
• Fuzzy based knowledge discovery in databases
• Spatial analysis of data using fuzzy methods
• Fuzzy analytics
• Fuzzy techniques for intelligent systems

 

Important Dates

Submission of manuscripts: 5 April, 2017

Notification to authors: 6 June, 2017

Final versions due: 18 December, 2017

Special issue published: "Entrepreneurship Research in France: from Theory to Practice"

International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business 30(1) 2017

• Performance measurement of French incubators
• Entrepreneurial situations, definition and interests for entrepreneurial research
• SME owner-manager representations of firm transfer
• Assessing business model relevance for business leaders in the construction industry
• Women entrepreneurs in France
• Linking types of ICT entrepreneurs to new firm survival

Call for papers: "Human-Machine Interaction and Internet of Vehicles"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Vehicle Information and Communication Systems.

Human-machine interaction is being perceived as a mandatory for safety, quality, and efficiency. It constitutes all facets of interaction and communication between human users and their machines by virtue of human-machine interfaces. Internet of Vehicles (IoV) accomplishes mobile communication between vehicles and metropolitan networks. Gathering and sharing information intervening vehicle-to-human (V2H), vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) for acquiring knowledge on vehicles, humans, roads and infrastructure for persuasive guidance and inspection of vehicles.

Existing control functionalities in human-machine interaction via bio-signals or via control devices for handicapped people includes the operation of a fake limb. Human-machine interaction and IoV benefits the utilisation of speech and motion detection (gestures, displacements, and forces) directly. Speech input and gestural control, emotion/intention detection, mapping strategies, gesture capture/sensing technologies, etc. has become a part of our day-to-day life.

This special issues invokes the latest innovations and challenges in the development of IoV and human-machine interaction by affording reliability, safety, converged network communication, open controller area network (CAN) buses, vehicle rescue, precise vehicle positioning, vehicle checking, remote diagnostics, networking with the global positing system and radio-frequency identification (GID), gestural control, and generating robust data services.

The issue will carry revised and substantially extended versions of selected papers presented at the International Conference on Intelligent Computing and Control Systems ICICCS 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, the following:

• GID-cloud terminal communication protocols
• Improvement in security and plausibility in cyberspace for IoV
• Mobile Internet and location based service for IoV
• Cloud-based IoV service
• Rigorous positioning of vehicle
• Man-to-machine interface in IoV
• IoV impact on telecom and internet transformation
• Safety and security for connected vehicles
• Software defined networking and virtualisation for vehicles
• Information optimisation and service quality measurement in IoV
• Telematics, wireless communication networks for IoV
• Information services and human-machine interaction in IoV
• Standards and applications in IoV
• Computer vision-based driver assistance
• Vehicular bio-signal communication in IoV

Important Dates
Submission of manuscripts: 30 June, 2017
Notification to authors: 30 September, 2017
Final versions due: 30 December, 2017

A social reboot for illegal downloaders

Unauthorized downloading of digital goods, including copyright music, videos, computer games, and images has become an increasing problem for content providers and those who hold the copyright on such goods and expect remuneration for distribution. A new research study in the International Journal of Business Environment suggests that content providers must take a pragmatic view based on social consensus to persuade illicit downloaders that their behaviour is economically and ethically unacceptable behaviour among their peer group or other social group to which they belong.

Eva Hofmann of the Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations, Coventry University, UK and Elfriede Penz of the Institute for International Marketing Management, at Vienna University of Economics and Business, in Austria, explain that unauthorised sharing of digital content, often referred to as “piracy”, is well-entrenched in popular culture. However, they have discerned a difference in the way those downloading pirated content and the legal downloaders decide on how to obtain the content they desire from the internet.

Inherent in the problem for copyright holders is that digital goods can be duplicated endlessly without loss of fidelity, this benefit of the digital realm makes piracy easy but also points to the value of such goods as being less than traditional, physical items in the realm of content, such as CDs and DVDs. This makes the moral decision less onerous for illegal downloaders than were they to steal a CD or DVD from a high street shop. Interestingly, some earlier studies have suggested that online piracy does not detrimentally affects sales of physical goods and that many so-called pirates actually spend more on entertainment overall. Nevertheless, the sale of CDs and related goods are in decline and the industry blames piracy largely for declining numbers of units shifted. Conversely, consumers often cite the high price of digital goods as justification for engaging in unauthorised downloading.

“In the era of digitisation, exchanging goods for material and immaterial compensation or for a feeling of sheer altruism remains an important human behaviour,” the team says, “But rather than tightening enforcement to protect their assets content providers would benefit more by initiating communication with the illegal downloaders and profiting from global online networking rather than fighting it.”

Hofmann, E. and Penz, E. (2016) ‘The moral decision-making process of unauthorised downloading’, Int. J. Business Environment, Vol. 8, No. 4, pp.385–407.

Research Picks – January 2017

Helpful smart phones
Smart phones are ubiquitous, but are they actually useful? An international team from Canada, Korea and the USA has set out to answer that question in terms of the computational functionality of modern internet-enabled smart phones in particular with a managerial and organisational perspective in terms of informational, social networking and resource management functions. This study suggests that smart phones are not used for simple communication, as one would expect, but rather are mobile computing device that provide various types of work-related computing tools. “We found that informational functions influence all three dimensions of organisational roles, while social networking and resource management functions influence interpersonal role performance only,” the team reports.
Lee, K.Y., Lee, M. and Kim, K. (2017) ‘Are Smartphones helpful? An empirical investigation of the role of Smartphones in users’ role performance’, Int. J. Mobile Communications, Vol. 15, No. 2, pp.119-143.

The rise of the Twitter botnet
Researchers in Italy and the USA have demonstrated how so-called cyber criminals might exploit the social media/networking site, Twitter, also known as a microblogging platform, to create a network of zombie accounts, a botnet, that could be controlled and commanded to carry out specific malicious tasks. The team has demonstrated proof of principle as to how such a botnet might reach epidemic proportions of activity allowing the controller with malicious intent to carry out spam attacks and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on computer systems. The simulation of their botnet, known as SocioBot, using the Docker system could allow security personnel to improve the protection of Twitter and other potentially vulnerable systems against the emergence of such botnets.
Makkar, I.K., Di Troia, F., Visaggio, C.A., Austin, T.H. and Stamp, M. (2017) ‘SocioBot: a Twitter-based botnet’, Int. J. Security and Networks, Vol. 12, No. 1, pp.1-12.

Social learning
Students and “learners” in general can benefit greatly from interaction with other users of electronic education, or e-learning, systems. Researchers in Algeria have now developed an experimental method for analysing the meaning of interactions on an e-learning social network. The analysis shows who the leaders are and who those learners that hold a strategic position are. The analysis could be used in an e-learning environment to bring collaborators and peer mentors together as appropriate to enhance the overall learning experience for everyone. Moreover, the analysis shows how dynamic an e-learning social network can be rather than assuming connections and interactions are fixed and this insight will assist educators in improving such systems.
Hamadache, B. and Seridi-Bouchelaghem, H. (2016) ‘How to analyse a semantic social network of learners in a social learning environment?‘, Int. J. Web Based Communities, Vol. 12, No. 4, pp.393-418.

Sounding out music education
The well-known music platform SoundCloud could be a useful tool in music education, according to researchers in Canada. SoundCloud allows users to upload their own music or other sound files and to listen to those shared by other users. It is available as a web-based site as well as a smart phone application, or app. The team’s pilot study shows how the functionality of the mobile app is appropriate for use in high school music education. “The important question about the role of mobile learning in music education is not whether it should have a role, but how,” the team asserts. “SoundCloud is only one example of a mobile technology which may be used in the context of music education,” they point out. “Encouraging mobile musicianship within formal music classes provides a synergy between the students’ love for music which they actively engage in outside the classroom, and creative musical behaviour which represents authentic musicianship in the 21st century,” they conclude.
Birch, H.J.S. (2017) ‘Potential of SoundCloud for mobile learning in music education: a pilot study‘, Int. J. Mobile Learning and Organisation, Vol. 11, No. 1, pp.30-40.

Free sample articles newly available from International Journal of Security and Networks

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

• Optimising on trust value-based clustering using trust evaluation scheme for ad hoc network
• iDetect: an intelligent intrusion detection system for wireless body area networks
• A threat monitoring system in enterprise networks with smart mobiles
• Detection of slanders through Euclidean distance similarity assessment for securing e-commerce agents in P2P decentralised electronic communities
• Improving efficiency of quantum key distribution with probabilistic measurements
• Multi-photon tolerant protocols for quantum secure communication in wireless standards
• Full-healing group-key distribution in online social networks
• Use of fuzzy clustering and support vector machine for detecting fraud in mobile telecommunication networks

Special issue published: "Design for Blended Learning"

International Journal of Continuing Engineering Education and Life-Long Learning 27(1/2) 2017

• Developing a blended learning model in an EFL class
• A case study on the factors affecting Chinese adult students' English acquisition in a blended learning environment
• Design and practice of the blended learning model based on an online judge system
• The application of a flipped classroom model in modern educational technology
• Investigating a blended learning model in an online environment
• Application and effects of blended learning in public courses in the university
• A blended learning model of English teaching methodology course guided by constructivism
• Teachers' time investment in online teaching

Additional papers

• A distance learning curriculum on pervasive computing
• Sustainable future replaces sustainable development concept by systemic behaviour via social responsibility

Inderscience Editor receives Excellence Award

Professor Constantin Zopounidis, Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Multicriteria Decision Making and the International Journal of Financial Engineering and Risk Management, received the Technical University of Crete Excellence Award 2016 in acknowledgment of his research work in the area of multicriteria analysis. This work has a direct impact on business as well as government decision making. The ceremony took place on Friday 16 December in the Centre of Mediterranean Architecture in Crete, where Professor Zopounidis gave a keynote speech.