Vol. 26, No. 11, 2020: Research on Heuristic Optimization and Operations in IoT.. The articles in the issue present novel methods, algorithms, advances, challenges, and practical applications of optimization and operations techniques for IoT systems. Guest editors: Dominik Slezak from the University of Warsaw, Poland, Dobroslav Kovac from the Technical University of Kosice, Slovakia, Mauro Iacono from the Universita degli Studi della Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli", Italy and Jacek M. Czerniak from the Casimir the Great University in Bydgoszcz, Poland.
Vol. 26, No. 8, 2020: Exploring Immersive Technologies in Learning. The articles presented in this special issue include practical accounts concerning immersive technologies such as lessons learned, assessing impact, and insights of using VR in Higher Education, STEM teaching, and authoring tools, comparison of technological settings, novelty approaches to inclusion for people with disabilities, and the current state-of-the-art in game-based learning and in immersive learning. Guest editors: Anasol Peña-Rios from the BT Research Labs, United Kingdom and Daphne Economou and Markos Mentzelopoulos from the University of Westminster, United Kingdom.
Vol. 26, No. 7, 2020: Information Security Methodology, Replication Studies and Information Security Education. The articles in the special issue contribute to the advancement of information security research by making possible the comparison and the benchmarking of different security solutions. As a complementary approach, works on terminology and taxonomy address redundancies and unify the understanding between different sub-domains of information security. Guest editors: Steffen Wendzel from the Fraunhofer FKIE & Worms University of Applied Sciences, Germany, Luca Caviglione from the Institute for Applied Mathematics and Information Technologies, Italy, Alessandro Checco from the University of Sheffield, United Kingdom, Aleksandra Mileva from the University Goce Delcev, Macedonia, Jean-Francois Lalande from the CentraleSupelec, France and Wojciech Mazurczyk from the Warsaw University of Technology, Poland.
Vol. 26, No. 6, 2020: Progress in Features, Data, Patterns and Similarity Analysis. The articles in this issue present recent progress in feature extraction, pattern recognition, data analysis, data balancing and similarity analysis. Guest editors: Michał Choraś from the University of Science and Technology, Poland, Salvatore D'Antonio from the University of Perthenope, Italy, Jörg Keller from the FernUniversität in Hagen, Germany, and Rafał Kozik from the University of Science and Technology, Poland.
Vol. 26, No. 4, 2020: Practical Applications of Data Analysis, Classification and Anomaly Detection. The issue presents a collection of articles which deal with theoretical advances and practical solutions for data analysis, classification and anomaly detection. Guest editors: Michał Choraś from the University of Science and Technology, Poland, Salvatore D'Antonio from the University of Perthenope, Italy, Jörg Keller from the FernUniversität in Hagen, Germany, and Rafał Kozik from the University of Science and Technology, Poland.
Vol. 26, No. 3, 2020: Knowledge-based Configuration . Knowledge-based configuration is one of the most successful application areas of Artificial Intelligence. There are various application areas ranging from the automotive domain and smarthomes to the interactive configuration of financial services. The aim of this special issue is to present contributions that help to advance the state of the art and provide useful recommendations regarding open issues for future research. Guest editors: Alexander Felfernig from the Graz University of Technology, Austria and Juha Tiihonen from the University of Helsinki, Finland
Vol. 26, No. 1, 2020: Recent Advances in Social Network Analysis, Management and Security. The articles in the issue present and discuss social network analysis, management and security. Guest editors: Yaser Jararweh and Mohammad Al-Smadi from the Jordan University of Science and Technology, Jordan, and Elhadj Benkhelifa from the Staffordshire University, United Kingdom.
Vol. 25, No. 12, 2019: Advances in Web-Based Learning. The articles in this issue present the newest trends in distance education and electronic learning technologies. Guest editors: Ralf Klamma from the RWTH Aachen University, Germany, Marc Spaniol from the Université de Caen Basse-Normandie, France and Sayan Unankard from the Maejo University, Thailand.
Vol. 25, No. 11, 2019: Cyberattack Detection and Response. The issue targets research on the detection of and response to cyberattacks on all levels (e.g., individuals, organizations, ISPs, and critical infrastructure) that addresses technical, social or both aspects (including, e.g., social engineering and spear phishing detection). Guest editors: Jörg Keller from the FernUniversität in Hagen, Germany, Wojciech Mazurczyk from the Warsaw University of Technology, Poland, Bela Genge from the University of Medicine, Pharmacy, Sciences and Technology of Targu Mures, Romania, Lothar Fritsch from the Karlstad University, Sweden and Simon Vrhovec from the University of Maribor, Slovenia.
Vol. 25, No. 10, 2019: Intelligent Computing for Society. The papers in this issue present intelligent computing and technologies and their applications in modern society. Guest editors: Imran Sarwar Bajwa from the Islamia University Bahawalpur, Pakistan, Fairouz D. Kamareddine from the Heriot-Watt University, United Kingdom and Pamini Thangarajah from the Mount Royal University, Canada.
Vol. 25, No. 9, 2019: Recent Advances in Detection, Investigation and Mitigation of Cyber Crimes. The aim of the special issue is to present the latest cutting-edge research in the field of detection and mitigation of cyber crimes and to present the development of tools and techniques, which assist the investigation process of potentially illegal cyber activity. Guest editors: Artur Janicki and Wojciech Mazurczyk from the Warsaw University of Technology, Poland, Xiangyang Luo from the Zhengzhou Information Science and Technology Institute, China and Dengpan Ye from the Wuhan University, China.
Vol. 25, No. 8, 2019: Collaborative Technologies and Data Science in Smart City Applications. Today, we are experiencing an explosion in the ways data are being used to advance knowledge and improve live of human beings. Articles in this special issue deal with this new paradigm, using data science to optimize the way cities and populated areas in general are managed, which turns them in "Smart Cities". They cover various aspects, like data gathering, analysis, processing, visualization and sharing. Guest editors: Nelson Baloian from the University of Chile, Yanling Chen from the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany and Ashot Harutyunyan from the American University of Armenia.
Vol. 25, No. 6, 2019: Recent Advances, Emerging Methods and Applications of Pattern Recognition. Today, advanced pattern extraction and analysis techniques have been successfully used in a variety of domains. Nonetheless, many challenges still exist. In particular, the majority of practical applications of pattern recognition are still struggling with huge amounts of data that exhibits such challenges as concept drift, non-stationary underlying processes, noise, and common lack of labels or additional metadata that could be useful for further analysis. The articles in this issue cover recent solutions to the these problems, novel methods and algorithms, advances, challenges, as well as practical applications of pattern recognition. Guest editors: Jörg Keller from the FernUniversität in Hagen, Germany, Manuel Grana from the UPV/EHU University of the Basque Country, Spain, and Rafał Kozik, Tomasz Andrysiak and Michał Choraś from the University of Science and Technology, Poland.
Vol. 25, No. 5, 2019: Immersive Learning Technologies: Research and Future Directions. The articles in this issue display the multicultural and multidisciplinary application of immersive learning and reflect the important work of defining and creating effective immersive learning experiences. Guest editors: Anasol Peña-Rios from the British Telecom Research Labs, United Kingdom, and Foaad Khosmood from the California Polytechnic State University, USA.
Vol. 25, No. 3, 2019: Advances of Provable Security Techniques. The articles in the special issue present a variety of research topics within the scope of provable security. Guest editors: Yong Yu from the Shaanxi Normal University, China, and Yi Mu from the Fujian Normal University, China.
Vol. 24, No. 12, 2018: Quality and Reliability Engineering: Trends and Future Directions. The papers in the issue illustrate trends and future directions of quality and reliability engineering. Guest editors: Alok Mishra and Sunil Kumar Khatri from the Amity University, Turkey, P.K. Kapur from the Amity University, India and Uday Kumar from the Luleå University of Technology, Sweden.
Vol. 24, No. 11, 2018: New Trends in Semantic Web-Based Applications . The special issue explores how semantic web application trends are being developed in connection with the popularity of semantic web technologies. Guest editors: Miguel Ángel Rodríguez-Garc%#237;a from the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain, Rafael Valencia-García from the Universidad de Murcia, Spain and Giner Alor-Hernández from the Tecnológico Nacional de México/I. T. México.
Vol. 24, No. 9, 2018: Recent Advancements in Big Data Technologies and Applications in Computing, IoT and Computer Engineering Technology. The issue presents a well-rounded snapshot of current research in the field and provides a springboard for driving future work and discussion. Guest editors: Ka Lok Man from the Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China and University of Technology Sarawak, Malaysia, Ou (Owen) Liu from the Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China, Danny Hughes from the KU Leuven, Belgium and Chao Lu from the Southern Illinois University, USA.
Vol. 24, No. 8, 2018: New Trends in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). The special issue focuses on new trends in MOOCs from a research perspective, including key topics such as learning analytics, integration of cloud services, implementation of collaborative learning activities, or support to self-regulated learning, among others. Guest editors: Rocael Hernández Rizzardini from the Universidad Galileo, Guatemala, António Moreira Teixeira from Universidade Aberta, Portugal Carlos Alario-Hoyos from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain, and Héctor R. Amado-Salvatierra from Universidad Galileo, Guatemala.
Vol. 24, No. 6, 2018: Computational Intelligence Technologies Meet Medical Informatics - From Prediction to Prognosis. The special issue provides a comprehensive overview of contemporary studies in computational intelligence technologies with medical informatics applications from prediction to prognosis. Guest editors: Chi-Chang Chang from the Chung Shan Medical University Hospital, Taiwan, Chi-Jie Lu from the Chien Hsin University of Science and Technology, Taiwan, Chalong Cheewakriangkrai from the Chiang Mai University, Thailand, and Su-Hsin Chang from the Washington University in St Louis, United States.
Vol. 24, No. 5, 2018: Technical and Social Aspects of Critical Infrastructure Security. The special issue targets security of all types of critical infrastructure, and addresses both social and technical aspects of ensuring critical infrastructure security. Guest editors: Jörg Keller from the FernUniversität in Hagen, Germany, Igor Bernik from University of Maribor, Slovenia and Wojciech Mazurczyk from Warsaw University of Technology, Poland.
Vol. 24, No. 4, 2018: Advances in Security and Privacy of Multimodal Interfaces. The articles in the special issue present latest research results in the rapidly developing field of security and privacy in multimodal interfaces. Guest editors: Robertas Damaševičius from the Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania, Marcin Woźniak, Silesian University of Technology, Poland, Vicente Alarcon-Aquino from the Universidad de las Américas Puebla, Mexico, Ivan Ganchev from the University of Limerick, Ireland and Plovdiv University "Paisii Hilendarski", Bulgaria and Wei Wei from the Xi'an University of Technology, China.
Vol. 24, No. 3, 2018: Intelligent Services for Smart Cities. The papers in this issue illustrate how big data can be used to understand the biology of cities and how knowledge, experiences, and lessons can be shared to make data mining an essential and easy-to-use tool for the Smart City applications. Guest editors: Jason J. Jung from the Chung-Ang University, Korea and Andrés Muñoz from the Universidad Católica San Antonio Murcia, Spain.
Vol. 24, No. 2, 2018: Immersive Learning Research. The issue displays the multicultural strength of iLRN and shows creation and evaluation of effective immersive learning experiences across interdisciplinary contexts. Guest editors: Leonel Morgado from the Universidade Aberta and INESC TEC, Portugal, Colin Allison from the University of St Andrews, United Kingdom, Dennis Beck from the University of Arkansas, United States, and Filipe Penicheiro from INESC TEC, Portugal.
Vol. 23, No. 12, 2017: Mobile Learning and Instructional Mobile Applications. The papers in this special issue show the use of mobile learning, mobile devices and mobile applications in distance education. Guest editors: Hüseyin Uzunboylu from the Near East University, Turkey and Ergun Gide from the CQUniversity, Sidney, Australia.
Vol. 23, No. 7, 2017: Theory and Application of Bio-inspired Intelligence and Methods. The papers in this special issue deal with topics from the field of membrane computing and related areas and with more traditional AI and machine learning areas such as Swan intelligence and multi-objective optimisation. Guest editors: Xingyi Zhang from the Anhui University, China, Alfonso Rodríguez-Patón Aradas from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain, Xiangxiang Zeng from the Xiamen University, China and Tao Song and Pan Zhen from the Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak Campus, Malaysia.
Vol. 23, No. 3, 2017: Analyzing Political Discourse in On-line Social Networks . The papers in this special issue present innovative and high-quality research regarding both the use of On-line Social Networks as a channel for political discourse and campaigns, and the usefulness of user generated data to assess and predict the political context. Guest editors: Aitor Almeida and Pablo Orduña from the DeustoTech-Deusto Foundation, Spain.
Vol. 23, No. 1, 2017: Functional Programming: Past, Present, and Future. Contributions dedicated to D. A. Turner on his 70th Birthday. The papers in this special issue are all dedicated D.A.Turner on his 70th birthday and relate to his many contributions to functional programming language design and implementation. Guest editor: Rafael Dueire Lins from the Centro de Informática, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco and Dept. de Estatística e Informática, Universidade Federal Rural de Pernambuco, Brazil.
Vol. 22, No. 12, 2016: Improving Social Aspects of the Software Development Process: Games, Gamification and Related Approaches. The articles in the special issue present gamification practices, in particular, the use of game elements in software process improvement and software development. Guest editors: Murat Yilmaz from the Cankaya University, Turkey, Rory V. O'Connor from the Dublin City University, Ireland and Manuel Mora from the Autonomous University of Aguascalientes, Mexico.
Vol. 22, No. 10, 2016: Computer Supported Collaborative Work. The papers in this issue deal with research and applications in the field of Computer Supported Collaborative Work. Guest editors: Wolfram Luther from the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany, Hiroaki Ogata from the Kyushu Unversity, Japan and José A. Pino from the Universidad de Chile.
Vol. 22, No. 9, 2016: Security, Privacy and Reliability of Smart Buildings. The articles in this special issue address organizational aspects of smart building security, hardware-level security, network-level security and usability. Guest editors: Steffen Wendzel from the Fraunhofer FKIE, Germany and Worms University of Applied Sciences, Germany, and Jörg Keller from the University of Hagen, Germany
Vol. 22, No. 6, 2016: Computational Intelligence Tools for Processing Collective Data . The special issue deals with the important role of the computational intelligence paradigms in creation, maintenance and use of information systems. The articles cover examples of application of novel methods and techniques. Guest editors: Ngoc Thanh Nguyen from the Wroclaw University of Technology, Poland, Ireneusz Czarnowski from the Gdynia Maritime University, Poland and Dosam Hwang from the Yeungnam University, Korea.
Vol. 22, No. 5, 2016: New Trends in Opinion Mining Technologies in the Industry. The special issue explores recent advances in the application of opinion mining technologies in the industry. Guest editors: Rafael Valencia-García from the Universidad de Murcia, Spain, Ricardo Colomo-Palacios from the Østfold University College, Norway and Giner Alor-Hernández from the Instituto Tecnológico de Orizaba, Mexico.
Vol. 22, No. 4, 2016: Advanced Research on Software Security Design and Applications. The special issue presents innovative scholarly and professional research and information concerning different aspects of Software Security. Guest editors: Shadi A. Aljawarneh, Jordan University of Science and Technology, Jordan, Federica Cena, University of Turin, Italy, Abdelsalam Maatuk, Benghazi University, Libya.
Vol. 22, No. 3, 2016: Analyzing and Mining Social Networks for Decision Support. The papers in the special issue show how data mining and analysis of social networks can contribute to different application areas such as decicion support. Guest editors: I-Hsien Ting from the National University of Kaohsiung, Taiwan, and Babiga Birregah from the University of Technology of Troyes, France.
Vol. 22, No. 1, 2016: Future Trends in Computing Technology in Education. The special issue illustrates the different ways in which computing technology is being used in education. Guest editors: Jesús Garcá Laborda, Universidad de Alcalá, Spain, Huseyin Uzunboylu, Near East University, North Cyprus, and Steven Ross, John Hopkins University, USA.
Vol. 21, No. 13, 2015: Information Retrieval and Recommender Systems. The topics covered in this special issue include: advances in cross-language source code similarity, optimizations in the parameter selection for IR systems, a design pattern IR system, advances in the statistical analysis of IR system parameters, power consumption optimizations of replicated IR systems, scalable architectures for distributed recommendation systems, an IR system applied to medicine, and advances in the performance evaluation of the recommendation systems. Guest editors: Fidel Cacheda and Javier Parapar from the University of A Coruña, Spain.
Vol. 21, No. 11, 2015: Enabling Technologies and Business Infrastructures for Next Generation Social Media: Big Data, Cloud Computing, Internet of Things and Virtual Reality. The special issue shows future research aspects of next generation social media and provides a discussion of critical thinking and comparative studies on the phenomena under analysis. Guest editors: Miltiadis D. Lytras from the The American College of Greece, Greece, Wadee Al-Halabi from the King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia, Jacky Xi Zhang from the Tianjin University, P. R. China, Ramzi A. Haraty from the Lebanese American University, Lebanon and Mehedi Masud from the Taif University, Saudi Arabia.
Vol. 21, No. 10, 2015: Mobile Technology for Foreign Languages Teaching: Building Bridges between Non-formal and Formal Scenarios. The special issue seeks to offer an illustrative account of the field of MALL (Mobile-assisted language learning) from different theoretical, methodological, and technological perspectives. Guest editors: John Traxler, University of Wolverhampton, United Kingdom, Elena Barcena, UNED, Spain and Jesús Garcáa Laborda, Universidad de Alcalá, Alcalá de Henares, Spain.
Vol. 21, No. 8, 2015: Aligned, Embedded and Scalable Assessment Technologies. The articles in the issue frame a new generation of Assessment Technologies facilitating aligned, embedded and scalable assessment. Guest editors: Davinia Hernández-Leo from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain, and Lluís Vicent Safont from the La Salle Open University, Andorra.
Vol. 21, No. 6, 2015: Intelligent Distributed Processing Methods for Big Data. This special issue is devoted to analysis of these "Big data" sources and to an identification of the areas where Big data can be applied and provide the knowledge that is not accessible for other types of analysis. Guest editors: Jason J. Jung from the Chung-Ang University, Korea, David Camacho from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain and Costin Badica from the University of Craiova, Romania.
Vol. 21, No. 5, 2015: Massive Open Online Courses: Combining Methodologies and Architecture for a Success Learning. The articles cover different contexts of MOOC such as analytics, adaptability, orchestration, tool innovation, course development, and mobile assistants. Guest editors: Rocael Hernández Rizzardini from the Galileo University, Guatemala, Francisco J. García-Peñalvo from the University of Salamanca Salamanca, Spain, and Carlos Delgado Kloos from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain. .
Vol. 21, No. 3, 2015: Recent Advances in Security and Privacy in Big Data. The articles presented in the special issue deal with a variety of important topics within the security and privacy scope of big data. Guest editors: Yong Yu from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, China, Yi Mu from the University of Wollongong, Australia and Giuseppe Ateniese from the Sapienza-University of Rome, Italy.
Vol. 21, No. 1, 2015: Learning Analytics. With the advent of new technologies such as eye-tracking, activities monitoring, video analysis, content analysis, sentiment analysis and interaction analysis, the world of learning analytics has emerged as a vast research area with strong potential in various forms of formal, informal and non-formal learning opportunities. The special issue focuses on these research dimensions and aims to foster discussion on both individual impacts of these dimensions and their interdependencies. Guest editors: Martin Ebner from the Graz University of Technology, Austria, Kinshuk from the Athabasca University, Canada, David Wohlhart from the Private University of Teacher Education KPH Graz, Austria, Behnam Taraghi from Graz University of Technology, Austria and Vive Kumar from the Athabasca University, Canada.
Vol. 20, No. 15, 2014: The Social Media in Academia and Education - Research R-evolutions and a Paradox: Advanced Next Generation Social Learning Innovation. The articles provide insights into social networking services, social media in China, media content adoption, technological readiness, adaptive leanring, mon-explicit learning communities, virtual innovation labs and services for the disabled. Guest editors: Miltiadis D. Lytras from the The American College of Greece, Greece, Hassan I. Mathkour and Hassan Abdalla from the King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Cornelio Yanez-Marquez from the Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Mexico and Patricia Ordóñez de Pablos from the University of Oviedo, Spain.
Vol. 20, No. 13, 2014: Collaborative Computing and Applications. The papers cover a wide range of topics in collaborative computing research and development, including synchronization, volunteer computing, collaborative planning information delivery, service discovery and integration, ontology based emotion description, opportunistic networks, and wireless mesh networks. Guest editors: Weiming Shen from the Tongji University, P.R. China, Weidong Li from the Coventry University, United Kingdom, Jose Alberto Pino from the University of Chile, Chile and Junzhou Luo from the Southeast University, P.R. China.
Vol. 20, No. 12, 2014: Immersive Education: What does the Future Hold? The special issue aims at a discussion on innovative uses of immersive environments that take advantage of the unique characteristics of this technology for educational purposes. Guest editors: María Blanca Ibáñez and Carlos Delgado Kloos, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Leganés, Spain, and Victor Callaghan, Essex University, United Kingdom.
Vol. 20, No. 11, 2014: Methodologies, Technologies and Tools Enabling e-Government. The articles in the issue give an overview of the current e-Government related research areas: recommender systems, e-Documents, Open Data and interoperability. Guest editors: Juan Santos Gago and Luis Anido Rifón from the Universidade de Vigo, Spain.
Vol. 20, No. 10, 2014: Advances of Scientific Research on Technology Enhanced Learning in Social Networks and Mobile Contexts: Towards High Effective Educational Platforms for Next Generation Education. The articles provide significant insights into the theme of the special issue and set an interesting context for further scientific debate. The main concepts that are investigated are related to: Prototyping Modeling for Educational Platforms, Semantic Web Adaptation of Learning Quality, Management of Digital Elevation Models, Social Knowledge Construction, Self-learning Approaches, Mobile Databases Management, Smartphones Use in Social Networks etc. Guest editors: Miltiadis D. Lytras from the The American College of Greece, Greece, Leyla Zhuhadar from the Western Kentucky University, USA, Jacky Xi Zhang from the Tianjin University and Eugenijus Kurilovas from the Vilnius University Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, Lithuania.
Vol. 20, No. 8, 2014: Adaptive Services for the Future Internet. The aim of this special issue to promote the different aspects of Adaptive Services for the Future Internet, emphasizing the importance of governing the convergence of contents, services, things and networks in order to achieve building platforms for efficiency, scalability, security and flexible adaptation. Guest editors: Javier Cubo from the University of Málaga, Spain, Guadalupe Ortiz and Juan Boubeta-Puig from the University of Cádiz, Spain, Howard Foster from the City University London, London, United Kingdom and Winfried Lamersdorf from the University of Hamburg, Germany
Vol. 20, No. 7, 2014: Trending Breakthroughs in Human-Computer Interaction. This special issue aims at a full discussion on new trends in Human-Computer Interaction, bringing together trending papers and breakthroughs in this field. Guest editors: Sandra Baldassarri from the Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain, and José A. Macías from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain.
Vol. 20, No. 6, 2014: Enterprise Information Systems. The special issue includes original, pertinent and relevant contributions on the technological, organizational and social dimensions of the largely multidisciplinary field of Enterprise Information Systems. Guest editors: João Varajão from the University of Minho, Portugal, Ricardo Martinho from the Politechnic Institute of Leiria, Portugal and Pedro Soto Acosta from the University of Murcia, Murcia, Spain.
Vol. 20, No. 5, 2014: Software Components, Architectures and Reuse: Software Product Line Engineering and Source Code Enhancements . The aim of this Special Issue is to report the state of research and practice on the theme of Software Components, Architectures and Reuse - Software Product Line Engineering and Source Code Enhancements. Guest editors: Marcelo Fantinato from the University of São Paulo, Brazil, Uirá Kulesza from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil and Flavio Oquendo from the University of South Brittany, France.
Vol. 20, No. 3, 2014: Conceptual Modelling with Specific Focus on Service-Oriented Systems. The aim of this special issue is to disseminate the results of innovative research in Conceptual Modelling. Its main focus is on the application and role of conceptual modeling techniques in service-oriented systems. Guest editors: Flavio Ferrarotti from the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand and Software Competence Center Hagenberg, Austria, Georg Grossmann from the University of South Australia, Australia, Klaus-Dieter Schewe from Software Competence Center Hagenberg, Austria and Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria, and Qing Wang from the Australian National University, Australia.
Vol. 20, No. 1, 2014: Interaction in Massive Courses. The special issue aims at gathering research works in the field of massive courses with a special focus on enhancing interaction between lecturers-students or students-student in face-to-face situations or completely online by using different kind of technologies. Guest editors: François Bry from the Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich, Germany, Martin Ebner from the Graz University of Technology, Austria, Alexander Pohl from the Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich, Germany and Behnam Taraghi from the Graz University of Technology, Austria.
Vol. 19, No. 18, 2013: Technologies for Enhancing Accessibility and Fighting Info-exclusion. The contributions in this issue show how technology design can take into account accessibility and usability features for the protection and promotion of the human rights of persons with disabilities, in all policies and programmes. Guest editors: João Barroso, Hugo Paredes and Paulo Martins from the INESC TEC and Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Portugal, Frode Eika Sandnes from the Oslo University College, Norway, and Leontios Hadjileontiadis from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece.
Vol. 19, No. 17, 2013: Towards Sustainable Computing through Ambient Intelligence. Ambient Intelligence (AmI) represents a new generation of user-centred computing environments aiming to find new ways to obtain a better integration of information technology in everyday life devices and activities. The main focus of this special issue is to explore how Ambient Intelligence can contribute towards Smarter but still more Sustainable Environments (e.g. Smart Cities, Smart Cars, Eco-aware devices etc.). Guest editors: Diego López-de-Ipiña from the University of Deusto, Spain, and José Bravo from the Castilla-La Mancha University, Spain.
Vol. 19, No. 16, 2013: Information Security. In this issue, the articles deal with a wide range of privacy and security-related topics. Guest editors: Ilsun You from the Korean Bible University, Republic of Korea and Edgar Weippl from the Vienna University of Technology and SBA Research, Austria.
Vol. 19, No. 14, 2013: Cloud Education Environment. The papers in the isssue deal with one of the aspects of cloud-based services, namely the Cloud Education Environment. Guest editors: Rocael Hernandez Rizzardini from the Galileo University, Guatemala, Hans-Christian Schmitz from the Institut für Deutsche Sprache (Institute for the German Language), Germany, Alexander Mikroyannidis from The Open University, United Kingdom, Carlos Delgado Kloos from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain and Lee Chao from the University of Houston - Victoria, USA.
Vol. 19, No. 13, 2013: Industrial and Business Applications of Semantic Web Technologies. The issue brings together a selection of seven articles related to the development and deployment of semantic technologies in industry. Guest editors: Ricardo Colomo-Palacios from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain, Thomas Moser from the Vienna University of Technology, Austria and Rafael Valencia-García from the Universidad de Murcia, Spain.
Vol. 19, No. 11, 2013: International Research Projects on Socio-Semantic Technologies Applied to Education. The issue focuses on socio-semantic technologies applied to teaching and learning processed at all the educational levels. The papers in the issue present the main outcomes of 9 international research projects about technology socio-semantic applied to education. Guest editors: Francisco J. García-Peñalvo from the University of Salamanca, Spain, J. Ángel Velázquez-Iturbide from Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain and Martin Llamas-Nistal from the University of Vigo, Spain.
Vol. 19, No. 9, 2013: Ambient Assisted Living: Home Care. The articles in the issue deal with different aspects of Ambient Assisted Living with regard to home care in connection with an enhancement of the quality of life of older people. Guest editors: Ramón Hervás and and José Bravo from the Castilla-La Mancha University, Spain.
Vol. 19, No. 8, 2013: Advances in the Development of Highly Interactive Systems. During the last years, many highly interactive devices have transformed our lives by setting sophisticated devices almost everywhere. Different kind of tablets, laptops, whiteboards, touchable surfaces, sensors, situated displays, mobile devices and other exciting computer systems are present in all our daily activities both professional and spare time ones. Developing this kind of system is a complex process, since it involves different devices, a variety of technologies or tools and different hardware, in a changing and evolving world. Additionally, most of the highly interactive systems have collaborative requirements or usability and accessibility needs. The special issue brings together a selection of articles related to the development of highly interactive systems. Guest editors: Antonio Peñalver Benavent and Federico Botella Beviá from the Miguel Hernández University, Spain and José A. Gallud Lázaro from the University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain.
Vol. 19, No. 7, 2013: Interaction Design in Educational Environments. The special issue contains technical contributions that present novel solutions and tools where New Technologies have successfully been applied in educative environments. Guest editors: Abdulfattah S. Mashat and Habib M. Fardoun from the ing Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia and Jose A. Gallud from the UnUniversity of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain.
Vol. 19, No. 5, 2013: Innovative Instructional Technologies. The articles in this issue focus on mobile learning, interactive learning environments, pedagogical agents, and virtual classes. Guest editor: Huseyin Uzunboylu from the Near East University, Cyprus.
Vol. 19, No. 4, 2013: Hybrid and Ensemble Methods in Machine Learning. The special issue is devoted to hybrid and ensemble methods as well as their application to classification and forecasting problems. Guest editors: Przemysław Kazienko from the Wrocław University of Technology, Poland, Edwin Lughofer from the Johannes Kepler University, Austria and Bogdan Trawiński from the Wrocław University of Technology, Wrocław, Poland.
Vol. 19, No. 2, 2013: Software Components, Architectures and Reuse: Modeling, Customization and Evaluating. The issue reports the state of research and practice in the area of Software Components, Architectures, and Reuse. Guest editors: Eduardo Santana de Almeida from the Federal University of Bahia and Fraunhofer Project Center (FPC) for Software and Systems Engineering, Salvador, Brazil, and Flavio Oquendo from the University of South Brittany, Vannes, France..
Vol. 18, No. 19, 2012: Distributed Development of Information System. The papers in the special issue present new developments and describe lessons learned from real world cases within the area of distributed development of information system. Guest editors: Alok Mishra, Atilim University, Turkey, Jürgen Münch, University of Helsinki, Finland and Deepti Mishra, Atilim University, Turkey.
Vol. 18, No. 18, 2012: Trends in Immersive Education Research. The special issue gives insights into current research and results within the area of immersive education. Guest editors: Carlos Delgado Kloos, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain, Christian Gütl, Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria and Curtin University, Perth, WA and Frank Kappe, Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria.
Vol. 18, No. 17, 2012: Conceptual Modelling of Services. The special issue focusses on disseminating the results of innovative research in conceptual modelling addressing standing challenges in the emerging areas of service computing and service-oriented software engineering. Guest editors: Hui Ma, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, Klaus-Dieter Schewe (Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria & Software Competence Center Hagenberg, Austria, Bernhard Thalheim (Christian Albrechts University Kiel, Germany and Qing Wang (Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.
Vol. 18, No. 15, 2012: Technology for Learning across Physical and Virtual Spaces. The aim of the special issue is to present an updated view of the undergoing research efforts within the technology-enhanced learning community. Guest editors: Carlos Delgado Kloos, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain, Davinia Hernández-Leo, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain and Juan I. Asensio-Pérez, Universidad de Valladolid, Spain.
Vol. 18, No. 13, 2012: Recent Advances in Bio-Inspired Computing: Theory and Applications. The special issue presents a selection of papers dealing with various aspects of bio-inspired computing with a diverse range of simulation applications, theories, and techniques within the domain. Guest editors: Atulya K. Nagar from the Liverpool Hope University, United Kingdom and T. Robinson from the Madras Christian College, Chennai, India.
Vol. 18, No. 12, 2012: An Overview of Current Information Systems Security Challenges and Innovations. Information Systems Security is one of the most pressing challenges confronting all kinds of present-day organizations. Although many companies have discovered how critical information is to the success of their business or operations, very few have managed to be effective in maintaining their information secure, avoiding unauthorized access, preventing intrusions, stopping secret information disclosure, etc. The special issue compiles relevant advances in the area of Information Systems Security. In some cases, the papers are evolutions of some of the bases of this discipline, and in others they present new and interesting approaches. Guest editors: Daniel Mellado from the Rey Juan Carlos University, Spain and David G. Rosado from the University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain.
Vol. 18, No. 11, 2012: Some Reflections about Service Oriented Architectures, Cloud Computing Applications, Services and Interoperability. Technology-based education or technology applied to education is a key issue in Knowledge Society. There are several conferences, journals and specialized books that reflect the researching advances in this area, but there exists a huge experience background and efforts regarding international research projects development on technology-based education that not always spread their outcomes in a suitable way. This special issue includes information and the main outcomes of 12 international research projects on technology applied to education organized in 7 papers. Guest editors: Francisco J. García-Peñalvo from University of Salamanca, Spain, Marc Alier Forment from the Politécnica de Catalunya Barcelona-Tech, Spain and Miltiadis Lytras from the The American College of Greece, Greece.
Vol. 18, No. 9, 2012: Internet of Things. The special issue aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the state-of-the-art development in technology, application, and standardization in the field of Internet of Things, and presents an insight of future research directions and challenges in the Internet of Things. Guest editors: Daqiang Zhang, Nanjing Normal University, China, Huansheng Ning, Beihang University, China, Kevin S. Xu, Changzhou University, China, Feiyu Lin, Jönk246;ping University, Sweden and Laurence T. Yang, St. Francis Xavier University, Canada.
Vol. 18, No. 8, 2012: Understanding Online Social Networking Services. The area of social networks analysis and its applications bring together researchers and practitioners from different fields. The main goal of this special issue is thus to provide an opportunity to share visions, research achievements and solutions as well as to establish worldwide cooperative research and development. Guest editors: Jason J. Jung, Yeungnam University, Korea and Przemyslaw Kazienko, Wroclaw University of Technology, Poland.
Vol. 18, No. 7, 2012: Adaptive Methodologies and Designs for Network-on-Chip based Systems. The special issue covers hardware, middleware and application designs and synthesis tools that exploit the evolutionary computation principles and other innovative computing paradigms to provide CAD tools for embedded systems in general and NoC-based systems in particular. Guest editors: Nadia Nedjah and Luiza de Macedo Mourelle from the State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Vol. 18, No. 6, 2012: Security in Information Systems: New Challenges and Opportunities. The special issue presents topics from the wide spectrum of research into the area of information systems security. More than half of the articles are theoretical papers, mainly focused on security engineering, but there is also an important sample of papers which contribute to the area of security software engineering. This fact reaffirms the importance of both research disciplines in the scientific community, and confirms the growth of the secure software engineering discipline as a clear integration of security engineering and software engineering. Guest editors: David G. Rosado from the University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain, Luis Enrique Sánchez from Sicaman-NT, Spain, Eduardo Fernández-Medina from the University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain and Jan Jürjens from the Technical University of Dortmund, Germany.
Vol. 18, No. 4, 2012: Advances on Social Network Applications. The special issue is devoted to analysis of large-scale social structures and identification of the areas where social network analysis can be applied to provide knowledge that is not accessible for other types of analysis. Guest editors: Jason J. Jung, Yeungnam University, Korea and Przemyslaw Kazienko, Wroclaw University of Technology, Poland.
Vol. 18, No. 3, 2012: Rethinking Education in the Knowledge Society . The special issue of J.UCS offers a wide perspective on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in the learning experience. While all of them cover teaching/learning and ICT, the seven selected articles approach the same common subject from different viewpoints, both when it comes to the adopted research methodology - experiment, survey, case study; the learning context - secondary school, university, lifelong learning; the topic - health related, second language, science; as well as the related disciplines - pedagogy, psychology, sociology, ethnography. Guest editors: Lorenzo Cantoni and Isabella Rega from the NewMinE - New Media in Education Lab, Faculty of Communication Sciences, Università della Svizzera italiana, Lugano, Switzerland.
Vol. 18, No. 1, 2012: Outcomes of International Research Projects on Technology Applied to Education. Technology-based education or technology applied to education is a key issue in Knowledge Society. There are several conferences, journals and specialized books that reflect the researching advances in this area, but there exists a huge experience background and efforts regarding international research projects development on technology-based education that not always spread their outcomes in a suitable way. This special issue includes information and the main outcomes of 12 international research projects on technology applied to education organized in 7 papers. Guest editors: Francisco J. García-Peñalvo from University of Salamanca, Spain, Ricardo Colomo-Palacios from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain and Miltiadis Lytras from the The American College of Greece, Greece.
Vol. 17, No. 14, 2011: CSCWD: New Applications and Challenges. Computer Supported Cooperative Work in Design (CSCWD) is a field of research closely related to applications. The articles included in the special issue present a response to the new challenges that CSCWD communities are facing at the present moment. Guest editors: Marcos R. S. Borges, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, José A. Pino, Universidad de Chile, Chile and Weiming Shen, Tongji University, China.
Vol. 17, No. 12, 2011: Virtual Environments for Collaborative Innovation and Learning. Networked technologies, especially social software applications, provide new affordances that facilitate collaborative creativity among staff members of organizations. The articles in the issue focus on the design of virtual environments for collaborative innovation and learning. Guest editors: Symeon Retalis from the (Department of Digital Systems, University of Piraeus, Greece and Peter B. Sloepfrom the Open Universiteit in the Netherlands, The Netherlands.
Vol. 17, No. 10, 2011: Knowledge Work: Knowledge Worker Productivity, Collaboration and User Support. The articles in the issue focus on various aspects of knowledge work, namely knowledge worker productivity, collaboration and user support. Guest editors: Michael Granitzer and Stefanie N. Lindstaedt from the Know-Center Graz and Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria.
Vol. 17, No. 9, 2011: Software Technologies in Knowledge Society. The special issue emphasizes Knowledge and Learning Management Technologies, in Social Networks Research, and Technology Enhanced Learning and E-learning Innovations. Guest editors: Miltiadis Lytras from the The American College of Greece, Greece and Patricia Ordoñez de Pablos from the University of Oviedo, Spain.
Vol. 17, No. 8, 2011: Cloud Computing. The articles of this issue present different aspects of cloud computing. Guest editors: David Taniar from the Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, Ismail Khalil from the Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria and Eric Pardede from the La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia.
Vol. 17, No. 7, 2011: Semantic Web: Theory and Applications. The articles presented in this issue address theoretical and application-oriented aspects of the Semantic Web. Guest editors: Michael Granitzer and Stefanie N. Lindstaedt from the Know-Center Graz and Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria.
Vol. 17, No. 5, 2011: Software Components, Architectures and Reuse. The articles in the special issue report the state of research and practice on the theme of software components, architectures, and reuse. Guest editors: Paulo F. Pires from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte - UFRN, Brazil, Flavio Oquendo from the European University of Brittany - UBS/VALORIA, France and Ana Paula Terra Bacelo from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul - PUCRS, Brazil.
Vol. 17, No. 4, 2011: Web 2.0: Applications and Mechanisms. The article presented in the issue discuss different aspects of Web 2.0 applications. Guest editors: Michael Granitzer and Stefanie N. Lindstaedt from the Know-Center Graz and Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria.
Vol. 17, No. 2, 2011: CSCWD: Applications and Challenges. Design of complex artifacts and systems requires the cooperation of multidisciplinary design teams. In recent years, the universal and nearly free access to the Internet has made it much easier for people to coordinate and do collaborative design jobs without any geographical boundaries. This context and the wide scope requirement meet its realization in the CSCWD (Computer Supported Cooperative Work in Design) field. The papers in this issue illustrate new technologies and applications from CSCWD. Guest editors: Marcos R. S. Borges from the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Weiming Shen from the Tongji University, China, José A. Pino and Sergio F. Ochoa from the Universidad de Chile, Chile.
Vol. 17, No. 1, 2011: Meeting New Challenges in Document Engineering. Document engineering is the area of knowledge concerned with principles, tools and processes that improve our ability to create, manage, store, compact, access, and maintain documents. The articles of the special issue offer solutions to different problems arising in this area. Guest editor: Rafael Dueire Lins, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Recife, Brazil.
Vol. 16, No. 20, 2010: Evolving Theories of Conceptual Modelling. The articles of this issue illustrate research stretching from logical foundations of conceptual modelling to theoretical foundations for specific applications. Guest editors: Markus Kirchberg from Institute for Infocomm Research, A*STAR, Singapore and Klaus-Dieter Schewe from the Software Competence Center Hagenberg, Austria.
Vol. 16, No. 19, 2010: Advances in Authoring of Adaptive Web-based Systems. The papers presented in this special issue discuss various aspects of modular approach to authoring. Guest editors: Alexandra I. Cristea from the University of Warwick, United Kingdom, Rosa Carro from the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Spain and Craig D. Stewart from the University of Nottingham, United Kingdom.
Vol. 16, No. 18, 2010: Computability and Complexity in Analysis. The issue presents articles from the area of Computable Analysis, the theory of computability and complexity over real-valued data. Computability theory studies the limitations and abilities of computers in principle. Computational complexity theory provides a framework for understanding the cost of solving computational problems, as measured by the requirement for resources such as time and space. In particular, Computable Analysis supplies an algorithmic foundation for numerical computation. Guest editors: Andrej Bauer from the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, Peter Hertling, Universität der Bundeswehr, Munich, Germany and Ker-I Ko from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, USA.
Vol. 16, No. 17, 2010: Foundations and Practices of Unified Modeling Language. Since the emergence of the Unified Modeling Language (UML) in 1996, the UML has become the de-facto standard language for modeling software systems and been widely used in various areas including enterprise information systems, web applications, and business modeling. The articles in this issue deal with theories and foundations of the UML and their applications and experiences. Guest editors: Dae-Kyoo Kim from Oakland University, USA and Juan Trujillo from University of Alicante, Spain.
Vol. 16, No. 16, 2010: Context-aware Recommender Systems. Recommender systems have been researched and deployed extensively over the last decade in various application areas, including e-commerce, technology enhanced learning, e-health, adaptive multimedia and knowledge management. The articles contained in this special issue on context-aware recommender systems present innovative methods, techniques and systems that allow the measurement, analysis and exploration of context data and the exploitation of such data to drive personalized and contextual recommendations. Guest editors: Katrien Verbert and Erik Duval from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, Stefanie N. Lindstaedt from the Know-Center GmbH, Austria and Denis Gillet from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland.
Vol. 16, No. 15, 2010: Mobile Context-Aware Applications for Ubiquitous Computing. The special issue offers an innovative and original vision of the now and future context-aware applications for ubiquitous computing. Guest editors: María D. Lozano and Jose A. Gallud from the University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain, and Philippe Palanque from the Université Paul Sabatier, France.
Vol. 16, No. 13, 2010: Recent Trends in Service Science. Since Service Science, Management, and Engineering (SSME) was firstly coined by IBM, the "Service" has been one of the most important and common concepts in many research areas. Service Science is an interdisciplinary approach to the study, design, and implementation of services systems in which specific arrangements of people and technologies take actions that provide value for others. For example, in semantic web communities, a number of intelligent approaches have been investigated for better service. The special issue focuses on how to generate and discover the services and discusses the challenges from business and management. Guest editors: Jason J. Jung, Yeungnam University, Korea and Chulmo Koo, Chosun University, Korea.
Vol. 16, No. 12, 2010: Ambient Intelligence Vision: A Perspective. The articles in this issue show advances in aspects like Ambient Assisted Living or academic conference environments and deal with more general AmI concepts, such as middleware, augmented objects or ubiquitous end-user interfaces. Also, the concept of "Motion Intelligence" is examined. The introductory paper of the issue puts in context the aspects addressed by the other works and foresees the evolution of the still promising AmI paradigm. Guest editors: José Bravo, MAml Research Lab, Castilla La-Mancha University, Spain and Diego López-de-Ipiña, (MoreLab, University of Deusto, Bilbao, Spain.
Vol. 16, No. 11, 2010: Advances in Spatial and Temporal Reasoning. Qualitative spatial representation and reasoning has evolved as a sub-division in its own right within the broader field of Artificial Intelligence - recent years have witnessed remarkable advances in some of the long-standing problems of the field.. For instance, new results about tractability for spatial calculi, explicit construction of models, and characterization of important subclasses of relations, as well as in the development of new areas such as the emergence of integrated spatio-temporal calculi and the use of non-monotonic techniques for dealing with various aspects intrinsic to modeling dynamic spatial systems. Two of the papers in this issue deal with spatial issues, another two with temporal ones, and one paper addresses both space and time.
Guest editors: Hans W. Guesgen from the Massey University, New Zealand and Mehul Bhatt from the University of Bremen, Germany.
Vol. 16, No. 10, 2010: Multimedia Services and Applications. Due to the latest developments in communication, computing, and storage technologies, multimedia services and applications are being deployed for various applications such as entertainment, health care, smart homes, security and surveillance, and intelligent environments. The special issue focuses on research challenges and issues related to multimedia applications.
Guest editors: Sajid Hussain from the Fisk University, Nashville, USA, Geyong Min from the University of Bradford, United Kingdom, Jianhua Ma from the Hosei University, Tokyo, Japan and Jong Hyuk Park from the Seoul National University of Technology, Korea.
Vol. 16, No. 8, 2010: Methodologies, Technologies and Tools Enabling e-Government . The issue presents 5 papers dealing with differenct aspects of e-government. Guest editors: Luis Anido Rifón from the Universidade de Vigo, Spain and Flavio Corradini from the Universita di Camerino, Italy.
Vol. 16, No. 7, 2010: Collective Intelligence with Visualization and Multimedia. The aim of collective intelligence is to integrate single intelligence of individuals for dealing with highly complex problems. In practice, Web 2.0 applications like blogs and wikis have been developed to implement the collective intelligence. Such influences by collective intelligence have been an important issue in various knowledge-enhanced applications, e.g., information retrieval, semantic web, e-business, and e-learning as illustrated by the three papers published in this issue. Guest editor: Jason J. Jung, Yeungnam University, Korea.
Vol. 16, No. 6, 2010: Computational Science and Its Application. Computational Science is a main pillar of most of the present research, industrial and commercial activities and plays a unique role in exploiting ICT innovative technologies. Guest editors: Osvaldo Gervasi from the University of Perugia, Italy, Kenneth Tan from Qontix, Birmingham, UK, Marina Gavrilova from The University of Calgary, Canada and David Taniar from the Monash University, Australia.
Vol. 16, No. 5, 2010: Seventy Years Derick Wood. The special issue was compiled in honor of Derick Wood by his friends and collegues. Guest editors: Helmut Jürgensen, The University of Western Ontario, Canada, Hermann Maurer, Graz University of Technology, Austria, Arto Salomaa, Turku Centre for Computer Science, Finland and Sheng Yu, The University of Western Ontario, Canada.
Vol. 16, No. 1, 2010: Information Fusion and Logic-based Reasoning - Approaches for Decision Making under Uncertainty . Decision Making is a core area in different research fields related to human beings' intelligent activities; such activities involve different types of uncertainties depending on its nature. Therefore, different methods, models and formalisms have been investigated and applied to a wide range of decision making problems under uncertainty. This special issue is devoted to information fusion models and logic based formalisms and their application to decision making under uncertainty, it encompasses eleven papers. Guest editors: Luis Martínez, University of Jaén, Spain, Jun Liu, University of Ulster Northern Ireland, UK, and Yang Xu, Southwest Jiaotong University, P.R. China
Vol. 15, No. 18, 2009: Processing Camera-Based Documents Advances in Document Engineering. The special issue focuses on a new research area within document engineering which deals with new algorithms, tools and processing environments that are able to provide users in general with simple ways of visualizing, printing, transcribing, compressing, storing and transmitting through networks digital camera images. Guest editor: Rafael Dueire Lins, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Recife, Brazil.
Vol. 15, No. 16, 2009: Collaborative Technology and Environments. Collaborative technology and environments have always raised the attention of researchers with various backgrounds and a wide range of interests. System developers, technology designers, cognitive engineers and social scientists find themselves challenged by the complexity and tremendous possibilities raised by the technological support to groups and communities of users making joint efforts toward a common goal. And new problems continue to emerge as we find new application areas for collaborative technology. This special issue presents research in quite different application areas: healthcare virtual communities, agile software development, collaborative modeling and online chat communities. Guest editors: Pedro Antunes from the University of Lisboa, Portugal and Robert O. Briggs from the University of Nebraska at Omaha, USA.
Vol. 15, No. 15, 2009: Security in Information Systems: New Advances and Tendencies. Information Systems Security is one of the most pressing challenges currently facing all kinds of organizations. However, ensuring security and quality in both information and the systems which manage information is a complex goal necessitating the combination of two wide research disciplines which are usually separate: security engineering and security software engineering. The first discipline has a long history, and has usually focused on providing advances in security models, protocols, and techniques, but it remains in a constant state of development. Security software engineering, however, has emerged relatively recently, but is swiftly maturing and is focused on the integration of security into software engineering techniques, models and processes, in order to develop more secure information systems.
This special issue therefore includes the extended and improved versions of those papers that were selected from the best of the International Workshop on Security in Information Systems (WOSIS 2009), and aims to serve as a forum in which to unite academics, researchers, practitioners and students in the field of security engineering and security software engineering, by presenting new developments and lesson learned from real world cases, and to promote the exchange of ideas, discussion and development in these areas. The issue was edited by Eduardo Fernández-Medina from University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain and Alfonso Rodríguez from the University of Bio Bio, Chile.
Vol. 15, No. 4, 2009: Knowledge Management for Autonomous Systems and Computational Intelligence. Guest editors: Ngoc Thanh Nguyen from Wroclaw University of Technology, Poland and De-Shuang Huang from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, China.
Vol. 15, No. 12, 2009: Intelligent Environments and Services. Due to the latest developments in communication, computing, and storage technologies, smart services and applications are being deployed for various applications such as entertainment, health care, smart homes, security and surveillance, and intelligent environments. This special issue aims to address the smart spaces and their services for IE. Guest editors: Tai-hoon Kim from Hannam University, Korea, Andrew Kusiak from The University of Iowa, USA, David Taniar from Monash University, Australia and Daqing Zhang from TELECOM & Management Sud Paris, France.
Vol. 15, No. 11, 2009: Software Components, Architectures and Reuse. The papers of the issue report the state of research and practice on the theme of software components, architectures, and reuse. Guest editors: Cláudia Werner from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and Flavio Oquendo from the European University of Brittany - UBS/VALORIA, France.
Vol. 15, No. 10, 2009: Information Integration on Web-based Applications and Services . The special issue presents papers focusing on XML database management on one hand and hypermedia and web applications on the other hand. Guest editors: Gabriele Kotsis from the Johannes Kepler University, Austria, David Taniar from the Monash University, Australia, Ismail Khalil from the Johannes Kepler University, Austria and Eric Pardede from La Trobe University, Australia.
Vol. 15, No. 9, 2009: CSCWD Technologies, Applications and Challenges. The issue addresses the new challenges that CSCWD (Computer Supported Cooperative Work in Design) communities are facing at the present moment. Guest editors: Jianming Yong, University of Southern Queensland, Australia, Weiming Shen, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario and José A. Pino, Universidad de Chile, Chile.
Vol. 15, No. 7, 2009: Computers in Education: Advances in Software Technology. The special issue presents 9 articles dealing with e-learning and web-based educational software, user-centered educational software, and visualization tools. Guest editors: J. Ángel Velázquez-Iturbide from the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, Spain and Francisco José García-Peñalvo from the Universidad de Salamanca, Spain.
Vol. 15, No. 6, 2009: Computability and Complexity in Analysis - in honor of Klaus Weihrauch's 65th birthday -. The articles in the issue present topics from Computable Analysis, the theory of computability and complexity over real-valued data. Computability theory studies the limitations and abilities of computers in principle. Computational complexity theory provides a framework for understanding the cost of solving computational problems, as measured by the requirement for resources such as time and space. In particular, computable analysis supplies an algorithmic foundation of numerical computation. Guest editors: Vasco Brattka from the University of Cape Town, South Africa, Pieter Collins from the Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica, The Netherlands and Robert Rettinger from the University Hagen, Germany.
Vol. 15, No. 5, 2009: Data Security and Privacy Protection in Pervasive Computing Environments. The issue solicits state-of-the-art approaches and solutions in the area of data security and privacy protection in modern Pervasive Computing environments. Guest editors: Byoung-Soo Koh, DigiCAPS Co., Ltd, Korea, Mieso Denko from the University of Guelph, Canada, Stefanos Gritzalis from the University of the Aegean, Greece and Ching-Hsien Hsu from the Chung Hua University, Taiwan.
Vol. 15, No. 4, 2009: Knowledge Management for Autonomous Systems and Computational Intelligence. Guest editors: Ngoc Thanh Nguyen from Wroclaw University of Technology, Poland and De-Shuang Huang from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, China.
Vol. 15, No. 2, 2009: Multimedia Security in Communication (MUSIC). The issue presents five papers that report the latest research advances more on secure multimedia transmission and distribution than on multimedia content protection. Guest editors: Shiguo Lian from France Telecom R&D (Orange Labs), Beijing, China, Yan Zhang from Simula Research Laboratory, Oslo, Norway, Stefanos Gritzalis from the University of the Aegean, Mytilene, Greece and Yu Chen from the State University of New York - Binghamton, USA.
Vol. 15, No. 1, 2009: Logic, Abstract State Machines and Databases. The issue is a collection of papers presenting research stretching from pure logic over database theory and formal methods to rather applied topics such as business processes and data warehouses. Guest editor: Klaus-Dieter Schewe from the Information Science Research Centre, New Zealand.
Vol. 14, No. 21, 2008: Programming Languages. A selection of papers from the "9th Brazilian Symposium on Programming Languages", edited by Marco Tulio Valente from PUC Minas, Brazil, Peter D. Mosses from the Swansea University, United Kingdom and Francisco Heron de Carvalho Jr. from the UFC, Brazil.
Vol. 14, No. 20, 2008: Lisp: Research and Experience. The special issue was edited by Pascal Costanza from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium.
Vol. 14, No. 19, 2008: New Trends in Human Computer Interaction. The issue pays an special attention to the topic of modelling and design collaborative systems. The papers included in this issue present some technological advances and research results in the area of Human-Computer Interaction from different points of view: user-interface modelling and design, virtual and augmented reality, collaborative environments, usability and accessibility, ambient intelligence to name but a few. Guest editors: María Dolores Lozano and Jose A. Gallud from the University of Castilla-La Mancha, Albacete, Spain.
Vol. 14, No. 18, 2008: Further Advances in Document Engineering. A Document is any sort of object that conveys relevant information. This wide definition of document goes far beyond paper documents, the most usual form of document, and encompasses all sorts of materials from bones of pre-historical animals to videos, etc. Document Engineering is the area of knowledge focused in principles, algorithms, tools and processes that allow creating, managing, store, compact, access, and maintaining digital documents. The World Wide Web (WWW) made the fields of document recognition and retrieval grow rapidly in recent years. New application areas such as the, digital libraries, and video- and camera-based OCR have appeared lately. The papers of this issue present different aspects of document analysis and recognition. Guest editor: Rafael Dueire Lins from the Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Refice, Brazil.
Vol. 14, No. 17, 2008: Authoring of Adaptive and Adaptable Hypermedia. The issue presents design (via ontologies), analysis (via logs), automation, IMS-LD and other standards connections, social and cultural aspects, and game technology approaches, showing the many facets of authoring for personalization and adaptation. Guest editors: Alexandra Cristea from the University of Warwick, United Kingdom and Rosa Carro, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Spain.
Vol. 14, No. 16, 2008: Human-Computer Interaction Research and Development Challenges. The special issue was edited by Francisco J. García-Peñalvo from the University of Salamanca, Spain and Julio Abascal from the University of Basque Country, Spain.
Vol. 14, No. 15, 2008: Evolutionary Optimization for Intelligent Systems Design. The issue is devoted to reporting innovative and significant progress in intelligent systems design through an evolutionary computational process. Guest editors: Nadia Nedjah and Luiza de Macedo Mourelle from the State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Vol. 14, No. 14, 2008: Knowledge Processing in Intelligent Systems. Guest editors: Longbing Cao from the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia and Ngoc Thanh Nguyen from Wroclaw University of Technology, Poland.
Vol. 14, No. 13, 2008: Software Adaptation. Guest editors: Carlos Canal from the University of Málaga, Spain, Juan Manuel Murillo from the University of Extremadura, Spain and Pascal Poizat from the University of Evry Val d'Essonne, France and ARLES Project-Team, INRIA, France.
Vol. 14, No. 12, 2008: Quo Vadis Abstract State Machines?. In their introduction to the special issue, the guest editors point out the particular role J.UCS has played in the short history of the ASM method and describe the current state of ASM. Guest editors: Egon Börger from the Università di Pisa, Italy and Andreas Prinz from the University of Grimstadt, Norway.
Vol. 14, No. 11, 2008: Wrapping Web Data Islands. Guest editors: Rafael Corchuelo from the Universidad de Sevilla, Sevilla, Spain, José L. Arjona from the Universidad de Huelva, Huelva, Spain and David Ruiz from the Universidad de Sevilla, Sevilla, Spain.
Vol. 14, No. 9, 2008: Designing the Human Computer Interaction: Trends and Challenges. Interaction between humans and machines is being increasingly recognized as a crucially interesting "dialogue" that requires modeling, design and evaluation in order to build software systems usable in any form (Web applications, groupware, mobile and ubiquitous systems, etc.). A great number of resources and efforts is being devoted to this task, being the focus of the research community in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). The special issue was edited by Crescencio Bravo, Miguel A. Redondo and Manuel Ortega from University of Castilla - La Mancha, Spain.
Vol. 14, No. 8, 2008: Software Components, Architectures and Reuse - a special issue reproting the state of research and practice on the theme of software components, architectures and reuse. Guest editors: Cecília M. F. Rubira from the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil and Rogério de Lemos from the University of Kent, United Kingdom.
Vol. 14, No. 7, 2008: Collective Intelligence for Semantic and Knowledge Grid , edited by Jason J. Jung from the Yeungnam University, Korea and Ngoc Thanh Nguyen from the Wroclaw University of Technology, Poland.
Vol. 14, No. 6, 2008: Computability and Complexity in Analysis reflects the study and advancement of the theory of computability and complexity over real-valued data and its application. Guest editors: Vasco Brattka from the University of Cape Town, South Africa, Hajime Ishihara from the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Japan, Matthias Schröder from the Universität der Bundeswehr, Munich, Germany and Ning Zhong from the University of Cincinnati, USA.
Vol. 14, No. 5, 2008: Socio-Economic Issues in Future Generation Internet (FGI). Quality of Service (QoS) has been a hot topic within Internet-related research for many years. However, corresponding efforts have been contrasted with Internet merely providing connectivity and best-effort service. With the advent of new services such as Triple-Play (voice, video, Internet access) and the fact that some of these services will be charged per use, performance and economic issues regarding Internet and the trade-off between them are perhaps more important than ever before. This is amongst others witnessed by large efforts of major manufacturers and service providers for improving Quality of Experience (QoE) perceived from the users. Investments in networks, on the other hand, require detailed cost analyses. In addition, users need to be equipped with well-adapted security solutions in order to retain trust in networked services. Indeed, QoS and thus QoE relate to both performance and security and come at a cost. Thus, for any (future) Internet-based service, an optimal balance between performance, economy and security has to be found in order to make it well-accepted, which is pivotal to minimize the "Digital Divide". Thus, coordination and cross-fertilization of the domains user-perceived quality, economy/costing and security is required. The issue was edited by Markus Fiedler from theBlekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden, Klaus D. Hackbarth from the University of Cantabria, Spain and Helmut Hlavacs from the University of Vienna, Austria.
Vol. 14, No. 3, 2008: Cryptography in Computer System Security: Cryptography plays an important role on ensuring the security and reliability of modern computer systems. Since high speed and broad bandwidth have been becoming the keywords for modern computer systems, new cryptographic methods and tools must follow up in order to adapt to these new and emerging technologies. This Special Issue aims to provide a platform for security researchers to present their newly developed cryptographic technologies in computer systems. Areas of interest for this special journal issue include, but are not limited to, the following topics: Authentication, Cryptographic algorithms and their applications, Cryptanalysis, Email security, Electronic commerce, Data integrity, Fast cryptographic algorithms and their applications, Identity-based cryptography, IP security, Key management, Multicast security, Computer network security, Privacy protection, Security in Peer-to-Peer networks, Security in sensor networks, and Smartcards. The issue was edited by Liqun Chen from the Hewlett-Packard Labs, UK, Ed Dawson from the Queensland University of Technology, Australia, Xuejie Lai from the Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, Masahiro Mambo from the Tsukuba University, Japan, Atsuko Miyaji from JAIST, Japan, Yi Mu (Lead Guest Editor) from the (University of Wollongong, Australia, David Pointcheval from the École Normale Supérieure, France, Bart Preneel from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, Nigel Smart from the Bristol University, United Kingdom, Willy Susilo from the University of Wollongong, Australia, Huaxiong Wang from the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and Duncan S. Wong from the City University of Hong Kong, China.
Vol. 14, No. 2, 2008: Advances in Document Engineering: Document Engineering is a discipline within computer science that investigates systems for documents in any form and in all media. Document engineering is concerned with principles, tools and processes that improve our ability to create, manage, store, compact, access, and maintain documents. The fields of document recognition and retrieval have grown rapidly in recent years. This development has been fueled by the emergence of new application areas such as the World Wide Web (WWW), digital libraries, and video- and camera-based OCR. The use of OCR is spreading from high-volume, niche domains to more general tasks, including the processing of noisy "real-world" documents, photocopies, and faxes. The issue was edited by Rafael Dueire Lins from the Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Recife, Brazil.
Vol. 14, No. 1, 2008: Groupware: Issues and Applications: The articles of this special issue are significantly extended versions of selected papers presented at the 12th International Workshop on Groupware (CRIWG 2006) held in Medina del Campo, Spain in September 2006. The CRIWG workshops are annual events which have a single track of relatively few papers, providing ample time for lively and constructive discussions during and between sessions. The 2006 version had 34 accepted papers out of 101 submissions, from which six were selected to be invited to this special issue. The invited papers were reviewed by three anonymous referees each and had two rounds of improvement. Guest editors: Yannis A. Dimitriadis, University of Valladolid, Spain, José A. Pino; University of Chile, Chile; and Ilze Zigurs, University of Nebraska at Omaha, USA.
Vol. 13, No. 13, 2007: The issue Applications of Formal Methods to System Design and Verification contains the extended versions of a selected set of papers presented at the first IPM International Workshop on Foundations of Software Engineering (Theory and Practice), Tehran, Iran, October 1-3, 2005. The issue was edited by Farhad Arbab from CWI, Netherlands and Leiden University, Netherlands, and Marjan Sirjani from the University of Tehran, Iran and IPM, Iran.
Vol. 13, No. 12, 2007: Ontologies and their Applications, edited by Fred Freitas from Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil, Heiner Stuckenschmidt Universität Mannheim, Germany, Andréia Malucelli from the Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná, Brazil and H. Sofia Pinto from the INESC-ID, Lisbon, Portugal.
Vol. 13, No. 11, 2007: Combinatorics and Related Areas: A Collection of Papers in Honour of the 65th Birthday of Ioan Tomescu. The special issue was edited by Cristian S. Calude from The University of Auckland, New Zealand, Gheorghe Stefanescu from the University of Bucharest, Romania and Marius Zimand from Towson University, USA.
Vol. 13, No. 7, 2007: A special issue on Computers in Education: New Developments in e-Learning Technology, edited by Baltasar Fernández-Manjón from the Complutense University of Madrid, Spain and Martín Llamas and Ramón-Ángel Fernández, both from the University of León, Spain.
Vol. 13, No. 6, 2007: Selected papers from the 11th Brazilian Symposium on Programming Languages (SBLP 2007), edited by Roberto Bigonha from the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil, and Martin Musicante from Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil.
Vol. 13, No. 5, 2007: A survey of The State of the Art in Formal Methods, edited by Richard Banach from the University of Manchester, United Kingdom.
Vol. 13, No. 3, March 28, 2007: New Advances in Reconfigurable Computing and its Applications, edited by Miguel A. Vega-Rodríguez, Juan A. Gómez-Pulido and Juan M. Sánchez-Pérez from the University of Extremadura, Spain.
Vol. 13, No. 2, February 28, 2007: Communicative Intellligence, edited by Ngoc Thanh Nguyen from Wroclaw University of Technology, Poland, and Toyoaki Nishida, The University of Tokyo, Japan.
Vol. 13, No. 1, January 28, 2007: A selection of papers from the 1st ACIS International Workshop on Self-Assembling Wireless Networks. Guest editors: Gruia Călinescu from the Illinois Institute of Technology, USA, Ion I. Măndoiu from the University of Connecticut, USA, Alexander Zelikovsky from the Georgia State University, USA and Marius Zimand from the Towson University, USA.
Vol. 12, No. 9, September 28, 2006: A selection of papers presented at Informatics in Higher Education conference held in 2005 in Debrecen, Hungary. Guest editors: Attila Pethő from the Debrecen University, Hungary, and Dezső Sima from the Budapest Polytechnic, Hungary..
Vol. 12, No. 7, July 28, 2006: Selected papers from the 10th Brazilian Symposium on Programming Languages, edited by Mariza A. S. Bigonha from the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil and Alex de Vasconcellos Garcia from the Militar Institute of Engineering, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Vol. 6, No. 6, June 28, 2006: The special issue contains the contributions of some participants of the First and Second Japanese-German Frontiers of Science Symposia (JaGFoS). The First JaGFoS Symposium took place in Mainz, Germany, in January 2005, and its mathematics and computer science session was devoted to "Computational Challenges of Massive Data Sets". The Second JaGFoS Symposium took place in Shonan, Japan, in November 2005, and the topic of its mathematics and computer science session was "Randomness in Computation". Guest editors: Jörg Rothe from the Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf, Germany and Hiroki Arimura from the Hokkaido University, Japan.
Vol. 12, No. 4, April 28, 2006: Special issue on Evolvable Hardware devoted to reporting innovative and significant progress in automatic hardware design. The issue includes five extended papers, originally presented at the IEEE CEC 2005. Guest editors: Nadia Nedjah and Luiza de Macedo Mourelle from the State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Vol. 12, No. 3, March 28, 2006: Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence: New Challenges for Computing, edited by José Bravo, Castilla-La Mancha University, Javier Alamán, Autonoma University of Madrid, and Teresa Riesgo, Politecnic University of Madrid, Granada, Spain.
Vol. 12, No. 1, January 28, 2006: Pervasive Health Management: New Challenges for Health Informatics, edited by J.C. Augusto, N.D. Black, H.G. McAllister, P.J. McCullagh and C.D. Nugent from the School of Computing and Mathematics University of Ulster at Jordanstown, United Kingdom.
Vol. 11, No. 12, December 28, 2005: Constructivity, Computability, and Logic, A special collection of papers dedicated to Professor Douglas Bridges' 60th Birthday, edited by Cris Calude from University of Auckland, New Zealand and Hajime Ishihara from the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Japan.
Vol. 11, No. 11, November 28, 2005: A special issue on Visual Data Mining, edited by Jesús S. Aguilar-Ruiz, Pablo de Olavide University, Spain, and Francisco J. Ferrer-Troyano, University of Seville, Spain.
Vol. 11, No. 10, October 28, 2005: Special issue on "Compositional Construction and Reasoning Techniques for Software", edited by Farhad Arbab from the Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and Joost N. Kok from Leiden University, The Netherlands.
Vol. 11, No. 9, October 28, 2005: A selection of the best papers from the 6th International Symposium on Computer and Education (SIIE '04). Edited by José Bravo, Castilla-La Mancha University, Spain, Baltasar Fernández, Complutense University of Madrid, Spain, and Juan M. Sánchez, Extremadura University, Céceres, Spain.
J.UCS Vol. 11, No. 7, July 28, 2005: A selection of papers from the "9th Brazilian Symposium on Programming Languages", edited by Martin A. Musicante from the Universidade Federal do Paraná, Brazil and Ricardo Massa Ferreira Lima from the Universidade de Pernambuco, Brazil.
Vol. 3, No. 5, May 28, 1997: The second part of the special issue on Ten Years of Gurevich's Abstract State Machines is devoted to applications of ASMs to classical problems of programming and software engineering. Guest editor: Egon Börger, Università di Pisa, Italy.
Vol. 3, No. 4, April 28, 1997: The special issue Ten Years of Gurevich's Abstract State Machines documents the flourishing Abstract State Machines research. The special issue consists of two parts, published in the April and May issues, respectively. The papers in this issue deal with foundational questions, with questions from complexity theory, with the central notion of refinement and with machine support for reasoning about ASMs. Guest editor: Egon Börger, Università di Pisa, Italy.
Vol. 2, No. 10, October 28, 1996: The topic of this special issue is the Classroom of the Future. The issue contains papers presenting visions of the "classroom without walls," a learning environment that merges new pedagogies, advanced media, and collaborative learning to meet the needs of knowledgeworkers of the 21st century. Guest editor: Patricia A. Carlson from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, USA.
Vol. 2, No. 9, September 28, 1996: Special issue presenting five extended versions of WebNet '96 contributions dealing with different aspects of Internet. All five papers received a best paper award.
Vol. 2, No. 6, June 28, 1996: Special issue on Distance Teaching, edited by Bernd Kraemer from the University of Hagen, Germany.
Vol. 2, No. 2, February 28, 1996: The issue contains a selection of refereed papers contributed to the International Symposium and Young Scientists School on Mathematical Modelling and Information Systems in Biology, Ecology and Medicine (BIOMATH-95). The meeting was organized by the Institute of Informatics at the University of Basel and the Research Group for Mathematical Modelling in Biology of the Institute of Biophysics at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and held in Sofia, Bulgaria from August 23 to 27, 1995. Guest editors: Svetoslav M. Markov, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Bulgaria, and Christian P. Ullrich, University of Basel, Switzerland.
Vol. 1, No. 7, July 28, 1995: A selection of papers presented during the international conference "Real Numbers and Computers" in Saint-Etienne, France, April 1995, edited by Jean-Claude Bajard, Université de Provence, France, Dominique Michelucci, Ecole des Mines de Saint-Etienne, France, Jean-Michel Moreau, Ecole des Mines de Saint-Etienne, France and Jean-Michel Muller, CNRS, ENS Lyon, France.
