Call for Papers (Vol.3, No.2) Special Issue focusing on: "Business Intelligence for Competitive Advantages" to be published in July 2005 in the International Journal of Internet and Enterprise Management (IJIEM) ISSN : 1476 - 1300 Guest Editors: Dmitri Roussinov, Arizona State University, USA  J. Leon Zhao, University of Arizona, USA

Business Intelligence can be defined as the use of advanced software techniques that exhibit certain degree of human intelligence for advanced business applications.   The recent surge of interests in business intelligence can be attributed to (1) the remarkable progress in cutting-edge technologies such as machine learning, autonomous computing, data mining, mobile agents, and collaborative computing, (2) significant commercial deployment of intelligent applications such as recommendation systems, online auction services, customer relationship management, and intelligent product catalogs, and (3) the dramatic increase of real world data that is available for business analysis as found in data warehouses, Internet web pages, and digital libraries. These new research and development results are providing profitable opportunities for corporations to tap into and at the same time leading to unprecedented complexity in corporate computing.  Furthermore, business systems are increasingly interacting automatically with other business systems, which raise issues of competitive and cooperative intelligence.  These direct interactions of business systems will lead to novel information systems and inventive business applications.

The purpose of this special issue is to provide a forum for researchers to report their recent discoveries on how to develop, deploy, apply, and assess business intelligence to achieve competitive advantages in enterprise and cross-enterprise settings.  The goal of this special issue is to publish high quality articles in this area that address theoretical, technical, and practical issues in business intelligence. Both original contributions and thoughtful survey papers are welcome.

Topics of relevance to this special issue include (but not limited to):

• automated contracting, brokering, and negotiation techniques and applications
• autonomous computing and business Semantic Web
• business applications of game theory, distributed AI, and machine learning techniques
• business applications of web services
• buyer and seller decision making through intelligent techniques
• collaborative retrieval and suggestions generation
• customer relationship management techniques and applications
• customized presentation of information to buyers
• data mining, warehousing,  and visualization applications
• flexible process automation
• individualized promotions and advertising
• integrated product/service catalogs
• intelligent auction, intelligent brokering, and matchmaking services
• intelligent shopping agents, including product search and decision analysis
• knowledge representation to describe goods and services
• novel machine learning and knowledge discovery techniques
• recommendation systems and applications
• representation, execution, and retrieval of business policies, rules, and processes
• XML-encoded domain ontologies and business-message languages

Important Dates

• 1 December, 2003:  Due date for full-paper submissions to the Special Issue.
• 1 January, 2004:  Outcomes of initial screening are returned to authors whose papers are rejected for further reviews.
• 1 March, 2004:  Outcomes of formal reviews are sent to authors of all papers.
• 1 April, 2004:  Due date for resubmission of papers required revisions.
• 1 June, 2004:  Outcomes of 2nd-round formal reviews are sent to authors of resubmitted papers.
• 1 July, 2004:  Due date for resubmission of papers required only minor revisions.
• 15 July, 2004:  Outcomes of 3rd-round formal reviews are sent to authors of resubmitted papers.
• 15 August, 2004:  Due date for authors to submit properly-formatted copies for all accepted papers.
• April 2005 (Vol.3, No.2):  Publication schedule.

• A submitted paper must not be under the review of any other journal.
  
  
• Electronic submission is required.  Manuscript in MS-Word or PDF format must be emailed to the Guest Editor. 
  
  
• A complete submission must include: (1) the cover letter, (2) the title page, and (3) the manuscript without authors' names in three separate MS-Word files. These files should be submitted electronically to the Guest Editor.  Please specify "BIFCA Submission" in the "Subject" of your e-mail message.
  
  
• Each paper will undergo two rounds of double-blind reviews. Any paper fails to meet the required revisions after two rounds of reviews will be rejected unless only minor changes are needed.  (Click here for Acceptance Criteria)
  
  
• Please submit your manuscript with a cover letter/e-mail containing the following imperative statements: (Click here for a sample cover letter/e-mail.)

 
1. Title and the central theme of the article.
2. Which subject/theme of the Journal the material fits.
3. Why the material is important in its field and why the material should be published in this Journal.
4. Nomination of up to four recognized experts who would be considered appropriate to review the submission. Please state (1) the names, title, addresses, phone, fax, and email addresses of these reviewers, (2) the expertise of each reviewer relating to your paper, and (3) your relationship with each of them. An attempt will be made to select at least one of the reviewer nominations.
5. The fact that the manuscript contains original unpublished work and is not being submitted for publication elsewhere.

 
• Note that author name(s) must not appear anywhere else in the manuscript except in the title page and the reference list (if cited). No information can be placed in the properties of the manuscript's electronic file. Inappropriate submissions will be returned to authors. Factors leading to this action include submission with improper or no cover letter, excessive length, technically inappropriate material, single spaced body of text, subject of no interest to readers, manuscripts simultaneously submitted to other publications, and manuscripts not adhering to author guidelines. Non-English speaking author should have his/her paper proofread by a professional technical writer for grammatical and spelling corrections as well as the readability of the paper, before submitting it to the Guest Editor.
  
  
• Accepted papers must follow the guidelines posted at: http://www.icebnet.org/author/ to format the final papers.

For any questions and article submissions, please contact:

Guest Editors:
Dr. Dmitri Rossinov
E-mail:  dmitri.roussinov@asu.edu
or
Dr. J. Leon Zhao
E-mail:  lzhao@bpa.arizona.edu

For more information on the Journal visit the IJIEM web site:
http://www.icebnet.org/ijiem.html