Call for Papers (Vol.5, No.2) Special Issue focusing on: "Business Service Management and Service Level Agreement" to be published in Spring 2007 in the International Journal of Internet and Enterprise Management (IJIEM) ISSN : 1476 - 1300 Submission deadline: February 17, 2006. Guest Editors: Patrick C. K. Hung, University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT), Canada   Terry Wu, University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT), Canada

Aims and Objectives

When two enterprise systems come to talk with each other, one of the biggest challenges is the issue of interoperability in the context of languages, protocols, and technologies. Business Services Networks (BSN) are IT infrastructure intermediaries where business services can be securely published, reused, and invoked based on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) standards. They allow providers to sell their service and offer requestors a secure network to compose complex business processes. With proper permissions, requestors can automate several Business Service Management (BSM) functions such as: (1) analyze their requirements and match them to network resources, (2) model their business processes in a complete architecture, (3) define key operational conditions for processes, (4) execute their processes on the grid, and (5) monitor and manage processes in real-time. In addition, BSN's extend the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) of each network participant by providing reliable Business-to-Business (B2B) transaction management, Business-to-Government (B2G), and Business-to-Customer (B2C) with Service Level Agreements (SLA). A SLA is a formal contract between a services requestor and provider guaranteeing quantifiable issues at defined levels only through mutual concessions. In general, a SLA is used to specify the service level parameters that describe both enterprise systems' guarantees and obligations.

Subject Coverage

In particular, this special issue focuses on original theory-, application- and industry-oriented research and technical papers on "Business Service Management and Service Level Agreement." Suggested interested topics include, but are NOT limited to:

• Management of ICT in the Service Operations Sector
• Business Ethics, Excellence and Infrastructure Management
• Engineering Service Process, Specifications, Execution and Level Agreement
• e-Healthcare, e-Science and e-Banking: Issues and Implications for Service Level
• e-Learning, e-Recruitment and e-Marketing Operations and Management
• e-Supply Chain Management Service Management and Level Agreement
• Social Modeling Treatment of Business Service Management and Agreement
• e-Service and Process-oriented Application Development Methods and Architectures
• Composite Processes with Messages, Documents, and Services
• Services Operations, Quality Management, and Contract Specifications
• Automatic and Semi-automatic Services Contract Generation and Management
• B2B, B2G and B2C Processes for Service Contracting, Operations, and Management
• Semantic Support for Services Contracting, Operations, and Management
• Virtual Organizations and Integration Issues for Service Management and Operations
• Legal Issues in Services Contract and Operations
• Service Marketing and Relationship Management
• Decision Models and Decision Support Systems for Service-related Management and Operations
• Agent-based Technologies for Service-related Management and Operations
• Measuring Service Quality in the New Economy
• Building Customer Loyalty and Electronic Communications in Service Operations
• Case Studies, Prototypes, and Experiences

Important Dates

• 17 February, 2006:  Due date for full-paper submissions to the Special Issue.
• 3 March, 2006:  Outcomes of initial screening are returned to authors whose papers are rejected for further reviews.
• 21 April, 2006:  Outcomes of formal reviews are sent to authors of all papers.
• 12 May, 2006:  Due date for resubmission of papers required revisions.
• 2 June, 2006:  Outcomes of 2nd-round formal reviews are sent to authors of resubmitted papers.
• 23 June, 2006:  Due date for resubmission of papers required only minor revisions.
• 14 July, 2006:  Outcomes of 3rd-round formal reviews are sent to authors of resubmitted papers.
• 4 August, 2006:  Due date for authors to submit properly-formatted copies for all accepted papers.
• April-June 2007 (Vol.5, 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 "IJIEM-v5-n2-SP Submission" in the "Subject" line 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:
Patrick C. K. Hung (Patrick.Hung@uoit.ca) and Terry Wu (Terry.Wu@uoit.ca)
University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT), Canada

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