Groups at work: lessons from research into large-scale coordination

Study of large-scale coordination seeks us to understand work between and across groups beyond earlier conceptions of social human factors. Revealing the complexity of work domains and the subtle yet effective ways that workers negotiate its challenges opens the way to develop support tools that are grounded in a scientific understanding. This first special issue in Large-Scale Coordination shows the breadth of application research from air traffic control to the military and multi-agency emergency response. A second special issue later this year will show depth of research at large scale in healthcare.     

Special Issue: Emerging,Ambient and Ubiquitous Systems 2015

This special issue is based on the best papers from the 6th International Conference on Ambient Systems, Networks and Technologies (ANT), which was held at London, United Kingdom, on 2–5 June 2015. The conference attracted a large number of scientific papers that contributed to the state-of-the-art in the areas of pervasive and ambient information systems. This special issue follows on the same topics published earlier in the journals of Future Generation Computer Systems in 2013, 2014 and 2016 [1], [2], [3]. With rapid technological developments, we thought that it would be interesting once more to draw together high-quality work in this field.     

Speech and Language processing as assistive technologies

We are delighted to bring you this special issue on speech and language processing for assistive technology. It addresses an important research area that is gaining increased recognition from researchers in speech and language processing as a rich and fulfilling area on which to focus their work, and by researchers in assistive technology as the means to dramatically improve communication technologies for individuals with disabilities. This special issue brings a wide swath of approaches and applications highlighting the variety this area offers.     

John McCarthy's legacy

This special issue is dedicated to John McCarthy, founding father of Artificial Intelligence. It contains a collection of recent contributions to the field of knowledge representation and reasoning, a field that McCarthy founded and that has been a main focus of his research during the last half century. In this introductory article, we survey some of McCarthy's major contributions to the field of knowledge representation and reasoning, and situate the papers in this special issue in the context of McCarthy's previous work.     

Computing at Bolt Beranek and Newman: The First 40 Years, Part 2

This is the second of two special issues of the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing on computing at Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc. (BBN). The first issue (vol. 27, no. 2) included accounts of BBN’s founding. Articles in that issue addressed the factors that led to BBN’s early interest in computer technology, BBN’s history of attempted commercial exploitation of company-developed technology, reflections on leading-edge research and development in a commercial company, and details of work in two of the several specific areas in which BBN conducted computer-related research and development over many years. The current issue describes work in several other technical areas in which BBN maintained a long-term interest.     

Procedural Methods for Urban Modeling

Simulation of our man-made environment, especially cities, is becoming an increasingly important research problem in computer graphics. This special issue captures a good snapshot of work in this emerging area.     

Introduction: Computer Vision Research at NECI

This special issue of the International Journal of Computer Vision highlights research on computer vision at the NEC Research Institute. The purpose of this preface is to provide some context to how this work reflects our broader goals and themes of computer vision research at NECI.     

Nature-inspired computation and communication: A formal approach

We introduce the special issue with the title of “Nature-inspired Computation and Communication: A Formal Approach” edited by Prof. Phan Cong Vinh and Dr. Emil Vassev to scientists, researchers, professionals and students in the field of computing. Hopefully, they will find this issue provoking for their research related to hot topics of computing and being useful to their future work.     

Workflow Automation: Overview and Research Issues

Workflow management systems, a relatively recent technology, are designed to make work more efficient, integrate heterogeneous application systems, and support interorganizational processes in electronic commerce applications. In this paper, we introduce the field of workflow automation, the subject of this special issue of Information Systems Frontiers. In the first part of the paper, we provide basic definitions and frameworks to aid understanding of workflow management technologies. In the remainder of the paper, we discuss technical and management research opportunities in this field and discuss the other contributions to the special issue.     

Differentiated Awareness-Support in Computer Supported Collaborative Work

Awareness has, for decades, been a topic of interest in CSCW research, as it is a critical condition for effective coordination of collaborative work. In this special issue we present papers that discuss overviews of awareness aspects as well as research challenges for awareness in new settings and conditions. Awareness continues to be a topic of research especially in new (virtual) interaction environments and in various challenging domains in which collaboration is becoming an answer to the increasing complexity of interconnected systems and globalization.     

Fixed priority pre-emptive scheduling: An historical perspective

From its roots in job-shop scheduling, research into fixed priority pre-emptive scheduling theory has progressed from the artificial constraints and simplistic assumptions used in early work to a sufficient level of maturity that it is being increasingly used in the implementation of real-time systems. It is therefore appropriate that within this special issue we provide an historical perspective on the development of fixed priority pre-emptive scheduling.     

An analysis of the most cited articles in software engineering journals—1999

Citations and related work are crucial in any research to position the work and to build on the work of others. A high citation count is an indication of the influence of specific articles. The importance of citations means that it is interesting to analyze which articles are cited the most. Such an analysis has been conducted using the ISI Web of Science to identify the most cited software engineering journal articles published in 1999. The objective of the analysis is to identify and list the articles that have influenced others the most as measured by citation count. An understanding of which research is viewed as most valuable to build upon may provide valuable insights into what research to focus on now and in the future. Based on the analysis, a list of the 20 most cited articles is presented here. The intention of the analysis is twofold. First, to actually show the most cited articles, and second, to invite the authors of the most cited articles in 1999 to contribute to a special issue of Information and Software Technology. Five invited authors have accepted the invitation and their articles are appearing in this special issue. Moreover, the research topics and methods of the most cited articles in 1999 are compared with those from the most cited articles in 1994 to provide a picture of similarities and differences between the years.     

Who do you think you are? A review of the complex interplay between information systems,identification and identity

This paper introduces the special issue on information systems, identity and identification. In addition to introducing the papers in the special issue, it provides a state-of-the-art review of research into identity and identification to contextualise the contributions of the special issue papers. The paper reviews research themes in personal and organisational identity as well as research challenges in identification before considering the interplay between these two strands.     

Sexualities, technologies, and the teaching of writing: A critical overview

In this introduction to a special issue of Computers and Composition, the authors critically review current literature on computer-assisted writing pedagogies that grapple with issues of sexuality. Although this body of work is small, it points to provocative ways to develop our students’ critical and rhetorical sensibilities about the constructions of sexuality in our culture. Further, such work innovatively addresses the place of networked communication technologies in the interrogation of such constructions. The authors conclude with both an introduction of the work in this special issue that addresses the intersection of sexuality studies and computer-assisted writing studies and with a call for additional work in this field.     

Introduction to the Special Issue on Biometrics: Progress and Directions

The guest editors provide an overview of the articles selected for this special issue. The issue's goal is to document the current state-of-the-art, acknowledge the latest breakthroughs achieved by scientists working in the area of biometric recognition, and identify future promising research areas. It is thought the selection of papers discussed should give readers a good idea of where researchers have been focusing, both on long- studied problems still needing more work and on newer challenges. A fundamental of the field of biometrics is an ever-increasing need for better recognition and stronger security. But, as public and commercial biometric deployments increase in number, there is also more need to understand privacy issues and to provide greater ease-of-use. The volume and quality of papers in this special issue indicate that much progress has been made in many aspects of the biometrics field and that there are challenging and promising future directions still to follow.     

Guest Editors' Introduction: End-User Software Engineering

Millions of people program to support their work but don't call themselves programmers. The field of end-user software engineering is concerned with helping these people create reliable, dependable, and reusable programs, without distracting them from their primary tasks. This special issue of IEEE Software presents a selection of research from this field, providing a glimpse of some of the exciting advances made in past 10 years of research and development.     

Designing and evaluating driver support systems with the user in mind

In this editorial to the special issue we first introduce the field of driver support system (DSS) design and evaluation, frame it into the larger context of human–computer interaction research, and highlight some of its specificities. We then proceed to briefly present the selection of articles that compose this issue. Finally, we put the contributions to the special issue into perspective along a number of dimensions to show how they represent the diversity of current DSS research.     

An analysis of the most cited articles in software engineering journals - 2000

Citations and related work are crucial in any research to position the work and to build on the work of others. A high citation count is an indication of the influence of specific articles. The importance of citations means that it is interesting to analyze which articles are cited the most. Such an analysis has been conducted using the ISI Web of Science to identify the most cited software engineering journal articles published in 2000. The objective of the analysis is to identify and list the articles that have influenced others the most as measured by citation count. An understanding of which research is viewed by the research community as most valuable to build upon may provide valuable insights into what research to focus on now and in the future. Based on the analysis, a list of the 20 most cited articles is presented here. The intention of the analysis is twofold. First, to identify the most cited articles, and second, to invite the authors of the most cited articles in 2000 to contribute to a special issue of Information and Software Technology. Five authors have accepted the invitation and their articles appear in this special issue. Moreover, an analysis of the most cited software engineering journal articles in the last 20 years is presented. The presentation includes both the most cited articles in absolute numbers and the most cited articles when looking at the average number of citations per year. The article describing the SPIN model checker by G.J. Holzmann published in 1997 is first on both these lists.