[AISWorld] Special issue on Business Intelligence and the Web - Information Systems Frontiers journal

Wed May 11 04:22:54 EDT 2011

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Call for Papers
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- Information Systems Frontiers -
- Special issue on Business Intelligence and the Web -
- JCR impact factor: 1.309 -
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- Deadline for submission of papers: June 30th, 2011 -
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Rationale and aim
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Over the last decade we have been witnessing an increasing use of 
Business Intelligence (BI) solutions, which allow business people to 
query, understand, and analyze their business data to make better 
decisions. Traditionally, BI applications allow business people to 
acquire useful knowledge from the data of their organization by means of 
a variety of technologies, such as data warehousing, data mining, 
business performance management, OLAP, periodical business reports, and 
the like.
Yet, in the very recent years, a new trend emerged: BI applications no 
longer limit their analysis to the data inside a company. Increasingly, 
they also source their data from the outside, specifically, from the 
Web, and complement company-internal data with value-adding information 
from the Web (e.g., retail prices of products sold by competitors), with 
the purpose of providing richer insights into the dynamics of today’s 
business.
In parallel to the move of data from the Web into BI applications, we 
are also witnessing a move of BI applications from company-internal 
information systems to the Web: BI as a service (e.g., hosted BI 
platforms for small- and medium-size companies) is the target of huge 
investments and the focus of large research efforts by industry. The 
idea is that of outsourcing the processing and analysis of large bodies 
of data and consuming BI from the cloud: the so-called Cloud Intelligence.
We associate the above dynamics in the BI landscape with the following 
research challenges:
1. Data from the Web is feeding BI applications
In the last decade, the amount and complexity of data available on the 
Web has been growing rapidly. As a consequence, designers of BI 
applications making use of data from the Web have to deal with several 
issues. Among the most interesting challenges we find, for instance, the 
extraction and integration of heterogeneous data sources. But there are 
many other interesting research challenges that arise when the Web is 
seen as a data repository: how to develop Web warehousing solutions, how 
to handle data quality issues, how to leverage semantic Web 
technologies, how to employ Web mining, how to do BI with unstructured 
data (e.g., text) or semi-structured data (e.g., XML), and so on. Also, 
a recently emerged research challenge is Web Intelligence, which 
explores the use of Artificial Intelligence in combination with Web 
technologies, including novel statistical methodologies. Other 
interesting topics arise when Web usage data (e.g., logs, data streams, 
click streams, etc.) are analyzed and used in BI applications, since 
these data can give support to the development of Web applications, for 
example to achieve advanced levels of adaptivity in websites.
2. BI applications are moving to the Web
The move of BI applications from company-internal information systems to 
applications that are accessible over the Web implies the need for 
web-specific design competencies. In this context, we strongly believe 
that (existing and future) Web engineering methodologies and 
technologies represent a large body of knowledge and expertise that 
could be very useful in the design of applications that allow decision 
makers to access BI data and functionalities over the Web. Good Web 
engineering is also the foundation of the design of real-time BI and 
business performance management applications, as through the Web 
applications access to data is provided from anywhere, at anytime, and 
via any media. Furthermore, BI on the Web also implies a plethora of new 
research challenges that are specific to the BI context, e.g., using Web 
mashups and RIA for BI development, usability and accessibility for BI 
applications, security issues in BI, and so on. Finally, another 
research challenge is related to extracting knowledge from diverse Web 
sources in order to support, validate or analyze business models.

Topics of interest
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The scope of this special issue includes but is not limited to:
- Web warehousing
- Extraction, transformation, and load of Web data
- Web integration
- Web data quality
- Semantic Web technologies
- Web Mining
- Web Intelligence
- Novel statistical methodologies for BI
- The role of Web 2.0/3.0 in BI
- Social networks and BI
- BI with unstructured data (e.g., text) and semi-structured data (e.g., 
XML)
- BI for designing adaptive websites
- Web engineering techniques for BI applications (Web mashups, RIA, etc.)
- Real time BI
- Business performance management
- Usability and accessibility for BI applications
- Security issues in BI
- BI as a service
- Cloud Intelligence: cloud computing & BI.
- Revenue and risk management in Web-enabled BI applications.

Special issue guest editors
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Jose-Norberto Mazón (primary contact person)
Dept. of Software and Computing Systems
University of Alicante, Spain
Email: jnmazon at dlsi.ua.es

Irene Garrigós
Dept. of Software and Computing Systems
University of Alicante, Spain
Email: igarrigos at dlsi.ua.es

Florian Daniel
Information Engineering and Computer Science Department
University of Trento, Italy
Email: daniel at disi.unitn.it

Malu Castellanos
Intelligent Enterprise Technologies Lab
HP Laboratories, Palo Alto
Email: malu.castellanos at hp.com

Important dates
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Deadline for submission of papers: June 30th, 2011
Authors to receive a 1st decision by: September 30th, 2011
Final notification of acceptance: November 30th, 2011
Publication: subject to ISF schedule

Submission instructions
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Manuscripts must be submitted in PDF format by email to Jose-Norberto 
Mazón: jnmazon at dlsi.ua.es

Paper submissions must conform to the format guidelines of Information 
Systems Frontiers available at 
http://www.springer.com/business/business+information+systems/journal/10796

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Jose-Norberto Mazón

Lucentia Research Group
http://www.lucentia.es

University Institute for Computing Research (IUII)
http://www.iuii.ua.es

Dept. Software and Computing Systems
http://www.dlsi.ua.es
UNIVERSITY OF ALICANTE

PO BOX 99. E-03080
ALICANTE, Spain.
Phone : +34-965903400 ext:2384
Fax   : +34-965909326

E-mail: jnmazon at dlsi.ua.es
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