Call for papers

Guest Editors Ali Emrouznejad, Professor and Chair in Business Analytics, Director, Centre for Business Analytics in Practice, Surrey Business School, Guildford, UK Dima Rachid Jamali, Professor and Dean of the College of Business Administration at the University of Sharjah, Sharjah, UAE Panagiotis (Panos) Zervopoulos, Associate Professor, College of Business Administration, University of Sharjah, Sharjah, UAE

The College of Business Administration (CoBA) at the University of Sharjah (UAE) and the Centre for Business Analytics (CBAP) at Surrey Business School, UK, will be co-organizing the much-anticipated International Conference on Business Analytics in Practice in January 2024. We are pleased to announce a special issue on “Analytical Models and AI for Sustainable Development: Enhancing Decision-Making” in the Journal of Socio-Economics Planning Sciences (SEPS).

Business analytics plays a crucial role in understanding complex systems and enabling well-informed decision-making. By incorporating artificial intelligence techniques such as machine learning, predictive modelling, and optimization, along with methodologies like Data Envelopment Analysis and Analytical Hierarchy Process, these models excel in handling vast amounts of data, recognizing patterns, and delivering actionable recommendations to decision-makers.

Sustainable development is a global imperative that addresses present needs while safeguarding the interests of future generations. It encompasses environmental, social, and economic dimensions, necessitating holistic approaches to decision-making.

The objective of this special issue is to foster discussions, exchange innovative ideas, and advance the practical applications of business analytics and AI in the realm of sustainable development. Through the dissemination of high-quality research and the exploration of policy implications, we aim to underscore the transformative potential of these disciplines, thereby enhancing decision-making effectiveness in pursuit of sustainable development goals.

Scope and Topics:

We invite researchers, academics, and practitioners to submit original research papers, case studies, and reviews related to the following topics (but not limited to):

• Applications of business analytics and AI techniques in sustainable development,
• Decision support systems integrating analytical models and AI for sustainable development,
• Predictive models for analysing the impact of AI on sustainable development,
• Optimization techniques for sustainable decision-making,
• Ethical considerations in the use of AI for sustainable development,
• AI-driven solutions for environmental conservation and resource management,
• Novel case studies demonstrating successful implementation of analytical models and AI in sustainable development projects,
• Policy implications and guidelines for utilizing business analytics and AI in decision-making processes for sustainable development.

Please note: Manuscripts on the above topics should make a clear and unique contribution to Operations Research (OR) through relevant references to OR literature.

Instructions for Authors can be found at:

Authors should submit a cover letter and a manuscript by December 31, 2023, via the Journal’s online submission site. Manuscripts submitted after the deadline may not be considered for the special issue and may be transferred, if accepted, to a regular issue.

Please see the Author instructions on the website, when submitting, please select the special issue’s title “CBAP- Enhancing Decision-Making”, to ensure that it will be reviewed for this special issue (https://www.editorialmanager.com/seps/default2.aspx).   

Submitted papers should not have been previously published nor be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere. Papers will be subject to a strict review process managed by the Guest Editors and accepted papers will be published online individually, before print publication.

Important Dates

Guest Editors

Guest Editors

Ali Emrouznejad, Surrey Business School, University of Surrey, UK
Victor Podinovski^* Loughborough Business School, Loughborough University, UK

	New Developments in Data Envelopment Analysis and its Applications in Memoriam of Prof. Rajiv Banker (1953–2023)
	http://deazone.com/en/anor-rajivbanker

Professor Rajiv Banker passed away on March 1, 2023. As an exceptional scholar in the field of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), Professor Banker made unparalleled contributions to the field and the wider academic community. His outstanding research, expertise, and unwavering dedication to advancing the field of DEA will be remembered for generations to come.

Professor Banker’s legacy will undoubtedly live on through his published works and the countless students and colleagues he mentored and inspired. This special issue seeks to publish papers that build directly or indirectly on Rajiv Banker’s work on Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). We are especially looking for papers that develop new ideas in DEA.

We welcome submissions on a wide range of topics related to DEA, including but not limited to:

• Methodology and models
• Applications in finance, healthcare, education, agriculture and other sectors
• DEA approaches incorporating AI, machine learning, big data

We also encourage submissions that provide new insights into Professor Banker’s work, or that pay tribute to his contributions to the field.  

Submission Guidelines:

Authors should submit a cover letter and a manuscript by the deadline, via the Journal’s online submission site. Manuscripts submitted after the deadline may not be considered for the special issue and may be transferred, if accepted, to a regular issue.

Instructions for Authors:

When submitting your full paper, please follow the author guidelines and formatting requirements provided on the Journal’s website. When prompted for the article type, please select Original Research. On the Additional Information screen, you will be asked if the manuscript belongs to a special issue, please choose yes and the special issue’s title, In Memoriam of Professor Rajiv Banker on the New Developments in Data Envelopment Analysis and Its Applications, to ensure that it will be reviewed for this issue.

Papers should be original research articles that have not been published or submitted for publication elsewhere.

Important Date

Guest Editors

Revolutionising Search Experience: Intelligent Search Engines Powered by Artificial Intellgence and Machine Learning

Special issue on: Revolutionising Search Experience: Intelligent Search Engines Powered by Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Journal: Machine Learning with Applications  

Guest Editors:
Professor Ali Emrouznejad, Director of Centre for Business Analytics in Practice, Surrey Business School, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey, UK, a.emrouznejad@surrey.ac.uk

Professor Vincent Charles, University of Bradford, Bradford, UK, c.vincent3@bradford.ac.uk

Details: https://bit.ly/MLWA-SearchEngine

Intelligent Search Engines

In recent years, intelligent search engines have transformed the way we search, discover, and consume information online by utilising Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) technologies to deliver search results that are more precise, relevant, and personalised. While traditional search engines rely on predefined algorithms based on keyword matching and ranking factors that can often result in irrelevant or incomplete search results, intelligent search engines use AI and ML algorithms to comprehend the intention behind a user’s search query and offer more accurate, relevant, and personalised results, leading to more efficient and effective information retrieval, and consequently, increased user adoption. Natural Language Processing (NLP), Natural Language Understanding (NLU), and analysis of various signals such as search history, location, device type, preferences, and user behaviour are used by intelligent search algorithms to better understand what users are looking for. Moreover, existing AI- and ML-based search engines often exhibit biases, which are a result of the training data, the algorithms and sample used, and the user behaviour, among others. Hence, developing new AI- and ML-based search engines that are unbiased, transparent, inclusive, and ethical is crucial for ensuring fair and equitable access to information, and require a multi-faceted approach that involves careful attention to the design, development, and evaluation of such intelligent search engines. As the complexity of intelligent search engines increases, it is also important to consider issues related to the privacy and security of users’ sensitive personal data collected by the engines, along with transparency and accountability issues. Thus, developing intelligent search engines with enhanced transparency, privacy, and security systems is imperative.

The aim of this special issue on “Revolutionising Search Experience: Intelligent Search Engines Powered by Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning” is to bring together cutting-edge research on the latest advancements in intelligent search engines and their potential to revolutionise the search experience for users. We welcome researchers and practitioners to submit their contributions and share their innovative research on the latest advancements in intelligent search engines.

Scope of the Special Issue: Topics include, but are not limited to:

• AI and ML algorithms for search relevance and personalisation
• AI and ML algorithms for search engine optimisation
• AI and ML algorithms for more inclusive and equitable search engines
• AI and ML algorithms for enhancing the transparency, privacy, and security of search engines
• Recommender systems for search engines
• NLP and NLU techniques for intelligent search
• Semantic web and knowledge graphs for intelligent search
• User behaviour analysis for personalised search
• Search intent and context analysis
• Conversational search and chatbots
• Integration of intelligent search engines with other technologies, such as voice search and virtual assistants
• Use cases and real-world applications of intelligent search engines in various domains, such as e-commerce, finance, marketing and advertising, healthcare, education, travel and hospitality, and government and public services, among others
• Evaluation metrics for intelligent search, including new evaluation metrics for assessing the fairness and inclusivity of search engines

We welcome both theoretical and practical contributions from academia and industry. All submitted papers will be peer-reviewed and selected based on their originality, significance, and technical quality.

About MLWA journal and Publication fee:

Although the journal Machine Learning with Applications is an Open Access journal, publication fees will be waived for the articles published in this Special Issue. More on the MLWA journal can be found at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/machine-learning-with-applications.

Important Dates:

• Submission deadline: August 31, 2023
• Notification of first round of review results: October 31, 2023
• Submission of revised papers: November 20, 2023
• Final acceptance decisions notifications: December 21, 2023

Submission Guidelines:

All papers must be submitted through the journal’s online submission system. Please follow the journal’s author guidelines for formatting and other details at: https://www.editorialmanager.com/mlwa/.

When submitting your manuscript please select the name of the special issue: “VSI: Intelligent Search Engines”

Details: http://DEAzone.com/MLWA-SearchEngine

Why publish in this Special Issue?

• Special Issue articles are published together on ScienceDirect, making it incredibly easy for other researchers to discover your work.
• Special content articles are downloaded on ScienceDirect twice as often within the first 24 months than articles published in regular issues.
• Special content articles attract 20% more citations in the first 24 months than articles published in regular issues.
• All articles in this special issue will be reviewed by no fewer than two independent experts to ensure the quality, originality and novelty of the work published.
• Learn more about the benefits of publishing in a special issue:
   https://www.elsevier.com/authors/submit-your-paper/special-issues 

Call for Papers: Papers will be considered for the conference based on a 300 word abstract for oral presentation. Abstracts should be submitted by Monday 19 December 2022

Submission Info:
https://ima.org.uk/20140/4thmathsofor/

You can submit your paper to the IMA Journal of Management Mathematics (IMAMAN). https://academic.oup.com/imaman

Guest editors:

Vincent Charles, School of Management, University of Bradford, Bradford, UK,

Ali Emrouznejad, Centre for Business Analytics in Practice, Surrey Business School, The University of Surrey, Guildford, UK,

Details: https://deazone.com/en/envsci

Submission:https://www.editorialmanager.com/envsci/

The global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were established by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015, as extensions of the UN Millennium Development Goals. These SDGs contain 17 goals and 169 targets aimed at “ending poverty, protecting the planet, and ensuring prosperity for all” (UN, 2018). Governments, private companies, organisations, and civil societies have been challenged to work together until 2030 to accelerate the progress towards achieving sustainable development.

Special issue information:

Achieving sustainable development is, therefore, a massive, complex, and ongoing task and one of the first steps in the assessment of whether goals can be met by 2030 involves the development of methods and tools to monitor the SDGs’ progress (Cristóbal et al., 2021; Nhamo et al., 2020). However, quantifying the level of sustainability attained by a system (be it a nation, region, sector, or business) is a challenging task due to the need to consider a wide range of economic, environmental, and social aspects simultaneously (Galán-Martín et al., 2016).

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) has been shown to be a well-established promising tool for such purposes, especially because it considers each sustainability dimension separately and can handle a large number of indicators. DEA is an optimisation-based management science technique for identifying the best practices of a group of decision-making units (DMUs) whose performance is categorised by multiple performance metrics that are classified as inputs and outputs. The construction of composite indicators, in particular, is a stream of research in the DEA literature for assessing sustainable development that has been gaining traction in recent times (Zakari et al., 2022). This is because indices are easy to communicate and can measure multi-dimensional concepts that may not share common units of measurement.

Studies aimed at examining sustainability using DEA have started to emerge (Chuai et al., 2021; Xu & Yao, 2022), although they are still scarce. However, when it comes to building (composite) indices using DEA, most of the existing studies have only looked at a specific dimension of the SDGs, for example, food supply/SDG2 (Lucas et al., 2021), health/SDG3 (Habib & Shahwan, 2020), energy/SDG7 (Zakari et al., 2022), or CO2 emissions/SDG13 (De Castro Camioto et al., 2014).

Therefore, the topic of this Special Issue is very timely, and it is expected that contributed articles will be of interest to a wide audience, from academics to practitioners, NGOs, and governmental bodies. It is expected that the research papers will assist relevant decision and policymakers in their attempt to measure sustainability and design policies aimed at raising the level of efficiency of current SDG policies, identifying and engaging in best practices, and allocating governmental resources – ultimately, with the overarching aim of achieving sustainable development.

This Special Issue welcomes original research articles of high quality that focus on building robust DEA-based index systems to measure and benchmark the SDGs across a variety of empirical contexts. The papers can use different theoretical lenses in the way they approach the conceptualisation and measurement of sustainability. For example, the papers can build upon literature on institutional theory, participation and community development, and global value chains, among others. Theoretical, conceptual, methodological, and empirical research studies are encouraged. The development of new or enhanced solutions are of considerable interest. Contributions from both the academic and the practitioner communities are supported.

Manuscript submission information:

Submission Deadline: July 31, 2023

You are invited to submit your manuscript at any time before the submission deadline. For any inquiries about the appropriateness of contribution topics, please contact Managing Guest Editor: Prof. Vincent Charles.

The journal’s submission platform (Editorial Manager^®) is now available for receiving submissions to this Special Issue. Please refer to the Guide for Authors to prepare your manuscript and select the article type of “VSI:DEA for SDGs” when submitting your manuscript online.

References:

Cristóbal, J., et al. (2021). Unraveling the links between public spending and Sustainable Development Goals: Insights from data envelopment analysis. Science of The Total Environment, 786, 147459. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.147459

Chaudhry, I. S., Ali, S., Bhatti, S. H., Answer, M. K., Khan, A. I., & Nazar, R. (2021). Dynamic common correlated effects of technological innovations and institutional performance on environmental quality: Evidence from East-Asia and Pacific countries. Environmental Science & Policy, 124, 313-323. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2021.07.007

Chuai, X., Gao, R., Li, J., Guo, X., Lu, Q., Zhang, M., Zhang, X., & Liu, Y. (2021). A new meta-coupling framework to diagnose the inequity hidden in China’s cultivated land use. Environmental Science & Policy, 124, 635-644. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2021.08.001

De Castro Camioto, F., Barberio Mariano, E., & do Nascimento Rebelatto, D. A. (2014). Efficiency in Brazil’s industrial sectors in terms of energy and sustainable development. Environmental Science & Policy, 37, 50-60. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2013.08.007

Galán-Martín, A., Guillén-Gosálbez, G., Stamford, L., & Azapagic, A. (2016). Enhanced data envelopment analysis for sustainability assessment: A novel methodology and application to electricity technologies. Computers & Chemical Engineering, 90, 188-200. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compchemeng.2016.04.022

Habib, A. M., & Shahwan, T. M. (2020). Measuring the operational and financial efficiency using a Malmquist data envelopment analysis: a case of Egyptian hospitals. Benchmarking: An International Journal, 27(9), 2521-2536. https://doi.org/10.1108/BIJ-01-2020-0041

Lucas, E., Galán-Martín, A., Pozo, C., Guo, M., & Guillén-Gosálbez, G. (2021). Science of The Total Environment. 755, Part 1, 142826. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.142826

Nhamo, L., Mabhaudhi, T., Mpandeli, S., Dickens, C., Nhemachena, C., Senzanje, A., Naidoo, D., Liphadzi, S., & Modi, A. T. (2020). An integrative analytical model for the water-energy-food nexus: South Africa case study. Environmental Science & Policy, 109, 15-24. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2020.04.010

Sarra, A., Mazzocchitti, M., & Nissi, E. (2020). Optimal regulatory choices in the organization of solid waste management systems: Empirical evidence and policy implications. Environmental Science & Policy, 114, 636-444. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2020.09.004

Retrieved from https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/indicators/Global%20Indicator%20Framework%20after%20refinement_Eng.pdf

Xu, Z., & Yao, L. (2022). Opening the black box of water-energy-food nexus system in China: Prospects for sustainable consumption and security. Environmental Science and Policy. Environmental Science & Policy, 127, 66-76. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2021.10.017

Keywords:

Sustainable development goals, economic dimension, social dimension, environmental dimension, best practice, policy, optimisation, benchmarking, composite indicators, data envelopment analysis

Learn more about the benefits of publishing in a special issue: https://www.elsevier.com/authors/submit-your-paper/special-issues

Submission deadline: July 31, 2023

Special Issue Editors: