Special Issue On Knowledge Discovery For Web Intelligence

In recent years the Internet has become a source of data and information of indisputable importance and has immensely gained in acceptance and popularity. The World Wide Web (WWW or Web, for short), frequently named “the nervous system of the infor- tion society,” offers numerous valuable services leaving no doubt about the signi?cance of the Web in our daily activities at work and at home. Consequently, we have a clear aspiration to meet the obvious need for effective use of its potential by making - provements in both the methods and the technology applied. Among the new research directions observable in Web-related applications, intelligent methods from within the broadly perceived topic of soft computing occupy an important place. AWIC, the “Atlantic Web Intelligence Conferences” are intended to be a forum for exchange of new ideas and novel practical solutions in this new and exciting ?eld. The conference was born as an initiative of the WIC-Poland and the WIC-Spain Research Centres, both belonging to the Web Intelligence Consortium – WIC (http://wi-consortium.org/). So far, three AWIC conferences have been held: in Madrid, Spain (2003), in Cancun, Mexico (2004), and in ?ódz, ́ Poland (2005).

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the First Asia-Pacific Conference on Web Intelligence, WI 2001, held in Maebashi City, Japan, in October 2001. The 28 revised full papers and 45 revised short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 153 full-length paper submissions. Also included are an introductory survey and six invited presentations. The book offers topical sections on Web information systems environments and foundations, Web human-media engineering, Web information management, Web information retrieval, Web agents, Web mining and farming, and Web-based applications.

We are pleased to present the proceedings of the 2003 Atlantic Web Intelligence C- ference, AWIC 2003. The conference was located in Madrid, Spain during May 5–6, 2003, organized locally by the Technical University of Madrid. AWIC 2003 aimed to be the rst of a series of conferences on Web Intelligence, to be celebrated annually, alternatively in Europe and America, starting in Madrid. It was born as an activity of the recently created WIC-Poland Research Centre and the WIC-Spain Research Centre, bothbelongingtotheWebIntelligenceConsortium(WIC) (http://wi-consortium.org).AWIC 2003 was supported with grants from the S- nish Ministry for Science and Technology and the European Network of Excellence in Knowledge Discovery, KDNet. AWIC 2003 brought together scientists, engineers, computer users, and students to exchange and share their experiences, new ideas, and research results about all aspects (theory,applications,andtools)ofarti cialintelligencetechniquesappliedtoWeb-based systems, and to discuss the practical challenges encountered and the solutions adopted. Almost 70 contributions were submitted. After a preliminary evaluation, 60 of these papers were accepted to the conference and were assigned at least two reviewers from the international program committee. Out of this 60, 33 were conditionally accepted, and 32 of them were nally accepted after the conditions set by the reviewers had been met, which resulted in an acceptance ratio of 45%.

Knowledge management (KM) has become an evolving discipline since the early 1990s, when organizations started perceiving knowledge as a valuable resource. This field of research has its origin in many disciplines, such as: information and IT management, computer science, enterprise management, organization science, human resource management and even philosophy, offering many potential research perspectives and approaches. For more than three decades, organizations of various types have been undertaking efforts to apply knowledge management, in order to benefit from a competitive advantage. Researchers and practitioners from diversified industries, and with different backgrounds, have tried to answer the question how to successfully manage knowledge, knowledge work and knowledge workers, still leaving much space for further research avenues Now, after all those years of research, some old questions have still not been answered and some new ones have arisen. During the pre-conference workshop on “The future of KM: short-time goals and long-term vision”, organized in Barcelona before the European Conference on Knowledge Management 2017 and conducted by myself and my colleague, Dr Sandra Moffett from Ulster University (UK), we asked the participants what their idea of the future of KM was. We could observe many different voices and approaches: some very pessimistic that KM is probably coming to an end, but mostly very promising that there are still many unexplored aspects of KM we should focus on and there is still a plethora of issues related to knowledge management that should be examined. Similar voices can be detected in the flagship article written by Meliha Handzic, who claims that KM definitely has a future, although it may not be without some challenges and obstacles to overcome. This paper links the past (three evolutionary stages of KM called fragmentation, integration and fusion) with the future of KM (three new trends named extension, specialization and reconceptualization). The author also suggests that KM should embrace different approaches under the “KM Conceptual Umbrella”, highlighting the possibility of addressing many themes, ideas or tools linked with knowledge. All the past and future evolutionary stages of KM are described in detail, together with the challenges that the KM field might face in the future. In the second paper, by Philip Sisson and Julie J. C. H. Ryan, the authors present a mental model of knowledge as a concept map being an input to KM research. The authors used qualitative methods, together with system engineering and object analysis methods, to collect various concepts and relate them. The issue of knowledge is elementary in knowledge management and showing the links between particular knowledge terms is of very high value to all KM researchers. Although the length of this article may constitute a challenge, it is definitely worth the effort as it illustrates many multifaceted, multilayered and multidimensional aspects of knowledge. The third paper by Karl Joachim Breunig and Hanno Roberts discusses another valid issue of value creation in the context of knowledge flow. The authors try to answer the question: How can we express knowledge in such a way that it can be monetized and made accessible to specific managerial interventions? Building on the previous extant studies and authors’ ideas, the paper points out that boundary spanners play a focal role in the monetization efforts of knowledge. In the fourth paper by Regina Lenart-Gansiniec one can read about crowdsourcing and the virtual knowledge sharing taking place in this process. The phenomenon of crowdsourcing is still under-researched and not much is known about the virtual exchange of knowledge in crowdsourcing and its benefits, such as co-creation, participation or gaining new ideas, and potential sources of innovations. Apart from the examination of the potential benefits of virtual knowledge sharing, the author also analyses ways of measuring virtual knowledge sharing in the process of crowdsourcing. The fifth paper by Kaja Prystupa concerns knowledge management processes in small entities and the role played by organizational culture. As the aim of this paper, the author set the examination of organizational culture in small Polish companies with the application of a symbiotic-interpretive perspective. Interesting outcomes of this study are: the confirmed role of organizational culture in KM initiatives, the importance of the founder and the industry, and the threat posed by organizational growth, which should be well-managed from the perspective of organizational culture so as not to hinder organizational performance. The sixth and the final paper, by David Mendes, Jorge Gomes and Mário Romão, deals with ways of creating intangible value through the use of a corporate employee portal. The authors undertake the effort to explain how such a portal fosters the creation of organizational values built on intangible assets. As the research confirms, an employee portal can be considered as a strategic tool for promoting organizational culture and cooperation, through information and communication fluxes and through the teamwork of collaborative functionalities. This issue of JEMI integrates contributions from Bosnia and Herzegovina, the United States, Norway, Poland and Portugal. I would like to express my gratitude to all the authors who contributed to this special issue, proving that knowledge management is still a valid topic, and offering abundant research opportunities. I would also like to express my sincerest thanks to the anonymous reviewers who contributed highly to the selection of the best submissions for this issue and guided the authors to further improvements in their works. Finally, I would like to pay special thanks to Dr Anna Ujwary-Gil, Editor-in-Chief of JEMI, for her kind invitation to prepare this special issue and her continual support at each stage of its preparation. I do hope that the readers of JEMI find the selected papers valuable and that they enrich their knowledge on KM issues. Additionally, I do believe that the collected works will be inspiring and offer some future directions for the examination of the knowledge management field. Dr. Małgorzata Zięba Guest Editor, JEMI Assistant Professor, Gdansk University of Technology, Poland

This book introduces a research applications in Web intelligence. It presents a number of innovative proposals which will contribute to the development of web science and technology for the long-term future, rendering this work a valuable piece of knowledge.

Intelligent Information Technology (iiT) encompasses the theories and ap plications of artificial intelligence, statistical pattern recognition, learning theory, data warehousing, data mining and knowledge discovery, Grid com puting, and autonomous agents and multi-agent systems in the context of today's as well as future IT, such as Electronic Commerce (EC), Business Intelligence (BI), Social Intelligence (SI), Web Intelligence (WI), Knowledge Grid (KG), and Knowledge Community (KC), among others. The multi-author monograph presents the current state of the research and development in intelligent technologies for information analysis, in par ticular, advances in agents, data mining, and learning theory, from both the oretical and application aspects. It investigates the future of information technology (IT) from a new intelligent IT (iiT) perspective, and highlights major iiT-related topics by structuring an introductory chapter and 22 sur vey/research chapters into 5 parts: (1) emerging data mining technology, (2) data mining for Web intelligence, (3) emerging agent technology, ( 4) emerging soft computing technology, and (5) statistical learning theory. Each chapter includes the original work of the author(s) as well as a comprehensive survey related to the chapter's topic. This book will become a valuable source of reference for R&D profession als active in advanced intelligent information technologies. Students as well as IT professionals and ambitious practitioners concerned with advanced in telligent information technologies will appreciate the book as a useful text enhanced by numerous illustrations and examples.

This state-of-the-art survey provides a systematic overview of the ideas and techniques of the adaptive Web and serves as a central source of information for researchers, practitioners, and students. The volume constitutes a comprehensive and carefully planned collection of chapters that map out the most important areas of the adaptive Web, each solicited from the experts and leaders in the field.

Business intelligence applications are of vital importance as they help organizations manage, develop, and communicate intangible assets such as information and knowledge. Organizations that have undertaken business intelligence initiatives have benefited from increases in revenue, as well as significant cost savings.Business Intelligence and Agile Methodologies for Knowledge-Based Organizations: Cross-Disciplinary Applications highlights the marriage between business intelligence and knowledge management through the use of agile methodologies. Through its fifteen chapters, this book offers perspectives on the integration between process modeling, agile methodologies, business intelligence, knowledge management, and strategic management.