[alife] 1st CfP: Special Issue on Complex Networks

[Carlos Gershenson]

//Please redistribute
//Apologies for multiple copies


Call for Papers
Special Issue on Complex Networks
Artificial Life Journal


Motivation

As a result of the quality of the Complex Networks track at the ALife  
XII conference last August in Odense, Denmark and the interest of the  
attendants; we announce a call for papers for a special issue on this  
theme for the Artificial Life Journal.

Many complex systems are amenable to be described as networks. These  
include genetic regulatory, structural or functional cortical  
networks, ecological systems, metabolism of biological species, author  
collaborations, interaction of autonomous systems in the Internet,  
etc. A recent trend suggests to study common global topological  
features of such networks, e.g. network diameter, clustering  
coefficients, assortativity, modularity, community structure, etc.

Various network growth models have also been proposed and studied to  
emulate the features of the real-world networks, e.g. the preferential  
attachment model, which explains scale-free power law degree  
distributions observed in many real-world networks.

Another direction is to investigate network motifs and subgraphs in  
order to understand and analyse the local structure and function of  
networks. The presence of a certain motif in a network may mean that  
that motif plays an important role in the overall functionality of the  
network. Thus, functionality of specific motifs, including their  
information processing and control functions, is a challenging topic  
relevant in Artificial Life studies, such as genetic regulatory  
networks, cell signaling networks, and protein interaction networks.

In addition, propagation and processing of information within networks  
may be analysed as (Shannon) information dynamics. Such analysis  
requires to consider not only networks' topology, but also the time- 
series dynamics at individual nodes. Specific topics of interest  
include phase transitions of network properties between ordered and  
chaotic regimes, where information transfer is often maximised, and  
other nonlinear phenomena related to criticality in networks.


Goal

The intention of the special issue is to bring together research from  
both Artificial Life and Complex Networks communities, in order to  
facilitate cross-fertilization, increase exposure of both communities  
to relevant research and foster new collaborations.


Submission

Contributions to the Session should be prepared and submitted  
according to the Artificial Life journal guidelines, available at http://www.mitpressjournals.org/page/sub/artl 
. Authors should also include a cover letter describing briefly the  
relevance of their article to the specific topic of this call. Every  
submission will be subject to full peer review.

Articles should NOT be submitted to the journal editor, but should be  
uploaded through the special issue website (TBA).

Papers will be judged by members of the Program Committee on their  
relevance to the call for papers, originality, clarity of the  
presentation, and overall quality.


Important Dates

Paper submission: December 15th, 2010
Paper notification: February 28th, 2011
Camera-ready papers due: March 31st, 2011


Program Committee

TBA


Guest Editors

Dr. Mikhail Prokopenko
CSIRO, Australia
http://www.prokopenko.net/

Dr. Carlos Gershenson
IIMAS, UNAM, Mexico
http://turing.iimas.unam.mx/~cgg/