“Management of Digital Ecosystems” Dedicated to the Memory of Prof. William I. Grosky August 4, 1944–November 13, 2020


Business, Economics & Management (General) Computer Networks & Wireless Communication Data Mining & Analysis Databases & Information Systems Artificial Intelligence Educational Technology Engineering & Computer Science (General) Game Theory and Decision Science





Dear Colleagues, 



One of the pioneers of computer science recently passed away: William I. Grosky (or Bill for friends). He received his B.S. degree in Mathematics from MIT in 1965, his M.S. degree in Applied Mathematics from Brown University in 1968, and his Ph.D. degree from Yale University in 1971. William I. Grosky served as a Professor and Chair of the Department of Computer and Information Science at the University of Michigan-Dearborn (UMD). Before joining UMD in 2001, he was the Professor and Chair of the Department of Computer Science at Wayne State University, as well as an Assistant Professor of Information and Computer Science at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. His research interests included multimedia information systems, text and image mining, and the semantic web. He was a founding member of Intelligent Media LLC, a Michigan-based company, whose interests are in integrating new media into information technologies. He delivered many short courses in the area of database management for local industries and was invited to lecture on multimedia information systems worldwide. He served as the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Multimedia magazine, as well as the Member of Editorial Boards of many journals in the field; in addition, he served as a Member of several Program Committees of conferences focusing on database and multimedia systems. He published 3 books and more than 150 papers in international conferences and journals.



His peers, students and friends, and our community remember him not only as an excellent scientist, but also as a very generous, funny, and curious person, passionately delivering lectures and seminars. When one needed to brainstorm any new technologies or ideas, he was the person to speak to. His impressive knowledge in Computer Science always allowed for constructive and enriching conversations. He used to state that one of the luxuries of academia is the ability to learn every day.



We, therefore, felt the need and duty to collect a series of papers by his students, friends, and colleagues, compiled in this Special Issue dedicated to Prof. William I. Grosky, for which we are interested in article topics addressing a broad scope, thereby paying tribute to the rich scientific curiosity of Prof. Grosky.



In the world of the Internet of Things (IoT), the rapid growth and exponential use of digital components has led to the emergence of intelligent connected environments, composed of multiple independent entities such as individuals, organizations, services, software, and applications, sharing one or several missions, focusing on the interactions and inter-relationships among them. The application of information technologies has the potential to enable the understanding of how entities request resources and, ultimately, interact to create benefits and added values, impacting business practices and knowledge. These technologies can be improved through novel techniques, models, and methodologies for fields such as big data management, web technologies, networking, security, human–computer interactions, artificial intelligence, e-services, and self-organizing systems, supporting the establishment of digital ecosystems and management of their resources.



The phenomena of collective intelligence in connected environments have emerged where i) the diversity and plenitude of shared resources and ii) users act both as content consumers and content providers. How can we make the most out of these vast amounts of easily searchable resources, capable of inferring new information and knowledge? Recent research advances have stimulated the development of a series of innovative approaches, algorithms, and tools for concept/topic detection or extraction, respectively.



This Special Issue invites high-quality research papers describing researchers’ latest results in the challenges of integrating, enriching, and consuming resources in connected environments. This Special Issue seeks contributions in the following areas:




  • Digital Ecosystem Infrastructure;

  • Data and Knowledge Management;

  • Computational and Collective Intelligence;

  • Semantic Computing;

  • Software Ecosystems for Software Engineering;

  • Big Data;

  • Services;

  • Trust, Security, and Privacy;

  • Software Engineering;

  • Internet of Things and Intelligent Web;

  • Cyber Physical Systems;

  • Social and Collaborative Platforms;

  • Human–computer Interaction;

  • Open Source;

  • Complex Systems and Networks;

  • Applications (Logistics, Energy, Healthcare, Environment, Smart Cities, Digital Humanities, Robotics, etc.).



Prof. Dr. Mirjana Ivanović

Prof. Dr. Richard Chbeir

Prof. Dr. Yannis Manolopoulos

Guest Editors