Calls for papers

 

International Journal of Agent-Oriented Software Engineering

 

Special Issue on: "Modelling Languages for Agent Systems"

Guest Editors: Haralambos Mouratidis, University of East London, UK and Marc-Philippe Huget, LISTIC – ESIA, France

Over the past decade, software agents and multiagent systems have grown into one of the most active areas of research and development in computing. At the same time, they affect other computing areas such as Grid, Semantic Web and Web Services. Plenty of reasons have been given in the computing literature why agents have received such interest; certainly one of the most important is that the concept of an agent as an autonomous system, capable of interacting with other agents in order to satisfy its design objectives, provides a natural way of developing software. An agent-oriented approach views the system as a society, similar to a human society, consisting of entities that possess characteristics similar to humans such as mobility, intelligence and the capability of communicating.

As a result, there has been a growth of interest in the potential of agent technology in the context of software engineering. Significant research has been introduced under the umbrella term of agent-oriented software engineering. An important, active and fast moving line of research is one associated with modelling languages for agent systems. Existing research has created two main types of “believers” among researchers. On the one hand, a number of researchers point out that agents represent a new paradigm for software engineering and therefore existing modelling languages, such as UML, are not suitable. They argue that different ways are needed to model complex and dynamic systems in terms of concepts such as collaboration, coordination and negotiation. On the other hand, a number of researchers stress the need to explore the usage of existing modelling languages for the development of multiagent systems and possibly extend these approaches to model the extra concepts that agent orientation introduces.

This separation of ideas, although useful to explore the different possibilities, needs to be addressed if agent orientation is to be widely accepted. This special issue provides a first step in this direction. In particular, its aim is to provide a forum for representing the most recent and innovative lines of research related to modelling languages for agent systems and capture its essential elements. Moreover, we are interested in establishing whether existing modelling languages are suitable for the development of agent systems, or whether we need “new” types of modelling languages to design such systems.

Subject Coverage
We welcome contributions relevant (but not limited) to:

• UML and agent systems
• Innovative modelling languages for the development of agent systems
• Formal methods for agent-oriented systems
• Design patterns, frameworks, components and architectures
• Pitfalls and lessons learned in the development of modelling languages for agent systems
• Domain specific languages
• Comparative studies between agent related modelling languages and languages of other paradigms
• Tools for agent-oriented modelling languages
• Industry case studies of agent-oriented modelling languages
• Feedback from using agent modelling languages
• Comparison between agent modelling languages and modelling languages from other paradigms

Notes for Prospective Authors

Submitted papers should not have been previously published nor be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere

All papers are refereed through a peer review process. A guide for authors, sample copies and other relevant information for submitting papers are available on the Author Guidelines page

To submit a paper, please go to Papers Submission

Important Dates

Submission Deadline: 21 June 2007

Authors’ Notification: 10 September 2007

Submission of revised version: 26 October 2007

Review 2 Notification (If needed): 14 December 2007

Final Camera Ready Copies: 4 February 2008