June 1998 Call for Papers Special Issue of Health Care Management Science (" Capitations and Risk Adjustment in Health Care" ) The purpose of this special issue of Health Care Management Science is to examine the theoretical basis underlying capitation, to review the variety of capitation systems now in existence, to describe empirical approaches used in developing capitation models, and to discuss the policy difficulties that arise in implementing capitation systems. As part of the intensifying search for cost control and fairness in the provision of health care, many funders of health care are seeking to develop capitation systems for the populations for which they are responsible. The intention is to indicate what constitutes a "fair" level of expenditure on chosen aspects of health care over a certain time period for a citizen with given characteristics. The development of capitation systems poses considerable methodological problems from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. Moreover, these problems may vary depending on the type of health care expenditure under consideration and the type of health care system in force. All submissions will undergo the journal's usual process of peer review. Authors considering submitting a paper are welcome to discuss their ideas with the editors of the special issue. Prospective authors are asked to submit a brief outline of their proposed submission by June 31. Full papers will be required by Nov. 30. The editors of the special issue are Nigel Rice and Peter C. Smith at the Centre for Health Economics, University of York, York YO1 5DD, England. Informal enquiries can be directed to Nigel Rice; Phone: 44 (0)1904 434554; Fax: 44 (0)1904 433644; E-mail: nr5@york.ac.uk More information about the journal can be found at http://www.baltzer.nl/hcms. Special Issue of Decision Support Systems Decision Support Systems will publish a special issue on "From Information Retrieval to Knowledge Management: Enabling Technologies and Best Practices" that will report on original research on the development and use of effective information management and knowledge management technologies and practices. Emerging, scaleable systems, techniques and practices which are at the intersection of information retrieval, artificial intelligence, and management information systems are of particular interest. Topics include, but are not limited to: • Information retrieval systems and techniques; • Electronic document management systems; • Internet and intranet search engines; • Information and content management; • Digital library applications and systems; • Groupware and collaboration technologies and case studies; • Knowledge discovery and machine learning techniques and case studies; • Textual knowledge mining; • Advanced, interactive information visualization; • Advanced human-computer interactions; • Single and multiple-agent based systems and architectures; • Information/knowledge management consulting practices; and • Case studies and implementations in competitive intelligence, intellectual capital, knowledge chain, and corporate memory. Send five copies of your manuscript by Oct. 15 to: Hsinchun Chen, Management Information Systems Department, director, Artificial Intelligence Lab, The University of Arizona, McClelland Hall 430Z, Tucson, AZ, 85721; Phone: 520/ 621-4153; Fax: 520/ 621-2433; E-mail: hchen@bpa.arizona.edu; URL: http://www.bpa.arizona.edu JASIS Special Topic Issue Digital Libraries The next Special Topics Issue of the Journal of the American Society for Information Science (JASIS), to be scheduled for late 1999 (vol. 50), will be on the topic of Digital Libraries. The guest editor for this issue will be Hsinchun Chen of the University of Arizona. In this era of the Internet and the World Wide Web, the long-standing topic of digital libraries has become white hot. As the Internet expands and new multimedia and database technologies become mature, the goal of creating large-scale, distributed, ubiquitously accessible, user-centered digital libraries to support learning, education, and knowledge sharing has wide support from researchers, practitioners and the general public. Specific topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following: • Information and library science research which contributes to knowledge concerning content creation, users, and services in digital libraries. • Social, political and economic science research which examines the contexts and impacts of digital libraries. • Computer science and engineering projects which develop new and scalable techniques for organizing, analyzing, visualizing, and sharing information in digital libraries. The guest editor seeks papers that discuss novel research projects in the area of Digital Libraries. Inquiries can be made to the guest editor at hchen@bpa.arizona.edu. Four copies of full articles should be sent to: Hsinchun Chen, director, Artificial Intelligence Lab, Management Information Systems Department, McClelland Hall 430Z, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, 85721, Phone: 520/621-2748; Fax: 520/621-2433; E-mail: hchen@bpa.arizona.edu Manuscripts should be submitted in hard copy in plain ASCII format. The deadline is Oct. 31. CP98 Workshop on Constraints in Bioinformatics/Biocomputing The workshop will be held in conjunction with the Fourth International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP98), Oct. 26-30, in Pisa, Italy. Bioinformatics is the development and application of methods in mathematics and informatics for approaching problems in molecular biology, whereas Biocomputing uses naturally occurring architectures and behaviors as models for computational methods, for example, neural networks, genetic algorithms, genetic programming and DNA computing. Selected papers from the first workshop will appear in a special issue of the Constraints Journal. Contributions are solicited from researchers working in any of these fields. Topics include (but are not restricted to) the application of constraint technology to: sequencing and sequence analysis; languages for the description of biomolecular structures (primary, secondary and tertiary); design and implementation of biomolecular databases; algorithms for locating structures in biomolecular databases. Send original papers (in English) to David Gilbert, City University, UK; E-mail: drg@cs.city.ac.uk More information on CP98 can be found at: http://www.di.unipi.it/cp98/ What Works in Improving Quality of Health Services The new journal, Health Care Management Science, is planning to publish a special issue on "Methods of Improving Quality of Health Services." This issue may include articles about different methods of quality improvement, including: • What is the best way of formulating problems to be addressed by quality improvement teams? Authors should review recent progress in linguistic and the problem formulation field and suggest practical, data-supported advice on how to help improvement team focus on a specific problem. • How should one assess an employee' s and organization' s readiness for change? The authors may wish to review the literature on impact of organization' s culture on productivity and the ability of leaders to change organization' s culture. • How should the improvement team plan to change the organization? Authors may wish to examine the planning literature and compare it to the recommendation of Total Quality management (Plan Do Check and Act cycles). The above areas are general suggestions, and Health Care Management Science is interested in other related issues. Papers may review the literature in a specific field, propose new theory, and/or report data-supporting claims made in the paper. Because this special issue may be available in classroom settings, authors are encouraged to provide an educational description of the field before a theory is proposed and data are presented to support the claim. Paper submission deadline for the special issue is Nov. 20. The projected publication date is September 1999. All queries about the special issue should be directed to the editor of the special issue at the following contact information: Farrokh Alemi Ph.D., editor, Associate Professor of Management, Cleveland State University, 1319 Ozkan Street, McLean VA, 22101; Phone: 703/893-3799; E-mail: f.alemi@popmail.csuohio.edu Authors should submit the papers to the following address: Yasar A. Ozcan, Ph.D., Editor-in-Chief, Health Care Management Science, P.O. Box 980203, 1008 East Clay St., Room #213, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, 23298-0203; Phone: 804/828-5224; Fax: 804-828-1894; E-mail: ozcan@hsc.vcu.edu Table of Contents OR/MS Today Home Page OR/MS Today copyright © 1998 by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. All rights reserved. Lionheart Publishing, Inc. 506 Roswell Street, Suite 220, Marietta, GA 30060, USA Phone: 770-431-0867 | Fax: 770-432-6969 E-mail: lpi@lionhrtpub.com URL: http://www.lionhrtpub.com Web Site © Copyright 1998 by Lionheart Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.