Editorial: Introduction to Web Information Systems Engineering

Abstract

With the recent advances in the World Wide Web development, more and more users have access to web information, and more and more information providers are able to put information of various types on the web. The web has now become one of the most important Internet information systems for various professionals and users. However, owing to the huge amount of information of various types available and various users on the Internet and Web, efficient query and information retrieval as well as the management of Internet information have become a challenging and difficult task. Therefore, systematic research on the design, implementation, and management of Internet and web-based information systems has been increasingly attractive and important. The Web Information Systems Engineering (WISE) Conference Series (see http://www.i-wise.org) has emerged since 2000 as an excellent forum for researchers, professionals, and industrial practitioners to share their rapidly developing knowledge and report on new advances in web-based information systems. The first International Conference on Web Information Systems Engineering (WISE 2000) was successfully held in Hong Kong on 19–21 June 2000. Being a timely event on this important theme, WISE ’00 provided an international forum for presentation and discussion of research on recent advances in web information engineering and management. In addition to reporting research results through soliciting and reviewing high-quality applied and theoretical research findings, an equally important objective of this conference was to identify challenging problems facing the development of web information systems and to shape future directions of research in this rapidly growing field. Of the 113 submissions of research papers from 25 countries/regions, 36 high-quality regular papers were accepted (an acceptance rate of 32%), with an additional 20 short papers (a