Special Issue Research Articles

Intersecting public management and social equity Introduction to the special issue of Public Management Review

ABSTRACT This introduction to the special issue stems from the assumption that the field of public management is the necessary, missing catalyst to make tangible progress towards social equity. We begin by outlining the concept of social equity and highlighting the value of improving the field’s understanding of how we can use the foundations of public management to advance social equity principles, practices, and theories, across all forms of oppression. A brief overview of the papers in the special issue follows and we draw out key themes, which hopefully will inspire public management scholars to engage with social equity research.

Populism and alternative models to representative democracy

ABSTRACT This introduction to the special issue provides an overview of the state of the art in the study of populism and democracy. It outlines the current debates and identifies several questions that remain unexplored or underexplored. It elaborates on how the different articles in this special issue address these gaps in the literature in order to advance and consolidate our knowledge about the relationship between populism and alternatives to representative democracy. Those articles make a significant contribution to this debate and open important avenues for future research.

Call for Papers: Special Issue on Neural Networks Depicted in ODEs with Applications

Call for Papers: Special Issue on Neural Networks Depicted in ODEs with Applications

Call for Papers: Special Issue on Cross-Layer and Collaborative Optimization Techniques in Space-Air-Ground-Sea Integrated Networks

Call for Papers: Special Issue on Cross-Layer and Collaborative Optimization Techniques in Space-Air-Ground-Sea Integrated Networks

Safeguarding scientific integrity: A case study in examining manipulation in the peer review process

ABSTRACT This case study analyzes the expertise, potential conflicts of interest, and objectivity of editors, authors, and peer reviewers involved in a 2022 special journal issue on fertility, pregnancy, and mental health. Data were collected on qualifications, organizational affiliations, and relationships among six papers’ authors, three guest editors, and twelve peer reviewers. Two articles were found to have undisclosed conflicts of interest between authors, an editor, and multiple peer reviewers affiliated with anti-abortion advocacy and lobbying groups, indicating compromised objectivity. This lack of transparency undermines the peer review process and enables biased research and disinformation proliferation.Our study is limited by a few factors including: difficulty collecting peer reviewer data, potentially missing affiliations, and a small sample without comparisons. While this is a case study of one special issue, we do have suggestions for increasing integrity.

Implementing AI in the public sector

ABSTRACT Artificial Intelligence (AI) has advanced as one of the most prominent technological innovations to push the conversation about the digital transformation of the public sector forward. This special issue focuses on actual implementation approaches or challenges that public managers are facing while they fulfil new policy that asks for the implementation of AI in public administrations. In addition to assessing the contributions of papers in this issue, we also provide a research agenda on how future research can fill some of the methodological, theoretical, and application gaps in the public management literature.

Introduction to the Special Issue on Situating the Intersectional Experiences of Black Girls and Women in Computing & Technology

This special issue builds on and expands computing’s engagement with Black feminist epistemologies like Intersectionality and Black Feminist Thought, exploring the intersectional experiences of Black girls and women in computing, technology, and computing education and workforce. The set of articles examines, explores, and uncovers structural and systemic barriers in computing, CS education, and technology; the roles of social supports and social capital in ensuring Black women thrive; quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods approaches that center Black girls and women instead of making them comparative groups to white or other people of color of all genders; and issues around equity and inclusivity in computing, CS education, and technology more broadly. Taken together, this collection serves as a model for centering one community often marginalized in computing, technology, and computing education: Black girls and women.

Submission to Special Issue to Explainable Representation Learning-Based Intelligent Inspection and Maintenance of Complex Systems: Synchronization of Inertial Neural Networks With Unbounded Delays via Sampled-Data Control.

This article addresses the synchronization issue for inertial neural networks (INNs) with heterogeneous time-varying delays and unbounded distributed delays, in which the state quantization is considered. First, by fully considering the delay and sampling time point information, a modified looped-functional is proposed for the synchronization error system. Compared with the existing Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional (LKF), the proposed functional contains the sawtooth structure term V8(t) and the time-varying terms ex(t-βħ (t)) and ey(t-βħ (t)) . Then, the obtained constraints may be further relaxed. Based on the functional and integral inequality, less conservative synchronization criteria are derived as the basis of controller design. In addition, the required quantized sampled-data controller is proposed by solving a set of linear matrix inequalities. Finally, two numerical examples are given to show the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed scheme in this article.

Introduction to the Special Issue on Automotive CPS Safety & Security: Part 2

Introduction to the Special Issue on Automotive CPS Safety & Security: Part 2

Foreword to the special issue of Comptes Rendus Mécanique in the memory of Roland Glowinski

Foreword to the special issue of Comptes Rendus Mécanique in the memory of Roland Glowinski

Beyond ‘responsibility vs. responsiveness’: reconfigurations of EU economic governance in response to crises

ABSTRACT The Covid-19 pandemic led to an important reconfiguration of economic governance in the European Union towards deeper economic integration. This fits uneasily with predictions of an inevitable political ‘lock-in’ stemming from a responsibility–responsiveness dilemma, or an inexorably constraining politicisation. Investigating the evolution in discourses on and policies of economic governance in the EU, the papers in this collection approach the relationship between prevailing notions of responsible and responsive government as socially constructed and critically contingent upon politicisation processes. The special issue explores the reconfiguration of economic governance in the EU through multi-level analysis of politicisation, ranging from citizens’ attitudes to conflicts over central banking mandates, using a variety of methodological toolkits. As the collection shows, the shift towards investment, fiscal sharing, and green transition in the new recovery programme followed the emergence of a form of ‘responsive responsibility’ dating back to the aftermath of the euro crisis and which has led to the incorporation of responsiveness imperatives in prevailing notions of ‘responsible government’.

Introduction to: The Rise of the Well-Being, Happiness, and Fulfillment Driven Organization

In this editorial we introduce the second of three special issues in the "Science of Life and Well-Being: A New Language for Humanity" series. The articles in this special issue provide insightful and helpful perspectives on the overall path toward a more flourishing future through organizations that prioritize well-being, happiness, and fulfillment.

Introduction: special issue on the political economy of the War in Ukraine

Introduction: special issue on the political economy of the War in Ukraine

Criptech and the Art of Access: Introduction to Special Issue

Criptech and the Art of Access: Introduction to Special Issue

Applied Machine Learning for Information Security

Information security has undoubtedly become a critical aspect of modern cybersecurity practices. Over the past half-decade, numerous academic and industry groups have sought to develop machine learning, deep learning, and other areas of artificial intelligence-enabled analytics into information security practices. The Conference on Applied Machine Learning (CAMLIS) is an emerging venue that seeks to gather researchers and practitioners to discuss applied and fundamental research on machine learning for information security applications. In 2021, CAMLIS partnered with ACM Digital Threats: Research and Practice (DTRAP) to provide opportunities for authors of accepted CAMLIS papers to submit their research for consideration into ACM DTRAP via a Special Issue on Applied Machine Learning for Information Security. This editorial summarizes the results of this Special Issue.

Raziskave konfucijanskega preporoda v Sloveniji

There has been a significant amount of research carried out in Slovenia on the revival of Confucianism, particularly since 2012 and 2014, when the first two research projects on this topic were approved. Members of the Department of Asian Studies at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, have been consistently conducting research in Slovenia and various Chinese, Taiwanese, and East Asian archives and libraries. These efforts have led to several important publications in Slovene, English, and even Chinese, and represent an ongoing commitment that continues in the present day. Therefore, it is not surprising that the present special issue of the Slovenian academic journal Asian Studies, focusing on the Confucian revival, already marks the fourth special issue in this area of research. This review article’s objective is thus to summarize the key achievements of Slovenian research in this field and provide a comprehensive overview of the diverse Slovene research activities and publications related to Modern New Confucianism. It covers not only research on the revival of Confucianism in China and the broader Sinic region, but also includes Confucian studies in other East Asian regions and the wider Sinic area.

Pollutants and Climate Change, Runoff, Behavior and Adverse Effects in Aquatic Ecosystems

This Special Issue addresses topics related to the sources of pollutants and their diffusion in ecosystems and aquatic organisms [...]

Editorial: Special Issue on Human in the Loop Data Curation

This Special Issue of the Journal of Data and Information Quality (JDIQ) contains novel theoretical and methodological contributions on data curation involving humans in the loop. In this editorial, we summarize the scope of the issue and briefly describe its content.

The media in China–Africa public relations: Assessing China's attractiveness beyond economic development assistance

AbstractThis work explores China's African public relations and image‐building effort, focusing on Nigeria. Thus, the paper's purpose is twofold: first, to investigate whether China's conduct of public diplomacy through its soft power resource—development assistance—has effectively shaped positive Nigerian public perception of China, and second, to determine the media's role in advancing China's public diplomacy in Nigeria. Specifically, it explores the interaction of economic development assistance, media, and public relations. I do this by comparing China's foreign direct investment (FDI) in Nigeria (2010–2019) with the public's perception of the FDI's influence on the Nigerian economy (2016 and 2020) and the media's role in shaping public support toward the investments. Utilizing a range of datasets, I find that Chinese economic investment alone is insufficient to substantially shape positive Nigerian public perception of China. Within a framework of mediated public diplomacy, I demonstrate that the Chinese image‐building effort in Nigeria would likely enhance when the country links economic investments with public relations to make the investments more visible through effective media representation.Related ArticlesAyhan, Kadir Jun, and Nancy Snow. 2021. “Introduction to the Special Issue—Global Korea Scholarship: Empirical Evaluation of a Non‐Western Scholarship Program from a Public Diplomacy Perspective.” Politics & Policy 49(6): 1282–91. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12440.Hodzi, Obert, and John H. S. Åberg. 2020. “Introduction to the Special Issue: Strategic Deployment of the China Model in Africa.” Politics & Policy 48(5): 804–14. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12378.Huijgh, Ellen. 2017. “Indonesia's ‘Intermestic’ Public Diplomacy: Features and Future.” Politics & Policy 45(5): 762–92. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12221.

Introduction: social movements and radicalisation in Europe

ABSTRACT This Special Issue (SI) provides a nuanced understanding of the root causes of radicalisation among European youth with both nativist and religious affiliations. The contributions challenge the civilisational paradigm and the reductionist interpretations that often conflate it with extremism, terrorism, and violence. Our contributors contend that the rise of populist rhetoric across Europe, alongside the notable strengthening of grassroots resistance, has led to a pronounced polarisation of public opinion. Drawing on the literature in Social Movement Studies, each contributor provides an analysis of various processes of youth radicalisation across different European nations. They illuminate that both nativist and Islamist forms of radicalisation among European youth function as frames for justification and alternative political expressions – almost akin to a form of anti-politics. This serves as a means for them to protect themselves from the destabilising effects of deindustrialisation, discrimination, alienation, humiliation, and stigmatisation. The findings underscore that radicalised youth tend to employ unconventional forms of political expression to articulate their knowledge and garner public attention to their marginalised status. This stems from their lack of trust in political centers, which they perceive as failing to provide remedies for disenfranchised youths experiencing socio-economic, political, spatial, and nostalgic deprivation in the era of globalisation.