In the last few years there have been the explosion in the use of heterogeneous distributed systems. In the 2005 edition of the ACM SIGIR conference a workshop was held focused on the topics of this special issue: http://hdir2005.isti.cnr.it.
Ranging from simple Network of Workstations to the more modern and complex Grid systems, the adoption of distributed systems instead of massively parallel supercomputers has been preferred due to their reduced cost of ownership. These kinds of systems pose many challenges in terms of information access, storage and retrieval. Usually, in fact, instead of having collections stored at a single site they are collected, and sometimes managed, at different sites (possibly owned by different institutions). Particular interest has been expressed on architectures and specifications for information retrieval in the context of heterogeneous distributed computing systems.
The papers should be focused on new methods and algorithms to efficiently and effectively access data distributed over large heterogeneous distributed systems. This special issue call for papers particularly encourage papers addressing the creation and the search in distributed, dynamic information systems as well as papers presenting novel architectural solution for these systems. However, more broadly, papers are solicited on any topic related to information retrieval in distributed architectures, including the topics listed below.
Submissions should follow the format stated in Information for Authors in IPM homepage. Papers should be submitted through the Elsevier Editorial System for Information Processing and Management located at http://ees.elsevier.com/ipm/. Once opened just follow the submit paper link located on the top.
All information requests about the special issue can be sent to Fabrizio Silvestri (fabrizio.silvestri@isti.cnr.it).