EXTENDED DEADLINE: SEPTEMBER 28, 2008

CALL FOR PAPERS

to be published in a special issue of the journal Mathematical Logic Quarterly (founded in 1955, Wiley, see also here for the latest issues).

This special issue is devoted to the topic:

"Logic and Complexity within Computational Social Choice"

Computational social choice is a new research field at the interface of social choice theory, computer science, economics, political science, and mathematics. It is an interdisciplinary field that, on the one hand, applies the notions and methods from computer science (especially those developed in artificial intelligence, algorithmics, computational complexity, and logic) to the notions and mechanisms of (classical) social choice theory, such as voting procedures, fair division mechanisms, social welfare orderings, and methods for collective decision making. On the other hand, computational social choice integrates fundamental concepts and ideas from (classical) social choice theory into computer science. For example, fair division algorithms as well as election systems were designed for human societies originally, yet have also numerous applications in multiagent systems (within distributed artificial intelligence), in network design, for multiagent resource allocation, and other tasks.

The focus of this special issue is on logic and complexity within computational social choice. For example, while it is known from (classical) social choice theory that essentially all natural voting systems are manipulable in principle, recent research results have shown that computational complexity can be used to protect, to some extent, certain election systems against attempts of changing an election's outcome, i.e., these systems can be shown to be resistant to (various types of) manipulation, procedural control, or bribery. As two examples regarding the use of logic within computational social choice, we mention the logic-based specification and verification of social procedures and the compact representation of preferences via logic-based languages.

Original research papers (and also survey papers) related to any aspects of applying logic or computational complexity to issues arising in computational social choice are sought.

Particular topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

Submissions should be prepared in LaTeX, preferably using the mlq-style sheets available via http://www.wiley-vch.de/vch/journals/2256/public/mlq.zip (also including all necessary additional information on how to use the style sheets), and should not exceed 20 pages (this page limit is a recommendation only: longer papers will be considered as well; of course, papers with less than 20 pages are also welcome).

Submissions should be sent as pdf to: rothe AT cs DOT uni-duesseldorf DOT de

All submissions will be refereed.

Important dates:

Paper submission deadline (extended): September 28, 2008
Notification of authors: December 10, 2008
Final version due (extended): February 15, 2009
Prospective publishing date: MLQ volume 55, issue 4 (July/August 2009)

This MLQ special issue will be edited by
Paul W. Goldberg
University of Liverpool
www.csc.liv.ac.uk/~pwg/
and
Jörg Rothe
Universität Düsseldorf
ccc.cs.uni-duesseldorf.de/~rothe/