Special Issue on the Economics of Computing Services In the Future Generation Computer Systems Journal

Theme and topics
Advances in distributed systems technology have allowed for the provisioning of IT services on an unprecedented scale and with increasing flexibility. As the global market for infrastructure, platforms and software services is continuously evolving supporting new application domains, the need to understand and deal with the new implications and multitude of new challenges is quickly growing. Some well-timed such issues are related to the energy consumption that relate to the distributed systems’ operation and their increasingly contributing role to the network neutrality.
This Special Issue aims to solicit contributions that are interdisciplinary, combining business and economic aspects with engineering and computer-science related themes. Contributions to this Special Issue can include extensions to existing technologies, successful deployment of technologies, economic analyses, analyses of technology adoptions, and theoretical models. We welcome papers that combine micro- and macro-economic principles with resource management strategies in computer science and engineering. Case studies, which demonstrate practical use of economic strategies, benefits and limitations, are particularly encouraged. The purpose of this Issue is to gather original work and build a strong multidisciplinary community in this increasingly important area of a future information and knowledge economy.
The issue will focus on cloud, software, and services technologies and solutions related (but not limited) to:
• Market mechanisms, auctions models, and bidding languages
• Decision support for service selection and procurement
• Revenue and energy-aware resource management
• Pricing schemes, service level agreements (SLAs), and revenue models
• Blockchain applications and economy
• Open source ecosystems
• Economically efficient resource allocation, scheduling, and capacity planning
• Automated trading and bidding support tools
• Incentive design, strategic behavior & game theory
• Development of sustainable infrastructures
• Desktop grids, volunteer computing and crowd-sourcing
• Service value chains and value networks
• Trust, reputation, security, and risk management
• Economics of big data, software, services, service composition, and selection
• Community networks, social network systems, and resource sharing models
• Techno-economic analysis
• Economic modeling of networks, systems, software, and data

The proposed FGCS special issue is linked to the International Conference on the Economics of Grids, Clouds, Software and services (GECON) series’ papers (http://gecon-conference.org). It aims at soliciting papers from the conference series –but not only- that are most promising for achieving a high impact. The topic of the FGCS special issue on the economics of computing services is highly relevant to the journal’s scope and aims in providing a multi-disciplinary application-based view of the current research advances.
This will be the 5th GECON Special Issue in FGCS with the other four being published in 2012, 2014, 2016, and 2018.

IMPORTANT DATES
Submission of manuscripts: April 30, 2018
Notification to authors about ‘major revision’ or ‘rejection’: July 31, 2018
Submission of revised versions of manuscripts: September 30, 2018
Notification to authors about ‘minor revision’ or ‘acceptance’: November 30, 2018
Submission of final version: December 23, 2018
Notification of acceptance: January 15, 2019

PAPER SUBMISSION
Manuscripts must be submitted electronically through the journal web site (http://ees.elsevier.com/fgcs). Contributions must contain original unpublished work not concurrently submitted or under review anywhere else. Please select "VSI: GECON18" when reaching the step of selecting article type name in submission process.
A rule of thumb for paper length could be to target for 12000-14000 words. This style will lead to about 12-15 pages in the final format.

GUEST EDITORS
Prof. Jörn Altmann, Seoul National University (http://eng.snu.ac.kr/node/10247)
Prof. José Ángel Bañares, University of Zaragoza (http://webdiis.unizar.es/~jangelb/Pagina_personal_Banares/Home.html)
Prof. Konstantinos Tserpes - Harokopio University of Athens (http://www.dit.hua.gr/~tserpes)

CONTACTS
For further inquiries feel free to contact: tserpes(AT)hua.gr