==================================================================== Call for Papers Annals of Operations Research Special Issue on "STOCHASTIC SEARCH ALGORITHMS" Guest Editors: Holger H. Hoos and Thomas Stuetzle Stochastic search algorithms strongly use randomised decisions while searching for solutions to a given problem. They play an important role for practically solving hard combinatorial problems from various domains of Operations Research and Artificial Intelligence, such as scheduling, routing, constraint satisfaction, satisfiability, planning, and many other application areas. Over the past few years there has been considerable success in developing stochastic local search algorithms as well as randomised systematic search methods for solving these problems. To date, for many problem domains, the best known algorithms are based on stochastic search techniques. The increasing relevance and popularity of these methods in OR and AI is reflected by the large number of publications in journals and at major conferences. This special issue will comprise publications on topics in stochastic search techniques, including the following: - stochastic local search algorithms - randomised systematic search methods - design and implementation of stochastic search algorithms - metaheuristics, learning techniques, and self-tuning algorithms - parallelisation and portfolios of stochastic search algorithms - empirical analysis and evaluation of stochastic search algorithms - theoretical results on stochastic search algorithms - new applications of stochastic search General information on Annals of Operations Research can be found at http://www.kluweronline.com/issn/0254-5330. Up-to-date information on the special issue is available from http://www.stochastic-local-search.net/anor-04.html Deadline ======== The (extended) deadline for submission is October 31, 2004. Please note that all papers will be thoroughly refereed according to the high standards of AOR. Submission ========== To submit a paper, email it (or a URL pointer to it) in pdf format to hoos@cs.ubc.ca and stuetzle@informatik.tu-darmstadt.de before October 31, 2004. Electronic submission is strongly preferable over submission of hardcopies. Only if electronic submission is not possible out of any reasons, please mail 4 copies of it to either Prof. Holger H. Hoos Department of Computer Science The University of British Columbia 2366 Main Mall Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4 Canada or Dr. Thomas Stuetzle Department of Computer Science Darmstadt University of Technology Alexanderstr.10 64283 Darmstadt Germany ====================================================================