SIGecom Exchanges serves as a forum for researchers in e-commerce to communicate about research issues and opportunities. We accept full-length research or survey articles; however, a major goal of SIGecom Exchanges is to establish an ongoing conversation among researchers, in the form of letters. These letters need not contain new research contributions or give a completely thorough overview; they are more likely to contain opinions or brief reviews of a stream of research (possibly the authors' own), with pointers. The Exchanges will also contain some recreational material, including puzzles.
Types of contribution
Letters
Letters to SIGecom Exchanges should be short, 1-3 pages including
references. A letter might contain, for example:
a very brief overview, with pointers, of a recent stream of research
(possibly the authors' own research)
opinions on where a research area within e-commerce is or should be
heading
a response to letters or articles in previous issues
an open question in e-commerce
opinions on and brief reviews of recent conferences, workshops, books,
events, etc.
Letters are intended to be closer to (long) blog posts than to full-length
research papers or survey articles, and they are no substitute for the
latter. They will be only lightly refereed, to ensure appropriateness and
quality.
Full-length articles
SIGecom Exchanges will continue to accept full-length articles. These
might be, for example:
technical papers
survey papers
comprehensive reviews of recent conferences, books, events, etc.
Contributed full-length articles will be more strictly refereed than
letters.
Puzzles
To increase the entertainment value of the Exchanges, issues may contain
puzzles relevant to e-commerce. Anyone can contribute a puzzle;
occasionally, the editor will do so. Puzzles should be clear, admit a
clean solution, and be of appropriate difficulty. Contributed puzzles will
be lightly refereed.
Solutions should be sent to the author(s) of the puzzle, who will choose
the best-written correct solution (with ties broken towards earlier
submissions), to be published in the next issue. Naturally, the identity
of who submitted a particular solution should play no role in this choice.
The authors of other correct solutions will also be mentioned. To maintain
fairness, the puzzle's author(s) should not give any hints or feedback
whatsoever to those attempting to solve the puzzle (even whether the
submitted solution is correct), at least until the solution has been
published.
Other
Other contributions (illustrations, humor, etc.) are also welcome. These will be lightly refereed.
Topics
Topics of interest are similar to those of the ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce (EC). Contributions with a more applied focus are also welcome.
Special topics
Many of the issues will have a special topic. If the issue has a special topic, the hope is that many of the contributions will address this topic; however, contributions on other topics are perfectly acceptable as well.