Call for Papers
European Journal of Operational Research

Feature Issue on Adaptation of Discrete Metaheuristics for Continuous
Optimization
Guest editors: Zbigniew Michalewicz and Patrick Siarry.

Most metaheuristics have been created for solving discrete combinatorial
optimization problems. Practical applications in engineering, however,
usually require techniques which handle continuous variables, or
miscellaneous continuous and discrete variables. As a consequence, a large
research effort has focused on fitting several well-known metaheuristics,
like Simulated Annealing (SA), Tabu Search (TS), Genetic Algorithms (GA),
Ant Colony Optimization (ACO), to the continuous cases. The goal of this
special issue is to collect state-of-the art research papers that discuss
recent developments in that area and to highlight some general ideas that
proved fruitful for transforming discrete domains of application into
continuous ones. Therefore, we invite original, high quality papers related,
but not limited to the following topics:
-       Methodological developments aimed at adapting some metaheuristics
(especially SA, TS, GA, ACO, GRASP, variable neighbourhood search, guided
local search, scatter search, path relinking, …) to continuous or
discrete/continuous variable problems.
-       Theoretical and experimental studies on metaheuristics adapted to
continuous optimization, e.g., convergence analysis, performance evaluation
methodology, test-case generators, constraint handling, etc.
-       Software implementations and algorithms for metaheuristics adapted
to continuous optimization.
-       Real-life applications of discrete metaheuristics adapted to
continuous optimization.
-       Performance comparisons of discrete metaheuristics (adapted to
continuous optimization) with that of competitive approaches, e.g., Particle
Swarm Optimization (PSO), Estimation of Distribution Algorithms (EDA),
Evolutionary Strategies (ES),  specifically created for continuous
optimization.

Important dates
Deadline for submissions: June 30th, 2005.
Date of completion of the reviewing process: December 31st, 2005.

Submission process
We encourage authors to send submissions via email in an electronic form
(PDF, Postscript, Ms Word) to zbyszek@cs.adelaide.edu.au and
siarry@univ-paris12.fr
Alternatively four hard copies must be sent by mail to:
        Patrick Siarry
        University of Paris 12, LERISS
        61 avenue General de Gaulle, 94010 Créteil, FRANCE