This volume of Annals of Information Systems will acknowledge the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the International Society for Decision Support Systems (ISDSS) by documenting some of the current best practices in teaching and research and envisioning the next twenty years in the decision support systems field. The volume is intended to complement existing DSS literature by offering an outlet for thoughts and research particularly suited to the theme of describing the next twenty years in the area of decision support.

Several subthemes are planned for the volume. One subtheme draws on the assessments of internationally known DSS researchers to evaluate where the field has been and what has been accomplished. A second subtheme of the volume will be describing the current best practices of DSS research and teaching efforts. A third subtheme will be an assessment by top DSS scholars on where the DSS discipline needs to focus in the future. The tone of this volume is one of enthusiasm for the potential contributions to come in the area of DSS; contributions that must incorporate an understanding of what has been accomplished in the past, build on the best practices of today, and be integrated into future decision making practices.

Frada Burstein completed her PhD at the Institute of Cybernetics, Georgian Academy of Science (the Branch of USSR Academy of Sciences) in 1981. She has an extensive research record in the areas of decision theory and decision support systems. Since 1992 she has been working in the Department of Information Systems of the Faculty of Information Technology at Monash University, and is currently an Associate Professor, Associate Dean for Research Training, Founder and Director of the Knowledge Management Research Program and a virtual laboratory at the Caulfield School of IT.

Dr. Burstein was co-editor of Handbook of Decision Support Systems (with Clyde Holsapple) published by Springer in 2008. She has been Program Co-Chair for the Australian Conference on Knowledge Management and Intelligent Decision Support, Steering Committee member and Doctoral Colloquium faculty for the IFIP TC8/WG8.3 Working Conference International Conference on Collaborative Decision Making, Executive Committee Member of the Australian Council of Professors & Heads of Information Systems, Chair for the Association of Information Systems Special Interest Group in DSS, and Secretary for the IFIP WG 8.3 Decision Support Systems.

Dr. Burstein's many editorial board assignments include serving as Guest Co-Editor for the special issue of Decision Support Systems "Decision Support in an Uncertain and Complex World" (with GeorgeWidmeyer), Guest Co-Editor for the special issues of the journal Information Systems and E-Business Management (with Clyde Holsapple), Area Editor for Decision Support Systems, Associate Editor for Journal of Decision Systems, Associate Editor for International Journal of Knowledge Management, and editorial board member for Journal of Knowledge Management Research and Practice and Journal of Information and Knowledge Management. In 2003, Dr. Burstein received the Monash University Postgraduate Association Supervisor of the Year award.

Patrick Brezillon is a researcher at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris where his work focuses on the study of intelligent assistant systems, particularly the modelling of context and the relationship between collaborative decision making and context. His papers have appeared in such journals as IEEE Intelligent Systems, Knowledge Engineering Review, Expert Systems with Applications, International Journal on Human-Computer Studies, and AI Magazine. Dr. Brezillon directs the SART project, which is developing a system to support subway traffic control decisions when incidents occur, and the PROTEUS program, which is developing an integrated platform for supporting e-maintenance strategy. He was co-editor of Creativity and Innovation in Decision Making and Decision Support, Volumes 1 and 2, Ludic Publishing Ltd.

List of publications: http: //www-poleia.lip6.fr/ brezil/Pages2/Publications/index.html

Arkady Zaslavsky is a Chaired Professor at the Luleå University of Technology, Sweden and Associate Professor at Monash University, Australia. He received MSc in Applied Mathematics majoring in Computer Science from Tbilisi State University (Georgia, USSR) and Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Moscow Institute for Control Sciences, USSR Academy of Sciences. His research interests include mobile and pervasive computing, context-awareness, distributed and mobile agents and objects, wireless networks, distributed computing and database systems, distributed object technology and mobile commerce. His research is published in such journals as Telecommunication Systems, Mobile Networks and Applications, Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, Electronic Commerce Research, and ACM SIGMOD Record, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, Cybernetics, Pervasive and Mobile Computing. He has edited four books of conference proceedings published in LNCS series.

List of publications: http: //www.ltu.se/forskning/1.16009?pureId=1161&l=en&pureFamily=dk.atira.pure.families.person.shared.model.Person&sortOrder=desc