This, the 24th issue of Transactions on Large-Scale Data- and Knowledge-Centered Systems, contains extended and revised versions of seven papers presented at the 25th International Conference on Database and Expert Systems Applications, DEXA 2014, held in Munich, Germany, in September 2014. Following the conference, and two further rounds of reviewing and selection, six extended papers and one invited keynote paper were chosen for inclusion in this special issue. Topics covered include systems modeling, similarity search, bioinformatics, data pricing, k-nearest neighbor querying, database replication, and data anonymization.

The LNCS journal Transactions on Large-Scale Data- and Knowledge-Centered Systems focuses on data management, knowledge discovery, and knowledge processing, which are core and hot topics in computer science. Since the 1990s, the Internet has become the main driving force behind application development in all domains. An increase in the demand for resource sharing across different sites connected through networks has led to an evolution of data- and knowledge-management systems from centralized systems to decentralized systems enabling large-scale distributed applications providing high scalability. Current decentralized systems still focus on data and knowledge as their main resource. Feasibility of these systems relies basically on P2P (peer-to-peer) techniques and the support of agent systems with scaling and decentralized control. Synergy between grids, P2P systems, and agent technologies is the key to data- and knowledge-centered systems in large-scale environments. This, the 18th issue of Transactions on Large-Scale Data- and Knowledge-Centered Systems, contains extended and revised versions of seven papers presented at the 24th International Conference on Database and Expert Systems Applications, DEXA 2013, held in Prague, in the Czech Republic, in August 2013. Following the conference, and two further rounds of reviewing and selection, five extended papers and two invited keynote papers were chosen for inclusion in this special issue. The subject areas covered include argumentation, e-government, business processes, predictive traffic estimation, semantic model integration, top-k query processing, uncertainty handling, graph comparison, community detection, genetic programming, and web services.

This two volume set LNCS 8055 and LNCS 8056 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Database and Expert Systems Applications, DEXA 2013, held in Prague, Czech Republic, August 23-29, 2013. The 43 revised full papers presented together with 33 short papers, and 3 keynote talks, were carefully reviewed and selected from 174 submissions. These papers discuss a range of topics including: search queries; indexing; discovery of semantics; parallel processing; XML and RDF; enterprise models; query evaluation and optimization; semantic Web; sampling; industrial applications; communities; AI and databases; matching and searching; information extraction; queries, streams, and uncertainty, storage and compression; query processing; security; distributed data processing; metadata modeling and maintenance; pricing and recommending; and security and semantics.

This two volume set LNCS 8055 and LNCS 8056 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Database and Expert Systems Applications, DEXA 2013, held in Prague, Czech Republic, August 23-29, 2013. The 43 revised full papers presented together with 33 short papers, and 3 keynote talks, were carefully reviewed and selected from 174 submissions. These papers discuss a range of topics including: search queries; indexing; discovery of semantics; parallel processing; XML and RDF; enterprise models; query evaluation and optimization; semantic Web; sampling; industrial applications; communities; AI and databases; matching and searching; information extraction; queries, streams, and uncertainty, storage and compression; query processing; security; distributed data processing; metadata modeling and maintenance; pricing and recommending; and security and semantics.

This two volume set LNCS 8644 and LNCS 8645 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Database and Expert Systems Applications, DEXA 2014, held in Munich, Germany, September 1-4, 2014. The 37 revised full papers presented together with 46 short papers, and 2 keynote talks, were carefully reviewed and selected from 159 submissions. The papers discuss a range of topics including: data quality; social web; XML keyword search; skyline queries; graph algorithms; information retrieval; XML; security; semantic web; classification and clustering; queries; social computing; similarity search; ranking; data mining; big data; approximations; privacy; data exchange; data integration; web semantics; repositories; partitioning; and business applications.

This two volume set LNCS 8644 and LNCS 8645 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Database and Expert Systems Applications, DEXA 2014, held in Munich, Germany, September 1-4, 2014. The 37 revised full papers presented together with 46 short papers, and 2 keynote talks, were carefully reviewed and selected from 159 submissions. The papers discuss a range of topics including: data quality; social web; XML keyword search; skyline queries; graph algorithms; information retrieval; XML; security; semantic web; classification and clustering; queries; social computing; similarity search; ranking; data mining; big data; approximations; privacy; data exchange; data integration; web semantics; repositories; partitioning; and business applications.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Scalable Uncertainty Management, SUM 2012, held in Marburg, Germany, in September 2012. The 41 revised full papers and 13 revised short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 75 submissions. The papers cover topics in all areas of managing and reasoning with substantial and complex kinds of uncertain, incomplete or inconsistent information including applications in decision support systems, machine learning, negotiation technologies, semantic web applications, search engines, ontology systems, information retrieval, natural language processing, information extraction, image recognition, vision systems, data and text mining, and the consideration of issues such as provenance, trust, heterogeneity, and complexity of data and knowledge.

This volume contains the articles presented at the 6th International Symposium on Foundationsof Informationand KnowledgeSystems (FoIKS 2010)which was held in So?a, Bulgaria during February 15-19, 2010. The FoIKS symposia provide a biennial forum for presenting and discussing theoreticalandappliedresearchoninformationandknowledgesystems.Thegoal is to bring together researchers with an interest in this subject, share research experiences, promote collaboration and identify new issues and directions for future research. FoIKS 2010 solicited original contributions dealing with any foundational aspects of information and knowledge systems. This included submissions that apply ideas, theories or methods from speci?c disciplines to information and knowledge systems. Examples of such disciplines are discrete mathematics, logic and algebra, model theory, information theory, complexity theory, algorithmics and computation, statistics, and optimization. Previous FoIKS symposia were held in Pisa (Italy) in 2008, Budapest (Hungary) in 2006, Vienna (Austria) in 2004, Schloss Salzau near Kiel (Germany) in 2002,and Burg/Spreewaldnear Berlin (Germany) in 2000.FoIKS took up the tradition of the conference series Mathematical Fundamentals of Database Systems (MFDBS), which initiated East-West collaboration in the ? eld of database theory. Former MFDBS conferences were held in Rostock (Germany) in 1991, Visegrad (Hungary) in 1989, and Dresden (Germany) in 1987. The FoIKS symposia are a forum for intense discussions. Speakers are given su?cient time to present their ideas and results within the larger context of their research. Furthermore, participants are asked in advance to prepare a ?rst response to a contribution of another author.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of seven workshops and a symposium, held at the 35th International Conference on Conceptual Modeling, ER 2016, in Gifu, Japan. The 19 revised full and 3 keynote papers were carefully reviewed and selected out of 52 submissions to the following events: Conceptual Modeling for Ambient Assistance and Healthy Ageing, AHA 2016; Modeling and Management of Big Data, MoBiD 2016; Modeling and Reasoning for Business Intelligence, MORE-BI 2016; Conceptual Modeling in Requirements and Business Analysis, MREBA 2016; Quality of Models and Models of Quality, QMMQ 2016; and the Symposium on Conceptual Modeling Education, SCME 2016; and Models and Modeling on Security and Privacy, WM2SP 2016.