Important Dates
- Submission deadline: 1 February 2025
- Publication date: Sep/Oct 2025
Call for Papers
Background:
As Artificial Intelligence (AI) advances, the need for transparency and interpretability in its decision-making processes becomes more pronounced, especially within the domain of affective computing. The capacity of AI systems to comprehend and react to human emotions introduces ethical considerations, necessitating a delicate equilibrium between innovation and accountability. Various stakeholders, spanning end-users, developers, and policymakers, express a collective need for a more profound comprehension of these systems, particularly in emotionally charged situations.
The motivation of this Special Issue stems from the inherent challenges in creating AI models that not only accurately recognize and respond to human emotions but also provide clear, interpretable insights into their decision-making processes. The Special Issue also aims at enriching the connotation of Explicable AI with diverse and comprehensive dimensions. Expanding the meaning of explicability is not just about deciphering the “black box” nature of AI models; it involves a broader understanding that encapsulates various facets crucial for fostering user trust, ethical considerations, and interdisciplinary collaboration.
Topics:
- Explainable sentiment analysis, emotion detection, and figurative language processing
- Neurosymbolic affective computing
- Multimodal affective computing with explainability
- Affective intention awareness AI
- Trustworthy AI for affective computing
- Affective computing involves multidisciplinary ensemble and explainability
- Affective computing for science research, e.g., healthcare, education, behavioural, cognitive and social science
- Granular task decomposition for affective computing
- Ethical analysis pertains to Explicable AI for affective computing.
Highlights:
The Special Issue will consider papers on the mentioned topics that demonstrate humanitarian value. While achieving state-of-the-art performance is commendable, acceptance priority will be given to works that contribute to the advancement of seven pillars for future AI, including Multidisciplinarity, Task Decomposition, Parallel Analogy, Symbol Grounding, Similarity Measure, Intention Awareness, and Trustworthiness. All submissions to the Special Issue undergo a rigorous editorial pre-screening process to assess their relevance, quality, and originality. This initial screening ensures that the manuscripts align with the thematic focus of the Special Issue and meet the Journal’s standards.
Evaluation Criteria:
The evaluation of submitted papers will be guided by the following key questions:
- a) Does the paper contribute to explicable AI in the context of affective computing?
- b) Does the paper provide an adequate level of technical innovation and/or analytical insights?
- c) Are the findings or contributions supported by experimental evidence and/or theoretical underpinning?
- d) Is the paper appropriate to be published on IEEE Intelligent Systems?
Peer Review:
The papers will be peer-reviewed by at least three independent reviewers with expertise in the area.
Submission Guidelines
For author information and guidelines on submission criteria, visit the Author’s Information page. Please submit papers through the IEEE Author Portal and be sure to select the special issue or special section name. Manuscripts should not be published or currently submitted for publication elsewhere. Please submit only full papers intended for review, not abstracts, to the ScholarOne portal. If requested, abstracts should be sent by email to the guest editors directly.
Questions? Contact the Lead Guest Editor at rui.mao@ntu.edu.sg
Guest Editors:
Rui Mao (Lead Guest Editor), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Erik Cambria, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Yang Li, Northwestern Polytechnical University, China
Newton Howard, University of Oxford, UK
