Data mining methods are used to discover patterns and extract potentially useful or interesting information automatically or semi-automatically from data. As a result of the recent advances in machine learning and data mining algorithms, along with the availability of inexpensive storage space and faster processing, data mining has become practical in new areas including speech, audio and spoken language dialog.  Data mining research in these areas is growing rapidly given the influx of speech, audio and dialog data that are becoming more widely available. Fundamental research in areas of prediction, explanation, learning and language understanding of speech and audio data are becoming increasingly important in revolutionizing business processes by providing essential sales and marketing information about the service, customers and product offerings. This research is also enabling a new class of learning conversational systems to be created that can infer knowledge and trends automatically from data, analyze and report application performance, and adapt and improve over time with minimal or zero human involvement.

The purpose of this special issue is to present recent advances in Data Mining Research for Speech, Audio, and Spoken Language Dialog.  Original, previously unpublished submissions for the following areas are encouraged:

• Data mining theory, algorithms and methods
• Core machine-learning algorithms for data mining
• Topic spotting and classification
• Pattern discovery and prediction from data
• Performance analysis and evaluation
• Information retrieval
• Tools and solutions for mining data
• Applications in marketing, business, security, surveillance, authentification and customer service
• Trend analysis and visualization

Schedule:

Submission deadline:	1 July 2004 (extended to 15 August)
Notification of acceptance:	1 January 2005
Final manuscript due:	31 March 2005
Tentative publication date:	1 July 2005

Submission procedure:

Prospective authors should follow the regular guidelines of the IEEE Transactions on Speech and Audio Processing for electronic submission via Manuscript Central. Authors must enter the title of the special issue into the field labeled “Please enter any additional keywords related to this submitted manuscript in order for the paper to be properly assigned to a Guest Editor.” In addition, the title of the special issue should be referenced again in the field marked “Comments to Editor-in-Chief” along with any other pertinent information. You are required to provide a properly executed copyright form to be faxed to the IEEE Signal Processing Society Publications Office (via +1 732-562-8905) at the time of submission. An 8-page limit will be enforced on papers published in the special issue and all papers are subject to the published policy for overlength page charges and color charges.