With the end of 2019, an opportunity arises to thank everyone who has contributed to the success of our Journal over the years. I would like to offer words of gratitude to our readers, our contributors, and our Editorial Board for their support of the Journal and its mission. The names of the Departmental and Associate Editors are available on the Journal web page (https://springer.com/journal/10726) as well as inside of the cover page of every issue.

My special thanks go to Adiel Almeida, João Climaco, Ingmar Geiger, Hannu Nurmi, and Rudolf Vetschera, Departmental Editors and Senior Associate Editors, who shared ideas and provided editorial guidance. I am also indebted to Kathleen O’Keefe, the Editorial Executive, who has been helping me in processing the submissions and the collection of data for this editorial.

I would also like to express my appreciation of the work of the editorial team at Springer. Jolanda Voogd became our Publishing Senior Editor in 2019 and she has been helping the editors to navigate the recent changes related to the data policy. She also made a number of suggestions including publishing a virtual open issue with selected articles, which had been published earlier in the Journal. Jolanda also made an excellent presentation of the 2018 Publisher’s Report. The report shows, among others, a continuing increase in Impact Factor, cite score, number of downloads, and other metrics. It also shows a 10% yearly increase in the number of papers submitted between 2017 and 2018, and a acceptance rate between 20 and 25%.

Laura de Kreij (Assistant Editor), Ambiga Selvaraj (Production Editor), and Ayshwarya Ganesan (Journal Editorial Office Assistant) continue helping the Editorial Board to improve the Journal’s web site, providing editorial support, and making sure that the issues are prepared and appear on time. They have been instrumental in making the Journal’s operations very efficient and making 2019 another successful year.

The aim of the Journal, as I wrote in the 2019 Editorial, is to provide scholars and practitioners involved with the different aspects of group decision and negotiation with content relevant to their work. The fields of study that belong to GDN are both those that are well established and those that are emerging. The established fields increasingly employ newly developed methods and technologies, while the new and emerging fields verify and adapt well-known theories to new circumstances. This means that the fields of study not only evolve but become increasingly intertwined – research in psychology and sociology often relies on artificial intelligence and decision support systems; economics incorporates social-psychological approaches; artificial intelligence increasingly relies on the results from psychology and management. To keep the Journal relevant to our readers we need to continue publishing high quality articles from established disciplines as well as the emerging ones.

Maintaining the multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary nature of the Journal and continuing to increase its high quality are challenging objectives and the Board strives to achieve them. We actively search for excellent manuscripts from economics, management, political science, psychology, sociology as well as artificial intelligence, computer science, neural science, engineering, and fuzzy systems. The challenge is to attract good manuscripts from these areas and to provide the best possible review process that increases the manuscripts’ quality. In addition, we need to maintain the right balance of the fields of study covered so that a currently fashionable area does not overly dominate the issues.

I hope that our readers found articles published in Volume 27 to be of high quality, informative and relevant to their work. We will continue to maintain the high standards of the forthcoming Vol. 28. Therefore, we ask our readers to submit the results of their work, and encourage prospective authors to submit the results of their research and professional practices.

1 Volume 28 Overview

In order to show the interdisciplinary character of the Journal, I assessed the articles based on several criteria. This assessment is not very precise and the categorization is neither exclusive nor exhaustive. Many articles are assigned to more than one category, and in 2019, as in the earlier years, we miss articles in some important categories. The brief overview given below reflects the multiple perspectives and approaches to the problems associated with group decision-making and negotiation processes.

In all, 54 articles appear in Vol. 28; an increase of 7 articles over the number of articles that appeared in Vol. 27. Most of the articles (46) discuss theories and methods and illustrate their applications with examples. Eight articles discuss concrete applications in such domains as environment, policy-making, and dispute resolution. Regarding areas of research 22 (41%) articles deal with group and team decision problems, 11 (20%)—with negotiation processes, 11 (20%)—with game models, four (7%) focus on the voting, and six (11%) focus on auctions and markets.

From the methodological approach perspective, 19 articles discuss studies based on qualitative approaches, 23—on quantitative models, and 12—use a mix of quantitative and qualitative modelling techniques. Eleven articles present results from experimental studies, which test quantitative and/or qualitative models. One article focusses on training and two—on learning.

Socio-psychological traits are discussed in several articles. In particular, emotions are the focus of four articles exemplifying continuing interest of the research community in this area. Only one article discusses the emergence and evolution of such a significant issue as trust; another article focusses on the development of interpersonal relationship in negotiations. Power is the concern of one article and another article focusses on the negotiators’ motivational orientation. Two articles focus on the impact of biases on the process and outcomes of multi-participant decision-making.

Culture and cross-cultural interactions are discussed in two articles. While this is an increase from the last year, we continue seek more papers on this important topic.

Among the formal approaches, multiple criteria decision analysis is the concern of five articles, utility of two, and the design and use of scoring rules are discussed in four articles. Six articles deal with uncertainty and risk.

Group and negotiation decision support (GDSS and NSS) are not particularly well represented in this volume—four articles deal specifically with different aspects of the system development, deployment, and use and with their various results in terms of objective and subjective outcomes. Two articles analyze the process and results of electronic negotiations, two are concerned with electronic markets and their participants, and three articles discuss auctions.

In the past, we published a few articles on AI, software agents and computer science; volume 28 contains only one article on the topic; its focus is modelling of argumentation between software agents. Given the growth and significance of these areas, this is not satisfactory but I expect this to change. Three papers that deal with AI issues have recently been submitted and we expect more submissions.

For several years, the Journal published articles discussing different aspects of fuzzy sets and linguistic approaches. Recently, we encouraged the authors to address the significance of these approaches in tackling practical issues. Nine papers appear in this volume. We plan to place more emphasis on the practical implications of the use of different fuzzy techniques in the context of group decision and negotiations.

2 Associate Editors

Group Decision and Negotiation is poised to become an even stronger and more widely recognized contributor to the broader group decision and negotiation discourse. Steps taken toward achieving this include broadening the Editorial Board in terms of the membership and countries represented on the Board. As of the end of 2019, the Board has 69 members from 19 countries.

The following eminent scholars committed to our Journal joined the Editorial Board:

William Bottom, Washington University, U.S.A.

João Paulo Costa, Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal

Masahide Horita, University of Tokyo, Japan

Sascha Kurz, Universitaet Bayreuth, Germany

Deng-Feng Li, Fuzhou University, China

Ece Tuncel, Webster University, USA

Jingjing Yao, IESEG School of Management, France

The Associate Editors who recently joined the Board have published excellent articles in the Journal and served as reviewers. I am grateful for their contribution and for assuring that the reviewing process is efficient and the reviews contain well-reasoned comments and comprehensive suggestions for the manuscript improvement.

On behalf of the Editorial Board, I thank Matthias Jarke from the RWTH Aachen University, Bilyana Martinovski from the Stockholm University and Mark Klein from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for their outstanding work on the Board.

Matthias has been a Board member since the very beginning of the Journal. Bilyana and Mark have been involved with the Journal for many years; Bilyana has also been involved in the GDN Book Series. As of the end of the 2019, they retired from the Board.

Over the years, Bilyana, Matthias and Mark have generously offered their time and expertise as authors, reviewers and Associate Editors. Thank you for your support and numerous contributions!

3 Appreciation of Reviewers

The success of the Journal is due in a very large part to many members of the scholarly community who act as reviewers. Every editor who is involved in the reviewing process is grateful and appreciative of the reviewers’ hard work and contribution. Many thanks go to all the reviewers who generously provided time, expert counsel and guidance on a voluntary basis. Without their outstanding work in submitting timely, unbiased, and thoughtful reviews, the Journal could not function.

Following the recently established process, I asked the Editors to nominate the best reviewers using such criteria as timeliness, critical suggestions for revision, thoroughness, willingness to contribute, and enthusiasm in supporting the Journal. Based on their recommendation, the ten recipients of the “Best 2019 Reviewer Award” are:

Martina Hartner-Thiefenthaler, Vienna University of Technology

Daisung Jang, the University of Queensland, Australia

Ginger Y. Ke, Memorial University, Canada

Philipp Melzer, University of Hohenheim, Germany

Alexandra Mislin, American University, U.S.A.

Gregory Northcraft, University of Illinois, U.S.A.

Julia Reif, Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich, Germany

Tamas Solymosi, Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary

Haiyan Xu, Nanjing University of Astronautics and Aeronautics, China

Hong Zhang, the University of Queensland, Australia

Finally, members of the Editorial Board and I wish to gratefully acknowledge all those who have generously given their time to review papers submitted to Group Decision and Negotiation in 2019. You helped the authors to improve their work and the editors to make informed decisions. Thank you!

António José Abreu Silva, University of Coimbra

Atif Açıkgöz, University of Toronto

Heiner Ackermann, Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Mathematics

Lin Adrian, Kobenhavns Universitet

Byeong Seok Ahn, Chung-Ang University

Muhammad Akram, University of the Punjab

Emel Aktas, Cranfield University

Amer Al shishany, Hashemite University

Helena Almeida, Universidade do Algarve

Pavel Alvarez, Universidad de Occidente

Mikel Alvarez-Mozos, Universitat de Barcelona

Adriana Amaya, ESPAE Graduate School of Management

Francisco Antunes, Computer and Systems Engineering Institute

Ouzhan Ahmet Arfik, Nuh Naci Yazgan Universitesi

Eduarda Asfora, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco

Krassimir Atanassov, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences

Shing Hung Au-Yeung, University of Macau

Aram Bahrini, University of British Columbia

Bijit Kumar Banik, Shahjalal University of Science and Technology

Ying Bao, University of International Business and Economics

Jordan Barlow, University of St. Thomas

Julia Bear, Stony Brook University

Victor Blanco, Universidad de Granada

Rebecca Bloch, Fairfield University

Zorica Bogdanovic, Univerzitet u Beogradu

Surajit Borkotokey, Dibrugarh University

Smaranda Boros, Vlerick Business School

Mathieu Bourgais, Normandy University

Katharina Burger, University of Bristol

Mei Cai, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology

Christopher Califf, Western Washington University

Junjun Cheng, Sungkyunkwan University

Pengfei Cheng, Hunan University of Science and Technology

Xusen Cheng, University of International Business and Economics

Hosmanny Coelho, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

Thomas Connolly, University of the West of Scotland

Joao Paolo Costa, University of Coimbra

Suzana Daher, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco

Francesca Dal Mas, University of Lincoln

Robert Davison, City University of Hong Kong

Andreia de Bem Machado, Federal University of Technology - Paraná

Ru-Xi Ding, Tianjin University

Yucheng Dong, Sichuan University

Viktor Dörfler, Strathclyde Business School

Lorna Doucet, Fudan University

Michael Doumpos, Technical University of Crete

Sarah Doyle, University of Arizona

Juan Dubra, Universidad de Montevideo

Conal Duddy, National University of Ireland Galway

Peter Duersch, University of Mannheim

Timothy Dunne, Boise State University

Karl-Martin Ehrhart, Karlsruher Institut fur Technologie

Tom Eich, Technische Universitat Munchen

Gamal Eladl, Mansoura University

Ulle Endriss, UvA

Sinan Ertemel, Istanbul Technical University

Ahmad Esmaeili, Iran University of Science and Technology

Saima Farhan, Lahore College for Women University

João Farinha, Universidade Europeia

Ray Fells, University of Western Australia

Michael Filzmoser, Technische Universität Wien

Ray Friedman, Vanderbilt University

Chao Fu, Hefei University of Technology

Robert Fuller, Széchényi István University

Ryan Fuller, California State University

Arindam Garai, Sonarpur Mahavidyalaya

Amanda Garcia, University of Waterloo

Brooke Gazdag, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Munchen

Yigal Gerchak, Tel Aviv University

Sónia Gonçalves, University of Minho

Zaiwu Gong, Nanjing University of Information Science

Dorota Gorecka, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń

Salvatore Greco, Universita degli Studi di Catania

Michele Griessmair, University of Vienna

Peijun Guo, Yokohama National University

Rafik Hadfi, Nagoya Institute of Technology

Ying Han, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology

Martina Hartner-Tiefenthaler, Technische Universitat Wien

Sonja Heintz, University of Zurich

Enrique Herrera Viedma, Universidad de Granada

Fang Hou, Shenyang University of Technology

Fujun Hou, Beijing Institute of Technology

Jens Leth Hougaard, Universtiy of Copenhagen

Xun-Feng Hu, Guangzhou University

Gordon Huang, University of Regina

Min Huang, Northeastern University

Joachim Hueffmeier, Technische Universität Dortmund

Nima Jafari Navimipour, Islamic Azad University

Simon James, University of Leicester

Daisung Jang, University of Queensland

Wu Jian, Shanghai Maritime University

Andrés Jiménez-Losada, Universidad de Sevilla

Antonio Jiménez-Martín, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid

Feifei Jin, Anhui University

Peter Jordan, Griffith University Griffith Business School

Miłosz Kadziński, Poznan University of Technology

Ozgur Kafali, University of Kent

Darjan Karabasevic, University Business Academy in Novi Sad

Paul Karänke, Technische Universitat Munchen

Ginger Ke, Memorial University of Newfoundland

Aleksei Y. Kondratev, National Research University

Matthew Kovach, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Laura Kray, University of California Berkeley

Henning Kreis, SRH Berlin University of Applied Sciences

Hanbin Kuang, Northestern University

Serkan Kucuksenel, Orta Dogu Teknik Universitesi

Sascha Kurz, Universitat Bayreuth

David La Red Martinez, Universidad Nacional del Nordeste

Álvaro Labella, Universidad de Jaén

Aron Larsson, Stockholm University

Deng-Feng Li, UESTC

Huchang Liao, Sichuan University

Dirk Libaers, University of South Florida

Bingsheng Liu, Tianjin University

Gaochang Liu, Jiangxi University of Science and Technology

Hu-Chen Liu, Shanghai University

Mark Kong Loon, Bath Spa University

Sérgio Lopes, Federal University of Santa Catarina | UFSC

Renato Lopes da Costa, ISCTE-Instituto Universitario de Lisboa

Sofia Lundberg, Umeå School of Business, Economics and Statistics

Gary Lynn, Stevens Institute of Technology

Nicola Friederike Maaser, Aarhus University

Najmeh Mahjouri, Khaje Nasir Toosi University of Technology

Tim Mahlberg, The University of Sydney Business School

Jean-Guy Mailly, Universite Paris Descartes

Heikki Mansikka, Aalto University

Luis Martinez, Universidad de Jaen

Bilyana Martinovski, University College of Borås

Jorge Miguel Martins, Haskolinn i Reykjavik

Yasser Matbouli, King Abdulaziz University

Alexander Mayer, Universitat Bayreuth

Jens Mazei, Technische Universitat Dortmund

Jiri Mazurek, Silesian University in Opava

Pere Mercadé Melé, University of Malaga

Philipp Melzer, University of Hohenheim

Maísa Mendonça Silva, Federal University of Pernambuco Recife

Fanyong Meng, Central South University

Adrian Miroiu, NUSPA

Arunodaya Mishra, ITM University, Gwalior

Alexandra Mislin, American University

Andreas Mojzisch, Universität Hildesheim

Ana Moreira, Universitario de Ciencias Psicologicas Sociais e da Vida

Jose Maria Moreno Jimenez, Universidad de Zaragoza

Stefan Napel, University of Bayreuth

Faisal Nawaz, University of Wah

Gregory Northcraft, Illinois Gies Collage of Business

João Oliveira, Loughborough University

António Oliveira, University Rovira i Virgili

Debra Oore, Saint Mary's University

António Osório, Universitat Rovira

Ivan Palomares, University of Bristol

Changsoon Park, Hanyang University

Ricardo Pateiro Marcão, Harvard University

Fernanda Santos Pereira, Federal University of Minas Gerais

Raúl Pérez-Fernández, Universiteit Gent

Małgorzata Przybyła-Kasperek, Uniwersytet Slaski w Katowicach

Dan Qin, Charles University

Shiran Rachmilevitch, University of Haifa

Francisco Ramos, Duke University

Hossein Rashmanlou, University of Mazandaran

Julia Reif, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Munchen

João Reis, Universidade de Aveiro

Sonja Rispens, Eindhoven University of Technology

Albérico Travassos Rosário, University of Aveiro

José Carlos Rouco, Universidade de Humanidades e Tecnologias

Arman Sajedinejad, Iranian Research Institute

Yasuo Sasaki, JAIST

Krishna Savani, Nanyang Technological University

Ryan Schuetzler, University of Nebraska at Omaha

Sudeep Sharma, University of Illinois at Springfield

Muhammad Shujahat, University of Hong Kong

José Leão Silva Filho, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco

Andrzej Skulimowski, AGH University of Science and Technology

Pedro Sobreiro, Polytechnic Institute of Santarém

Tamas Solymosi, Corvinus University of Budapest

Izabella Stach, AGH University of Science and Technology

Pamela Strickland, Campbell University

Christian Stummer, Bielefeld University

Rangaraja Sundarraj, Indian Institute of Technology Madras

David Sundgren, Stockholm University

Gao Taiguang, Heilongjiang Institute of Science and Technology

Jia-Wei Tang, National Penghu University of Science and Technology

Teresa Taylor, Boise State University College of Arts and Sciences

Chanta Thomas, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Dominic Thomas, Kennesaw State University

Nuriddin Tojiboyev, Rutgers. The State University of New Jersey

Janne Tukiainen, University of Turku

Ece Tuncel, Webster University

Ofir Turel, California State University

A. Ullah, Heriot-Watt University

Per van der Wijst, Tilburg University

Wendy van Ginkel, Erasmus University Rotterdam

Georg Vanberg, Duke Political Science

Luis G Vargas, University of Pittsburgh

João Vidal, University of Free State

Naoki Watanabe, Keio Gijuku Daigaku

Hans-Peter Weikard, Wageningen Universiteit

Robert Wilken, ESCP Europe - Berlin Campus

Irenaeus Wolf, Universitat Konstanz

Cheng-Kuang Wu, Chung Yuan Christian University

ShiKui Wu, Lakehead University

Zhibin Wu, Sichuan University

Yi Xiao, University of Waterloo

Haiyan Xu, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics

Xuanhua Xu, Central South University

Yingjun Xu, Qufu Normal University

Jingjing Yao, IESEG School of Management

Tak Wing Yiu, Massey University

Saied Yousefi, University of Tehran

Bo Yu, Dalhousie University Faculty of Management

João Zambujal-Oliveira, Universidade de Lisboa

Alfred Zerres, University of Amsterdam

Quanbo Zha, Chongqing University

Bowen Zhang, Xidian University

Hengjie Zhang, Hohai University

Hong Zhang, Leuphana Universitat Luneburg

Jun Zhang, Nanjing Audit University

Wen-Ran Zhang, Georgia Southern University

Xiaolu Zhang, The University of Texas

Shinan Zhao, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics

Liu Zhengmin, Shandong University of Finance and Economics

Ming-Jian Zhou, Harbin Institute of Technology in Shenzhen