The 4th DISCOLI workshop on DIStributed COLlective Intelligence is co-located with the 21st International Conference on Distributed Computing in Smart Systems and the Internet of Things (DCOSS-IoT 2025) that will take place in Tuscany (Lucca), Italy, June 9-11, 2025.

Call for Papers

Recent technological and scientific trends are promoting a vision where intelligence is more and more distributed and collective. Indeed, as computing and communication technologies are becoming increasingly pervasive, and complexity of systems is growing in terms of scale, heterogeneity, and interaction, hence the focus tends to shift from the intelligence of individual devices or agents to the collective intelligence (CI) emerging from a dynamic collection of diverse devices. Such intelligence would allow systems to address complex problems through proper coordination (e.g., cooperation or competition), to self-organise to promote functionality under changing environments, and to improve decision-making capabilities.

The workshop aims to provide a forum where researchers and practitioners can share and discuss fundamental concepts, models, and techniques for studying and implementing collectively intelligent distributed systems. Accordingly, it welcomes original research work providing ideas and technical contributions for promoting scientific discussion and practical adoption of CI mechanisms in engineered systems. As such, the workshop also welcomes cross-disciplinary contributions (e.g., extracting computational mechanisms from natural systems exhibiting forms of CI) and contributions from related research areas like coordination (the study of interaction), multi-agent systems (MAS), socio-technical systems, organisational paradigms, Wireless Sensor and Actuator Networks (WSANs), the Internet of Things (IoT), crowd computing, and swarm robotics.

The topics of interest include (but are not limited to) the following:

  • Algorithms for self-adaptive/self-organizing system behaviour
  • Algorithms of artificial collective intelligence (e.g., in aggregate computing/field calculi)
  • Techniques for task-specific collective intelligence (e.g., collective decision-making, collective transport)
  • Extraction of collective knowledge in WWW and Internet of Things systems
  • Human-machine networks: collaborations of humans and artificial agents in socio-technical systems, and crowdsourcing
  • Formal models for computational collective intelligence and collective adaptive systems (cf. projects FoCAS, ASCENS, QUANTICOL)
  • Micro / meso / macro models for collective dynamics (e.g., mean-field)
  • Design and verification of emergent properties in distributed systems
  • Coordination models and languages
  • Macro-programming languages for distributed CI systems
  • Languages and tools for multi-level complex systems (e.g., agent societies, e-institutions, holonic MASs)
  • CI for distributed wearable computing systems (collectives of wearables)
  • Machine learning and collective systems (e.g., MARL, many-agent RL, collective RL, evolutionary approaches)
  • Techniques for modelling human crowds and applications (e.g., crowd digital twins)
  • Applications of distributed CI for smart environments (e.g., smart cities, smart buildings, sensor systems, collective of vehicles, cyber-physical collectives, the IoT, and the social IoT)
  • Bio-inspired approaches
  • Security for smart systems (e.g., decentralised trust systems)
  • Cross-disciplinary works on collective intelligence (cf. artificial life, synthetic biology)

Important Dates

  • Abstract Registration Deadline: March 29, 2025
  • Paper Submission Deadline: April 5, 2025
  • Acceptance Notification: April 25, 2025
  • Camera Ready Deadline: May 2, 2025
  • Workshop date: June 9-11, 2025 (TBD)

All times are intended in Anywhere on Earth (AoE) timezone.

Submission, review, participation, and publication details

  • Originality. Submitted papers must be original, unpublished, and not concurrently submitted for publication elsewhere.
  • Kinds of submissions. The workshop welcomes two kinds of submissions:
    1. Workshop papers: provide original research contributions. These must not exceed 6 pages (including references; up to two additional pages may be purchased for CR).
    2. Work-in-Progress (WIP) papers: describe original work-in-progress research which may not have been fully validated. These must not exceed 4 pages (including references).
  • Format. All paper submissions should follow the formatting indications of the main conference, i.e., IEEE 8.5” x 11” Two-Column Format (IEEE Manuscript Templates for Conference Proceedings).
  • E-submission site: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=discoli2025
  • Reviews. Papers will be peer reviewed for originality, relevance to themes, significance, soundness, presentation, and overall quality. All papers will be reviewed by a TPC with a minimum of 3 reviews per paper. Reviews will be single-blind.
  • Registration and presentation. At least one of the authors of every accepted paper must register and present the paper at the workshop.
  • Publication. All accepted and presented papers will be submitted to IEEE Xplore and indexing databases like Elsevier, IET, and Scopus.

Workshop Chairs

  • Roberto Casadei (Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna, Italy
  • Claudio Savaglio (Università della Calabria, Italy)