The field of Collaborative Networks has seen a remarkable progress during the last 10 – 15 years in terms of research and practical applications. Nevertheless the ongoing consolidation of the area as a new discipline requires more efforts on establishing its theoretical foundation. This book is a contribution in this direction. Particular emphasis is put on modeling multiple facets of collaborative networks and establishing a comprehensive modeling framework that captures and structures diverse perspectives of these complex entities. Further, a contribution to the definition of reference models for Collaborative Networks is introduced.

This work was mostly developed in the context of the ECOLEAD project, a large 4-year European initiative including 28 academic, research, and industrial organizations from 14 countries in Europe and Latin America, within which the authors had major leading responsibilities. In addition to the contribution from the authors, some other colleagues have also contributed to some chapters, namely with provision of some modeling examples, as indicated in the corresponding sections. We would like to also thank those colleagues who acted as referees reviewing earlier versions of this manuscript and making valuable contribution to its improvement.

Finally we expect this work to effectively contribute to the establishment of comprehensive reference models for Collaborative Networks, and thus to offer a basis for researchers and practitioners interested in the field.

Luis M. Camarinha-Matos

New University of Lisbon, Portugal

Hamideh Afsarmanesh

University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands