IULM University

This paper reflects on the evolution of the Journal of Behavioural Economics and Social Systems (BESS) as it transitions from an open-access publication to a hybrid journal under Emerald Publishing. The paper situates this transition within broader shifts in scholarly communication, including the expansion of open access, changing research evaluation practices, consolidation within academic publishing, and intensifying concerns regarding research integrity. Particular attention is given to the opportunities and risks associated with artificial intelligence in research and publishing workflows. The authors distinguish between generative and non-generative language technologies, examining their implications for authorship, originality, transparency and accountability. Illustrative examples highlight the phenomenon of AI hallucinations and the persistence of predatory publishing practices. The article reviews emerging publisher policies governing AI use and emphasises the continuing necessity of human oversight, verification and ethical responsibility. It concludes by reaffirming BESS’s commitment to intellectual pluralism, methodological diversity and responsible innovation while introducing the contributions contained in the final issue.

The importance of advancing healthcare through effective communication that speaks directly to healthcare professionals (HCPs) is well recognized. With the landscape of communications changing rapidly, there is an ever greater need to closely assess human behaviors and tailor messages accordingly, such that communications effectively address the concerns of the audience and evoke the appropriate behavioral change. To address this need, The Bloc developed a comprehensive health communications strategy, Behaviorally Enriched Communications (BE-COMMS ® ). BE-COMMS is based on well-established, validated behavioral models and is developed to ensure communications can be targeted toward specific behavioral barriers and drivers, thereby evoking the desired behavioral change. Consistent application of BE-COMMS in different healthcare communications scenarios has demonstrated that, regardless of geographic location and therapy area, HCPs’ behaviors are influenced by many overt and covert factors related to capability, opportunity, and motivation (as defined in existing behavioral models). While capability and opportunity factors are easily identified, motivational factors are frequently overlooked when designing communications. We also found similarities in HCPs’ behavioral drivers and barriers across different therapeutic areas, but the combination of them in a specific scenario is often unique. Although our analysis is not systematic, it provides a well-rounded overview of factors influencing HCP behavior, as well as our perspective on effectively tailoring communications to bring improvements to patient care. Our accumulated years of practical experience with BE-COMMS demonstrate that communications require a tailored approach for different circumstances to drive behavioral change and improve patient healthcare.

Fake news—false or misleading information presented as news—now abounds. As information about firms becomes decreasingly credible, can stakeholders make effective use of their influence to drive firms to engage in socially responsible behaviors? We assembled this special issue to explore the extent to which the social evaluations that underpin stakeholder cognition and action have been compromised and to assess how this affects firm behavior in this era of fake news. The five articles comprising this issue elucidate the strategies used to spread fake news and show how it influences stakeholders. They find that emotionality proves effective in spreading and countering fake news. However, even when fake news is successfully countered, a negative residue remains. Fake news is particularly insidious because even when stakeholders know it to be false, they act in ways consonant with it being true. Overall, these articles provide evidence that fake news alters the ways in which stakeholders use social evaluations and harms the ability to use social control to bring business and society into alignment. However, much remains to be done to understand the complicated relationship between business and society in a compromised information environment.

Wetware Network-Based Artificial Intelligence (WNAI) introduces a new approach to robotic cognition and artificial intelligence: autonomous cognitive agents built from synthetic chemical networks. Rooted in Wetware Neuromorphic Engineering, WNAI shifts the focus of this emerging field from disembodied computation and biological mimicry to reticular chemical self-organization as a substrate for cognition. At the theoretical level, WNAI integrates insights from network cybernetics, autopoietic theory and enaction to frame cognition as a materially grounded, emergent phenomenon. At the heuristic level, WNAI defines its role as complementary to existing leading approaches. On the one hand, it complements embodied AI and xenobotics by expanding the design space of artificial embodied cognition into fully synthetic domains. On the other hand, it engages in mutual exchange with neural network architectures, advancing cross-substrate principles of network-based cognition. At the technological level, WNAI offers a roadmap for implementing chemical neural networks and protocellular agents, with potential applications in robotic systems requiring minimal, adaptive, and substrate-sensitive intelligence. By situating wetware neuromorphic engineering within the broader landscape of robotics and AI, this article outlines a programmatic framework that highlights its potential to expand artificial cognition beyond silicon and biohybrid systems.

This feature reports on the Philosophical Perspectives on Artificial Intelligence (AI), robotics and cognition session of the first Milan Logic and Philosophy of Science Network workshop (12th March 2025). Giuseppe Primiero introduced PhilTech’s agenda. Giacomo Zanotti presented the multidisciplinary approach to AI adopted by philosophers at Politecnico di Milano; Silvia Larghi discussed research on mental states attribution to robots conducted at the RobotiCSS Lab, University of Milano-Bicocca; and Ilaria Alfieri presented IULM’s lines on synthetic modeling, the sustainability of social robotics, and the robosphere.

The challenge of sustainability in robotics is usually addressed in terms of materials, energy, and efficiency. Yet the long-term viability of robotic systems also depends on organizational interdependencies that shape how they are maintained, experienced, and integrated into human environments. The present article develops this systemic perspective by advancing the hypothesis that such interdependencies can be understood as self-organizing dynamics. To examine this hypothesis, we analyze the case of Sony’s AIBO robotic dogs. Originally designed for social companionship, AIBO units gave rise to a hybrid socio-technical ecosystem in which owners, repair specialists, and ritual practices sustained the robots long after their commercial discontinuation. Building on self-organization theory, we introduce the concept of the “robosphere” as an evolving network of relations in which robotic and human agents co-constitute resilient, sustainability-oriented ecosystems. Extending self-organization beyond its classical biological and technical domains, we argue that robotic sustainability must be framed not as a narrow technical issue but as a complex, multifactorial, and distributed process grounded in organizational interdependencies that integrate technical, cognitive, social, and affective dimensions of human life. Our contribution is twofold. First, we propose a modeling perspective that interprets sustainability in robotics as an emergent property of these interdependencies, exemplified by repair, reuse, and ritual practices that prolonged AIBO’s lifecycle. Second, we outline a set of systemic design principles to inform the development of future human–robot ecosystems. By situating the AIBO case within the robospheric framework, this Hypothesis and Theory article advances the view that hybrid socio-technical collectives can generate sustainability from within. It outlines a programmatic horizon for rethinking social robotics not as disposable products, but as integral nodes of co-evolving, sustainable human–robot ecologies.

ABSTRACT Destination Management Organisations (DMOs) are driving the sustainability transformation at territorial level. The novel adoption of Fuzzy Formal Concept Analysis to analyse a census survey (n = 109) of Italian DMOs highlights the potential of FFCA to uncover nuanced patterns of sustainability implementation that remain hidden using more conventional methods: the co-existence of operational tourism flows management and strategic efforts aimed at advancing sustainability. This represents not only a methodological innovation and a valuable path to process categorical data from survey designs, but also a novel practice-oriented insight for destination managers aiming at implementing sustainability practices.

We investigate interactions between two like-signed vortices over either an isolated seamount or a basin (a depression in the bathymetry), using a quasi-geostrophic, two-layer model on the $f$ -plane. When the vortex pair is centred over the seamount, the vortices are pushed together by the secondary flow generated in the bottom layer, facilitating their merger. Over a basin, the deep anomalies are much stronger and their interaction strains out the surface vortices. The results are supported by an analytical estimation of the initial potential vorticity anomalies in the lower layer and by analysis of the linear stability of a single vortex over the bathymetry. Similar phenomena are observed when the vortex pair is displaced from the bathymetric centre and when the initial vortices are initially compensated. Sub-deformation-scale vortices are less influenced by bathymetry than larger vortices. The results help explain asymmetries noted previously in turbulence simulations over bathymetry.