Dear Colleagues,

Building on the tradition, promises and advances brought by the historical Silk Road, the One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative, launched by the Chinese Government in 2013, has the potential of re-drawing the map of checks and balances in today’s global economy. Exploiting the advantages of liberalization of trade in goods, services, capital, and public procurement, OBOR (also known as the New Silk Road) aims at benefiting the Chinese economy and international business, while also fostering business to business (B2B), peer to peer (P2P) collaboration and, last but not least, cultural exchange. OBOR is likely to re-shape the way we conceive of, conceptualize and manage manufacturing, logistics, and policies, most profoundly innovation policy, geared toward attaining sustainable growth and development especially in emerging markets. Given the profound implications OBOR is likely to generate in the fields of businesses, economy, society and politics, it is imperative to frame and streamline the discussion in view of identifying the key mechanisms and causal relationships that it induces. The objective of this Special Issue is to address this imperative and to query OBOR from a variety of disciplinary perspectives grounded in sound conceptual and empirical research. The intention of the Guest Editors is to encourage debate, research and, ultimately, a Special Issue that will serve as a reference for all researchers, academics, practitioners, consultants and policy makers interested in OBOR and other equally bold collaboration schemes.

This Special Issue, realized as a part of the mission underlying the Silk-IT-Road, i.e., Distributed International Network of Excellence for Research and Innovation, seeks to identify, query, discuss and deliver to the global community of researchers, practitioners, influencers the latest, top-quality insights into the developments, challenges, risks and opportunities as they unfold along the New Silk Road.

The Editors of the Special Issue welcome papers that address, but are not limited to, the following issues and topics.

Examples of topics of interest include:

• Studies on R&D related to OBOR vision;

• Elaboration on the concept of the New Silk Road in context of modern global business environment;

• Smart applications for different domains of OBOR vision.; emphasis on transportation, infrastructures, distributed information systems, artificial intelligence, smart cities

• Advanced information and communication technologies in context of OBOR, including internet of things, data mining, analytics, cloud computing, enterprise information systems, block chain technology, collaborative platforms, production automation systems, etc.;

• Policy-making and sustainable government initiatives for international strategic alliances;

• R&D and innovation policies: strategies, approaches, comparative insights;

• Strategic research partnerships of Chinese and international research institutions for the provision of OBOR value adding services;

• The role of international organizations, MNEs and other actors in the process of implementing OBOR;

• Business to business and peer to peer connections along the New Silk Road;

• Case studies, prototypes and project deliverables related to OBOR;

• Public consultation and open smart democracy.

Prof. Miltiadis D. Lytras
Prof. Anna Visvizi
Prof. Peiquan Jin
Guest Editors

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• OBOR

• Silk road

• Policy making

• Sustainable development

• Europe,-Asia-China collaboration

• International business

• Infrastructures management

• One Belt One Road

• Smart transportation

• Smart cities

• Big data

• Analytics

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