Concept lattice-based knowledge discovery in databases

Concept or Galois Lattices (CL) provide a productive framework for a variety of problems that arise in knowledge discovery in databases (KDD). This paper introduces this special issue of Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence devoted to concept lattices for KDD (CLKDD). The other papers in this volume come from a call for papers issuing after the first International Workshop on concept lattice-based theory, methods and tools for KDD, held in July 2001, at Stanford University. Another special issue devoted to applications of CLKDD will appear in the Journal of Applied Artificial Intelligence (AAI).