Abstract
With the aim of disseminating the potential and the capacity of Educational Data Mining (EDM) as an instrument of investigation and analysis in the support to the management of Higher Education Institutions, this paper presents a brief description of some of the most relevant studies in the area. The analysis carried out allows to highlight the innovations that EDM has been promoting, as well as current and future research trends.

Abstract
The early classification of university students according to their potential academic performance can be a useful strategy to mitigate failure, to promote the achievement of better results and to better manage resources in higher education institutions. This paper proposes a two-stage model, supported by data mining techniques, that uses the information available at the end of the first year of students' academic career (path) to predict their overall academic performance. Unlike most literature on educational data mining, academic success is inferred from both the average grade achieved and the time taken to conclude the degree. Furthermore, this study proposes to segment students based on the dichotomy between the evidence of failure or high performance at the beginning of the degree program, and the students' performance levels predicted by the model. A data set of 2459 students, spanning the years from 2003 to 2015, from a European Engineering School of a public research University, is used to validate the proposed methodology. The empirical results demonstrate the ability of the proposed model to predict the students' performance level with an accuracy above 95%, in an early stage of the students' academic path. It is found that random forests are superior to the other classification techniques that were considered (decision trees, support vector machines, naive Bayes, bagged trees and boosted trees). Together with the prediction model, the suggested segmentation framework represents a useful tool to delineate the optimum strategies to apply, in order to promote higher performance levels and mitigate academic failure, overall increasing the quality of the academic experience provided by a higher education institution.

Abstract
The present study puts forward a regression analytic model based on the random forest algorithm, developed to predict, at an early stage, the global academic performance of the undergraduates of a polytechnic higher education institution. The study targets the universe of an institution composed of 5 schools rather than following the usual procedure of delimiting the prediction to one single specific degree course. Hence, we intend to provide the institution with one single tool capable of including the heterogeneity of the universe of students as well as educational dynamics. A different approach to feature selection is proposed, which enables to completely exclude categories of predictive variables, making the model useful for scenarios in which not all categories of data considered are collected. The introduced model can be used at a central level by the decision-makers who are entitled to design actions to mitigate academic failure. © 2019, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Abstract
Promotional tools such as cross-market discounts have been increasingly used as a means to increase customer satisfaction and sales. This paper aims to assess whether the implementation of a cross-market discount campaign by a retailing company encouraged customers to increase their purchases level. It contributes to the literature by using neural networks to detect novelties in a real context involving cross-market discounts. Besides the computation of point predictions, the methodology proposed involves the estimation of neural networks prediction intervals. Sales predictions are compared with the observed values in order to detect significant changes in customers' spending. The use of neural networks is validated through the comparison with the forecasting estimates of support vector regression, regression trees, and linear regression. The results reveal that the promotional campaign under analysis did not significantly impact the sales of the rewarded customers.

Abstract
In celebration of the 10th anniversary of the International Conference on Exploring Service Science (IESS), this paper takes a historical look at the papers that have been published in the IESS proceedings. The analysis is focused on the development and evolution of the IESS community and of the main research topics covered by the published papers over time. The IESS community is portrayed in terms of authors, their affiliations and co-authoring network, while the topics are analyzed according to the papers' keywords. Moreover, this paper analyzes the impact of the papers published in this decade, in terms of citations. These results are then discussed in light of the observed trends and of the evolution of the service science field, to guide the future development of the IESS conference and of research on service science.

Abstract
In the last decades, the assurance of doctoral education's quality and their respective external quality assurance (QA) systems have been on the agenda of many European countries. Portugal is no exception, with doctoral education being envisaged by the national study programmes' accreditation system. This study aims to discuss both the forms assumed by the QA of doctoral education within the scope of a tightly regulated system, such as the Portuguese one, as well as the effects or impact of such a system in this education level. In trying to explore this impact, particular attention is given to the accreditation results (full accreditation, conditional accreditation and non-accreditation) of the doctoral programmes according to their scientific area and higher education sector (public and private). Overall it is possible to conclude that the Portuguese QA system has been contributing to the reorganisation of doctoral education, both by excluding programmes that do not meet a set of minimum quality criteria and by promoting the enhancement of the remaining programmes, through the enforcement of improvement measures. This reorganisation seems to differently affect doctoral programmes from distinct scientific areas as well as from private and public institutions.