Agent mining is an emerging interdisciplinary area that integrates multiagent systems, data mining and knowledge discovery, machine learning and other relevant areas. It brings new opportunities to tackling issues in relevant fields more efficiently by engaging together the individual technologies. It will also bring about symbiosis and symbionts that combine advantages from the corresponding constituent systems. In this editorial, we briefly introduce the concept of agent mining, the main

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... of research, and challenges and opportunities in agent mining. Finally, we give an overview of the papers in this special issue. Keywords Agent mining · Multiagent system · Data mining · Knowledge discovery · Machine learning The concept of agent mining Agent mining [1, 6] refers to the methodologies, technology, tools and systems that synthesize multiagent technology, data mining and knowledge discovery, machine learning and other relevant techniques such as statistics and semantic web for better addressing issues that cannot be tackled by any single technique with the same quality and performance. The concept of agent mining is interchangeable with other concepts such as agents and data mining