Authors of the best 25%-30% of the papers presented at the conference (included those virtually presented) will be invited to adapt their papers for their publication in the Journal of Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics.
A Summary is provided below regarding the three submission options with links for more details supplied in other pages in the conference website.
The conference is: 1) a multi-disciplinary one, oriented to inter-disciplinary
communication, and 2) trying to foster communications between academics
with Industrial/Business researchers and professionals. Consequently,
the potential attendees might not have the same objectives attending conference.
This is why potential attendees and authors have three
options for the submission of their article. In this
way, we are trying to adapt to the different objectives that attendees,
from different disciplines, as well as from Academia and Industry, might
have.
Therefore, each option has different requirements to be met, regarding the reviewing the submissions of 1) abstracts, 2) extended abstracts, and 3) full draft papers.
Abstracts (300-600
words) will be reviewed for presentation-only
at the conference. This means that the accepted abstracts will not be
included in the conference proceedings, but in the conference book (conference
program, abstracts of plenary keynote addresses, and final versions of
the abstracts accepted for presentation-only. At least, three kinds of
attendees might be interested in submitting abstracts:
Corporate attendees who have no time or no interest in writing full papers for the proceedings.
Academic attendees who might be interested in just making presentation in order to gather feedback in the conference, before completing their full paper which they prefer to submit for its publication in a journal.
Extended Abstracts (600-2000
words) will be reviewed by the two-tier* reviewing methodology of the
conference with which the author(s) should necessarily suggest 1-2 non-anonymous
reviewers to be accepted or not by the Organizing Committee, who will
also appoint at least 3 reviewers as anonymous ones, for the traditional
double-blind review of the submitted article. If the extended abstract
is accepted. Then the final article should have 2000-3000 words in order
to assure its inclusion in the proceedings while allowing the extension
it might need because of the recommendations made by the reviewers.
Draft Papers (2000-5000
words) will be reviewed by the two-tier* reviewing methodology of the
conference with which the author(s) should necessarily suggest 2-3 non-anonymous
reviewers to be accepted or not by the Organizing Committee, who will
also appoint at least 5 reviewers as anonymous ones, for the traditional
double-blind review of the submitted article.
* Important Note
Our two-tier reviewing methodology is based on the proposal made by the highly cited author David Kaplan in his short article published in 2005, "How to Fix Peer Review", The Scientist, Volume 19, Issue 1, Page 10, Jun. 6); posted at https://www.iiis2025.org/wmsci/Website/MMRPfMDC.asp?vc=1/. Kaplan affirmed that “Review of a manuscript would be solicited from colleagues by the authors. The first task of these reviewers would be to identify revisions that could be made to improve the manuscript. Second, the reviewers would be responsible for writing an evaluation of the revised work.” Consequently, the author should 1) solicit the colleague(s) he/she would recommend before sending his/her name(s) to the Organizing Committee and 2) provide the Organizing Committee with links to the institutional or organizational web pages of the reviewer(s) she/he is recommending in order to allow the Organizing Committee to make the s=respective evaluation of the proposed reviewers in order to be able to accept the recommend reviewers made by the author.
By using, since 2006, this two tier-reviewing methodology has proved to increase the effectiveness of peer review in its two objectives: 1) to increase the quality of the final versions of the papers, and 2) to improve the decisions related to accept or not accept the respective submission, as David Kaplan thought. Details regarding this issue can be found by clicking on the link "Peer-Review Methodology", i.e. under the "General Info" tab, especially in the text under the sub-title “Note to Authors”.
Our reviewing methodology combines the traditional double blind reviewing and what David Kaplan recommended. Both kinds of reviewing are mandatory for full papers (2000-5000 words) and extended abstracts (600-2000 words). The proceedings will include the final versions of accepted articles for which at least one author registered for the conference and paid the registration fees.
Session’s best papers selected by the respective session’s audience will also be published in the journal with no additional cost to the respective authors.
If a paper/presentation has not been voted as session’s best one, it might still be eligible for journal publication, with no additional cost to the author, if and only if the respective author submitted a draft paper (2000-5000 words) and the reviews were made, not for an abstract or an extended abstract. This selection will be made according to the highest averages of the quantitative evaluations provided by the respective reviewers and will be limited to reviews that have been made for full papers.
Invited and special sessions, as well as special events might have their own reviewing procedures, but for any journal publication (not based on the respective session’s audience selection of the best paper) there should necessarily be full paper reviews made by the conference’s or the journal’s reviewers. This is also a consequence of the multi-disciplinary nature of the conference.
Since our conference is a multi-disciplinary one and different disciplines have different reviewing requirements, we provided the authors with three options depending on the requirements of their respective disciplines and departments. More details regarding this issue can be found on the link "Multi-Methodological Reviewing Process for Multi-Disciplinary Conferences" under the "Reviewers" tab. In the second paragraph of this web page, we wrote the following:
“There is a high diversity in conference conceptions with a considerable number of different models and papers/abstracts reviewing process, even among the most prestigious, old, large and veteran scholarly societies and institutes. The types of required submissions and their respective reviews encompass a very wide specter going from the extreme of requiring from authors to submit just full papers which would be reviewed through methods and processes very similar to the ones used by Journal's editorial processes (several ACM and IEEE conferences are examples of this extreme), to the other extreme of accepting submission of no more than 50 words abstracts requiring no reviewing process (The prestigious and large INFORMS' and IFORS' conferences and annual meetings are examples of this other extreme.)”
More details regarding the huge differences found in conferences of different disciplines are shortly described in the web page given above.
Acceptance of a submission made by any of the three options would require face-to-face presentation; unless virtual participation is selected. In any of these two cases. At least one author should register at the conference. After doing so, s/he will receive a password to upload the final version of her/his paper (the camera ready one in PDF format). This procedure is the same for any of the three options provided to the authors for submitting their articles. With the password we will give registered author, s/he will also have access to the results of the reviewing process of her/his article. All articles, which full versions have been reviewed, will be included in the conference proceedings to be distributed at the registration desk of the conference (pre-conference proceedings). Any camera ready article (its final version) uploaded after the respective deadline will be included in the post-conference volume of the proceedings. In the post-conference volume will also be included the paper of accepted abstracts and extended abstract as long as an additional review has been done for the full paper. Registered authors of the post-conference volume can order their printed copy by means of paying its shipping and handling costs.
The selection of the 25%-35% the best papers for their publication in the journal (besides the proceedings), with no additional cost to the authors, will be based on the selection by the session’s audience of the best presented paper. Papers not selected by the audience as best papers might also be selected for the journal, depending on the evaluations of the reviewers and the feedback we can get from the respective virtual session in which the final version of the paper is posted. Papers eligible for this second selection should have been submitted and reviewed with the option of FULL PAPER, or after accepting an abstract or extended abstract, the full paper was also reviewed.
Each face-to-face session will also have a corresponding virtual session. Authors would be able to visit any virtual session corresponding to any face-to-face session three days before the conference, during the conference days and about three weeks after the conference is over. Virtual sessions will include all final versions of the full papers, including those whose initial acceptance was based on a submitted abstract or extended abstract. Consequently, all full papers uploaded to the conference web server will also provide input for peer-to-peer reviewing (PPPR) from any conference participant and, hence, could be included in the post-conference of the proceedings.
Communications through virtual sessions will be via asynchronous means, i.e. access to each full paper and the possibility of providing a written feedback. Details about the virtual sessions can be found by clicking on the link "Virtual Participations and Virtual Sessions" under the "General Info" tab. It is good to notice that the notion of virtual session is different to the notion of virtual participation. All face-to-face sessions will have corresponding virtual sessions, in which ALL papers to be presented are posted in their final full paper (camera ready) version.
To make the decision on which option the submitting author might select, we strongly recommend her/him read the short article of the highly cited author: David Kaplan (2005, "How to Fix Peer Review", The Scientist, Volume 19, Issue 1, Page 10, Jun. 6). It has been posted at https://www.iiis2025.org/wmsci/Website/MMRPfMDC.asp?vc=1/. Our two-tier reviewing methodology is based on what David Kaplan suggests in order to improve peer reviewing. Accordingly, authors are encouraged to submit draft papers (2000-5000 words); which requires suggesting the names of 2-3 colleagues of yours as non-anonymous reviewers, then you might have more adequate input for improving the final version of your article from both: double-blind and non-blind reviewing.
The submission option you might want to select depends on the standard of your discipline, on your specific research/presentation interests, and/or the organization in which you are working.
The apparent complexities that might be initially perceived in our procedure is due to a) trying to adapt to different disciplinary standards in order to get a multi-disciplinary forum that may enable the interested participants in inter-disciplinary communication, and b) because the two-tier methodology of our reviewing process that showed its effectiveness in improving the decisions of the acceptance process as well as the quality of the final papers. The later benefits authors and readers, as well as the quality of the conference, the proceedings and the journal. We have been increasing subjective and objective measures since 2006 that kept amplifying our confidence regarding our new designed reviewing methodology, which is being kept under observation for continuous incremental improvements.
The summarized sequence of the submission/acceptance/presentation/publication process is as follows:
The author submits her/his article via the conference website by means of one of the options provided her/him.
As soon as we verify and validate your suggested non-anonymous reviewers, the reviewing process starts adding 3-5 anonymous reviewers randomly selected by us.
If the submitted article is accepted, then we will send a formal email of acceptance. In this email the author will have the guidelines about the steps that should be followed. We will also include additional and optional steps for those who received the acceptance of an abstract or an extended abstract and would like to have reviewed also the final version of their paper in order to be included in the proceedings and be eligible for their publication in the journal.
After registering at the conference the author will receive a password (author ID) a) to access the comment and evaluation of the reviewers who recommended the acceptance of your paper and b) to upload the final version of your paper in a PDF document, by means of using your author ID.
If the paper is uploaded before the camera-ready deadline, then it will be included in the pre-conference proceedings which will be distributed to all conference participants, as long as the accepted article was a draft paper (2000-5000 word)
If the paper and presentation are selected as the best one of the sessions in which was presented, by the session’s audience, then it will also be published in the journal with no additional cost for the author.
If the final version of the paper is uploaded after the camera-ready deadline, then it will be included in the post-conference volume of the proceedings which the author can order after paying its shipping and handling. Papers which full versions were reviewed after the submitted abstract or extended abstract were accepted, will also be included in the post-conference volume of the proceedings, if they were not included in the pre-conference proceedings.
