WMSCI

WMSCI, the World Multi-conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics, is a conference that has occurred annually since 1995, which emphasizes the systemic relationships that exist or might exist among different disciplines in the fields of Systemics, Cybernetics, and Informatics. Critics describe the conference as having "loose standards", since it has accepted papers of dubious academic merit. Organizers stress inter-disciplinary communication, describing the conference as both wide in scope as a general international scientific meeting, and specifically focused in the manner of a subject-area conference.

WMSCI is organized by the International Institute of Informatics and Systemics: IIIS (www.iiis.org). Its General Chair has usually been retired Professor Nagib Callaos. The conference is often held in Orlando, Florida.

The annual WMSCI Conference started in Baden-Baden, Germany in 1995 as ISAS (Information Systems Analysis and Synthesis). About 50 papers were presented. In 1997, after earning the non-financial sponsorship of the World Organization of Systems and Cybernetics (WOSC), the conference name was changed to World Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics, and Informatics: SCI. In 2005 the acronym was changed to WMSCI because SCI coincided with the acronym of the Scientific Citation Index, and colocated conferences had been added since then. The multi-conference has grown to have about 900 registered participants, as of 2004; the majority of attendees present papers. Since its inception in 1995, more than 10,000 papers have been presented in WMSCI and its collocated conferences.

Until 2005, WMSCI allowed about 15% of non-reviewed submissions, based on the importance of the topic or the potential presenter's curriculum vitae. In a workshop founded by the National Science Foundation, the general chair of the conference explained that they accepted non-reviewed papers because the conference is multi-disciplinary and scholarly associations of several conferences accept almost all submissions on a non-reviewed basis. The most prestigious and largest conferences of OR/MS (IFORS and INFORMS), for example, explicitly state on their web sites that "Contributed abstracts are not reviewed and virtually all abstracts are accepted." Consequently, WMSCI 2005 general chair, Dr. Nagib Callaos, stated that since the conference is multi-disciplinary, he saw no problem with accepting for presentation (not necessarily publication) 15% of non-reviewed submissions, in order to follow the standards of other disciplines like those represented by the International Federation of Operations Research Societies (IFORS), Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS, the International Federation of Operations Research Societies (IFORS), the American Mathematical Society, etc.

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