World Multiconference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics
 | The neutrality of this article is disputed. |
WMSCI is the acronym of the World Multiconference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics, a computer science and engineering conference that has occurred annually since 1995, although prior to 2005 it was called simply SCI. WMSCI is organized by the International Institute of Informatics and Systemics.
About WMSCI
The conference (and its co-located conferences) span most topics in Computer Science. It attracts controversy because of the lack of focus in a particular area, and the manner in which the conference is promoted. Since 1995, more than 10,000 papers from about 100 countries have been presented at WMSCI and its co-located conferences. This is an exceptionally high number of papers. Many of the program committee members do not have academic credentials, and there is little qualified review of papers. Each paper that is accepted attracts a per-paper fee, and the authors of accepted papers are not expected to attend the conference. The combination of accepting any submitted paper, with charging per-paper fees has led many to suspect that the conference is a scam, to make money, rather than a serious academic endeavour.
WMSCI major themes
- Information Systems, Technologies and Applications
- Communication and Network Systems, Technologies and Applications
- Control Systems, Technologies and Applications
- Computer Science and Engineering
- Optical Systems, Technologies and Applications
- Image, Acoustic, Speech and Signal Processing
- Applications of Informatics and Cybernetics in Science and Engineering Systemics
- Concepts, Principles, Methodologies and Applications of Cybernetics
- Bio-Medical Informatics and Cybernetics
WMSCI 2006 Plenary Sessions
The WMSCI 2006 Plenary Sessions had the following Keynote Speakers:
Dr. Gary Metcalf: President Elect of The International Society of Systems Sciences, and Vice-president of The International Federations of Systems Research
Professor Suart A. Umpleby: The George Washington University Former President of The American Society of Cybernetics
Dr. Robert James: Former Director of Operations for the Faculty of the Air Force Academy
WMSCI Peer Review policy
The IIIS Organising Committe claim that the Peer Reviewing process used and accepted in almost all science and engineering conferences has 3 major weaknesses:
- Low level of agreement among reviewers
- Probability of Refusing High Quality Papers
- Possibilities of Plagiarism and Fraud Generated by the Reviewing Process
To avoid that, the IIIS Organizing Committee uses the following policy to review a paper:
1.- The majority rules when there is no agreement among the reviewers with regards to acceptance or non-acceptance, of a given submission.
2.- The non-acceptance of the submission when there is agreement among its reviewers for not accepting it.
3.- Acceptance of the paper when in doubt (a draw or a tie among the opinions of the reviewers, for example)
This acceptance policy has been criticized by some academics who considered it too liberal and feel its quality threshold for acceptance is low. In 2005 the process attracted publicity when it was spoofed by researchers [1]. Three graduate students at MIT succeeded in getting a paper accepted as a "non-reviewed paper" to the conference that had been randomly generated by a computer program called SCIgen. Documents generated by this software have been used to attack other similar conference worldwide. The SCIgen site includes an automatic paper generator that creates fake papers from random sequences of text phrases.
External links
- http://www.iiis-cyber.org/wmsci2007
- http://goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au/~jz/sci/ Criticism of WMSCI by Justin Zobel