Editorial

It is intellectually and emotionally gratifying to participate in the team who is launching The Journal of Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (JSCI), and to write its first editorial.

The main purpose of the Journal is to collaborate in the systemization of knowledge and experience generated in the areas of Systemics, Cybernetics (communication and control) and Informatics. This systemization process necessarily implies a progressive increase and enlargement of the relatedness among the associated areas, as well as among their respective disciplines. So, improvement in interdisciplinary communication would provide a very good support for the sought systemization process. This is one of the main objectives of the Journal we are launching with this first issue, and our editorial policy will be directed by it.

We are trying to support the process of interdisciplinary communication among and in the areas included in Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics, by means of 1) providing a multidisciplinary forum in the related areas, 2) fostering interdisciplinary research in them, 3) publishing papers related to transdisciplinary concepts, allowing different disciplinary perspectives on the same concept, and 4) encouraging communication among disciplines by means of interdisciplinary tutorials, and among the academic, the public and the private sectors by means of publishing information related multi- and inter-disciplinary projects which involve at least two of them.

The first issues of the Journal will have a multidisciplinary orientation. Interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary sections will gradually grow. The multidisciplinary part of the Journal will be nourished, basically, from the best papers presented in conferences in the Journal’s areas. The papers in this first issue are mostly based on the best 2% papers presented at the 6th World Multi-conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (SCI 2002), according to the reviewing process done in this conference. Issues 2, 3 and 4 will be based on the best 5% of the papers presented at SCI 2003. Issues 5, 6 and 7 will contain papers belonging to the best 10%. Next following issues will be based on the best papers presented at the International Conference on Computing, Communication and Control (CCCT 2003), the 9th International Conference on Information systems analysis and synthesis (ISAS 2003), The International Conference on Education and Information Systems, Technologies and Applications (EISTA 2003), The International Conference on Political and Information Systems, Technologies and Applications (PISTA 2003), etc. Authors of the best papers presented, in Spanish, at the Conferencia Ibero-Americana en Sistemas, Cibernética e Informática (CISCI 2003) will be asked to translate their papers to English if they want it to be included in the JSCI. We are also considering the possibility of publishing supplement issues of JSCI in Spanish. In such a case, the best papers presented at CISCI 2003 would be the basic content of these supplemental issues.

Consequently, with this approach, we are hoping to produce a very high quality journal, because its basic content will be related to the 5-10% best papers presented in related conferences, which is the equivalent, though not exactly the same, of a rate of, at least, 90% of refusal. This way of achieving a high quality Journal, will not be based on a high number of actual refusals. With this strategy we will be avoiding being the cause of the hidden psychological and economical costs caused to the authors of refused papers. The greater the refusal rate, the greater the hidden costs caused, by the editors, to potential authors of refused papers by the editors. We are hoping, with our editorial strategy to minimize the hidden costs we might be causing by means of our editorial decision, while not compromising the journal high quality.

Our methodological strategy will be a systemic, not a systematic one. To organize the editorial process and to manage the publishing operational activities will be done with an open, adaptable and evolutionary methodological system. It will have the flexibility required to adapt the journal, its editorial policy, its organizational process and its management to the dynamics of its related areas and disciplines, to changes produced by the inherent learning process involved, and to the uncertainty of the environment. It would be a matter of applying Ashby’s Requisite Variety principle, concepts related to Prigogine’s dissipative structures and other basic principles found in General Systems Theory, General Systems Methodology and Cybernetics. Consequently, we will not have a deterministic and a completely pre-conceived systematic editorial methodology, nor completely pre-determined and static editorial policy, but, in both cases, they will be open, flexible, adaptable and evolutionary. To achieve this purpose we will be using a General Systems Methodology that we have been designing, applying and re-designing in the last 30 years, and specifically we will be using the Incrementally-Evolutionary Methodology we have been designing and applying, especially to information systems developments and to projects of complex systems analysis and synthesis, in the last 25 years. We will be including, in next issues, of this journal, papers related to these methodologies which are the products of applying concepts and principles of Systemics and Cybernetics to real life problems and conducting action-research projects.