The Journal of Systemic, Cybernetics, and Informatics (JSCI) is an open publication that has been in publication since its inception in 2003. There are six regular issues per year and special issues on particular topics or events.

Regular Issues

Approximately 95% of the papers published in the regular issues are peer reviewed, while about 1% of these are invited papers. The published peer reviewed papers are the best 25%-30% of the papers presented at conferences organized by the International Institute of Informatics and Systemics. The papers published in the JSCI represent 12%-15% (about half of the 25%-30%) of the articles submitted to the conference. This percentage is associated with the number of articles accepted and presented at the respective conferences as related to the total number of articles submitted to these conferences. These statistics are published in the Forward sections of the respective conference proceedings. As an example, please refer to the table included in the following Forward section: https://www.iiis.org/CDs2016/CD2016Spring/ForewordZ.htm


Five Reviewing Processes for Regular Issues of the Journal:

Since 2006 and up to the present, the review methodology consists of five review processes which apply to any paper published in a regular JSCI issue of the Journal. Three of these review processes are mandatory and two are optional for conference participants.

Mandatory Reviews: The details of the Mandatory Reviews are described at http://iiis.org/peer-reviewing.asp. These three mandatory reviews are as follows:

• The traditional and well known double-blind peer-review process is supported by approximately 15.000 reviewers of the International Institute of Informatics and Systemics (IIIS, www.iiis.org). As published in the Forward section of the respective conference proceedings, on average, 6 reviews are received per submission.
  
  Once the conference is over, a list of all reviewers is published along with the paper titles which they reviewed. Consequently, the double-blind reviewing process for article acceptances is transformed into a one-sided information repository, i.e. the author may know the reviewers’ names, but not vice versa. Please see the example for the published list of the 2016 conferences at https://www.iiis.org/iiis/Rev-CL2016.asp


• A Non-blind peer review is recommended by the highly cited and seminal author Davis Kaplan (2005, "How to Fix Peer Review", The Scientist, Volume 19, Issue 1, Page 10, Jun. 6; at http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/16474/title/How-to-Fix-Peer-Review/). Non-anonymous reviewers are posted annually, at the IIIS website (www.iiis.org), along with the titles of the articles which they reviewed. An example of this from the 2016 conference may be found at http://www.iiis.org/iiis/Rev-OPSP2016.asp


• Both kind of reviewers (double-blind and non-anonymous are listed in proceedings of the respective conference.


• Best Sessions' Papers are selected by the audiences for each respective session. The selecting audience bases its decision on the face-to-face presentation, coupled with the final paper version published in the virtual session. These are accessible to all conference participants one week prior to the conference, during the conference itself, and for at least three weeks following the conference.

To be accepted by each one of the three mandatory reviewing processes is a necessary condition for the selection of the paper to be published in the Journal of Systemics, Cybernetics, and Informatics (JSCI)

Non-Mandatory and Supporting Reviews: In addition to the three mandatory review processes described above, there are two additional types of optional review processes that are available to all conference participants who volunteer to conduct such reviews for the conference submissions and/or on any paper presented at the conference. The two optional review processes are as follows:

• Pre-Acceptance Peer-to-Peer Review (PPPR): Submitted articles are posted as received on the conference website so that other authors submitting articles on similar topics/areas are provided with password-protected access to these submitted articles and may review them as peers in the area.


• Post-Publication Peer-to-Peer Review (PPPR): This is done via virtual sessions only for accepted papers presented at the conference. Each face-to-face session in the conference has a corresponding virtual session with asynchronous communication channels in order to facilitate participantsto evaluate the papers presented at the conference and to potentially provide feedback for their potential improvement for their possible publication in the journal. This type of post-publication review, following the proceeding publications, underscores the selection of the best papers for their publication in the JSCI. This process is oriented to: 1) ALL conference participants with the goal of improving their decision-making process regarding the selection of best sessions' papers, and 2) the journal editor(s) to further validate the selection process for both the regular and special journal's issues.

Invited Papers

The majority of invited papers are published in a special issue associated with the plenary keynote addresses of the respective year. The keynote speakers are selected from the top 10% of the best papers, which is calculated, mostly, by averaging the quantitative evaluations for all submitted and accepted articles. These invited papers are published in an annual special issue and are reciprocally linked to the videos of their respective plenary keynote addresses. An example of this may be found at https://www.iiisci.org/journal/sci/Contents.asp?var=&next=ISS1506

Less than 1% of the articles published in regular issues are invited papers. The decision to publish them has been an editorial one based on the importance of the topic and the Curriculum Vitae of the author(s).