There are many good focused conferences in any one of the major themes of WMSCI Conferences. There are also very good conferences even in the more specific areas included in the major themes of WMSCI Conferences. There are also good general conferences, which have a wider scope and are more comprehensive. Each one of these kinds of conferences has its typical audience. WMSCI 2024 will bring together both kinds of audiences, so participants, with a focused research, will be able to:

1. Present their focused research in a specific area for scholars/researchers specialized in their paper discipline and, perhaps, for specialists from other related disciplines and generalists with a more comprehensive intellectual outlook.

2. Get feedback from researchers with the same specific background, as is usual in focused conferences.

3. Get possible feedback from scholars/researchers in related disciplines, thereby opening the possibility of analogies generation, new applications to/from different disciplines, business or industrial areas; and, possibly, new models for re-thinking anew some of their research problems.

4. Organize sessions where papers from related areas are presented, in order to increase the probability of getting the benefits mentioned in (3).

5. Attract speakers with a wider intellectual interest in order to get a more comprehensive conceptual framework and to give context to their research effort.

This would allow specialists and focused researchers, to see the forest besides the tree of their discipline, and to be aware about the neighboring trees.

WMSCI 2024 participants, with non-focused or multi-focused research or with a comprehensive intellectual, industrial or business interest, will be able to:

1. Present their research, ideas, reflections, new concepts/designs or industrial/business innovations to a similar or a specialized audience, so suggestions about possible improvements could emerge and possibly new research or development projects could come out into view.

2. Present ideas that would require multi-disciplinary or interdisciplinary efforts to be researched or developed in action-research programs.

3. Constitute international, multi- and/or inter-disciplinary teams or workgroups in order to conduct research requiring synergic relationships among different kinds of talents, cognitive styles, intellectual faculties and/or research/industrial interests.

4. Create new research areas, based on both: a general framework and various disciplines or focused research areas. This could be done by means of international research teamwork and/or by the elaboration and edition of a multiple-authors book in the Newly Created Field. The newly created Informing Sciences Field is one example on this issue. Our past conferences served to support the initial efforts of their proponents, and now the group has its own yearly conference, newsletter, etc.

Invited Sessions can be organized in a specific or a general theme. These Invited Sessions may grow to Focus Symposia, workshops, satellite events, micro-conferences or even conferences by their own in the context of WMSCI or as independent or associated spin offs from WMSCI. At least two independent yearly conferences and several associated conferences are actually spin offs from WMSCI conferences.

Organizational, Reviewing, and Selection of Best Papers Policies

Virtual sessions

Face-to-face sessions of all events will have associated virtual pre- and post-conference sessions where registered participants can comment each paper in a forum associated to it. Registered participant at any event will have a password to access any virtual session of any collocated event.

Technical Keynote Speakers

Technical keynote speakers will be selected from early submissions because this selection requires an additional evaluation according to the quality of the paper, assessed by its reviewers, the authors' CV and the paper's topic.

Reviewing Process

All Submitted papers/abstracts will go through three reviewing processes: (1) double-blind (at least three reviewers), (2) non-blind, and (3) participative peer reviews. Final acceptance depends of the three kinds of reviews but a paper should be recommended by non-blind reviewers AND blind reviewers in order to be accepted for presentation at the conference and to be included in the respective conference proceedings. A recommendation to accept made by non-blind reviewers is a necessary condition, but it is not a sufficient one. A submission, to be accepted, should also have a majority of its double-blind reviewers recommending its acceptance. This double necessary conditions generate a more reliable and rigorous reviewing than a those reviewing methods based on just one of the indicated methods, or just on the traditional double-blind reviewing. More details regarding this issue can be found at https://www.iiis.org/iiis/PeerReviewing.asp.