Call for Participation for Special Session(s) on
Qualitative Research and Integrating Academic Activities:
Research, Education and Real Life Problem Solving

March 21-24, 2017, in Orlando, Florida, USA

Special deadlines for this specific session (not for other collocated events)

February 7^th, 2017: Submissions.
February 10^th, 2017: Notifications of acceptance.
February 21^st, 2017: Submission of camera-ready or final versions of the accepted papers.
March 25^th, 2017: Peer to peer reviewing for the publication in the Journal of Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics, with no additional charge for authors of the selected papers
Other reviewing processes may also apply for the journal publication, but in any case there will be no additional charge for the respective authors.
Before the end of 2017 the selected papers will be published in the journal in special or regular issue depending on the number of the selected papers.

To submit your article, please send an abstract (200-400) or an extended abstract (400-1000) attached to an email addressed to: ireps (at) iiis.org

Please do not submit your article via conference web site because it is a specific event with specific co-organizers

The organization of this special event will include at least one conversational session, a plenary keynote address, and paper presentation sessions(s), where accepted articles related to this CFP will be presented.

Submissions on articles can be made on any of the topics of the following special tracks and/or the topics listed below:

• Integrating Academic Activities: Research, Education and Real Life Problem Solving (IREPS 2017)
• Research and Consulting, Research via consulting and consulting via research (R&C 2017)
• Qualitative Research and Methodologies in Science and Engineering (QRMSE 2017)

Submissions may also be sent regarding a case study or report on any of the above referred tracks or on any of their respective topics, given below.


Publications

All accepted and presented articles will be included in IMCIC 2017 proceedings. IIIS July conference has been indexed by Scopus since 2005. Several months ago, Elsevier-Scopus asked for all the proceedings related to past March IIIS conferences and these proceedings were sent for their indexation. IIIS will continue to send the proceedings of all its conferences for their respective indexation.

A special issue of the Journal of Systemics, Cybernetics, and Informatics (JSCI) will be published on Integrating Academic Activities and Qualitative Research, if an adequate number of articles are submitted, accepted and, consequently, presented at the conference. Otherwise, best papers will be published in regular issues. JSCI is indexed by EBSCO, Cabell, DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals), Academic Journals Database, and Google Scholar and listed in Cabell Directory of Publishing Opportunities and in Ulrich’s Periodical Directory.


Relationships between Integrating Academic Activities and Qualitative Research

Integration of Academic activities (including research via consulting and consulting via research) and Qualitative Research and Modeling 1) intersect each other in several areas and 2) have explicit or implicit, potential or actual cybernetic loops of co-regulation (negative forward and feedforward) and co-amplification (positive feedback) which might produce synergies and emergent properties beneficial to both of them. The following figure summarizes visually the relationships between Academic Integration and Qualitative Research:




Cross Disciplinary Applications Via Analogical Thinking

Because of the actual and potential relationships shown above, a presentation on a topic in any of the three areas shown above might generate an application in other area via analogical thinking. This kind of a applications may be potential hypothesis formulation, solution to a real life problem in other area, methodological transfer from one area to the other, reformulations of concepts in other intellectual contexts, learning be means of inter-disciplinary communication, productive reflections, intellectual intuitions, creativity, potential methodological innovations in both academic, socio-economic, or business activities, etc. Consequently, presentation in any of the three non-exclusive set of topics listed below are expected to generate reflection, analogical thinking, intellectual intuitions, and potential applications in the mind of attendees from other sets of topics.

Who is encouraged to Participate in this Event

This event is especially (but not uniquely) oriented to the following academics, researchers, and professionals or consultants:

• Those who participated in the design, implementation, and/or administration of organizations oriented to integrate academic activities or relate "Research and Consulting."
• Those who have been working in relating research and education, education and real life problem solving, research, education and real life problem solving or in organizations of "Research and Consulting", or have done an ad hoc work in some of them.
• Those academics who have done research via consulting.
• Those consultants who have done consulting via research.
• Those who have experience and/or knowledge to share regarding the relationships among academic activities and between research and consulting.
• Those who have to generate or use qualitative research and/or modeling in any of the above applications or other related ones.
• Those who are making qualitative research and, consequently, are using the respective methodologies for theory formation or generating solution to real life problem solving which multi-disciplinary nature require inter-disciplinary communication, hence natural language using, hence qualitative or hybrid methodologies.

Ways of participating in this event

An academic, researcher, professional, or consultant might participate in this event submitting a contributed article which, if accepted, will be included in the conference program. This article might be:

• A research and/or a reflection paper regarding the integration of academic activities or the relationships between research and consulting.
• A case study, or the description of a specific case in which academic activites have been integrated or research was done via consulting or consulting was done via research. Such a case can be related to any of the topics of the collocated events and conferences.
• A position paper regarding the participation of a university’s faculties in integrating academic activities, in search via consulting or consulting via research.
• An article regarding the conception, design, and/or the implementation of an organization oriented to the integration of academic activities or relating "research and consulting".
• An article describing the different legal and structural forms in which an organization of research and development has been integrated into an academic context in order to synergistically relate the academic organization to the private and public sector and, in general, to Society.
• An article describing a seminar delivered in the private or public sector that generated the integration of academic activities or new projects based on relating “research and Consulting”, of consulting based new hypothesis formulation, new reflections, new research, case studies, etc.

SUGGESTED NON-EXCLUSIVE TOPICS

Any of the following three sets associated with the three mentioned areas or tracks, as well as any hybrid topic that might relate two or more topics in the same set or in different sets. Articles related topics from different set are encouraged because they would represent the relatedness among these areas as shown in the figure above.

1. Suggested, non Exclusive, Topics on Integrating Academic Activities: Research, Education and Real Life Problem Solving
   
   • Relating research and education
   • Relating research and real life problem solving
   • Relating research and consulting: research via consulting and consulting via research
   • Relating research and education
   • Research Education
   • Educational Research
   • Relationships between research and teaching. Teaching via collaborative research
   • esearching via teaching or educational action research
   • Relationships between research and practice
   • Integrating research, teaching and consulting or practice
   • Action research applied to the Integration of Academic Activities
   • Qualitative and hybrid research applied to the Integration of Academic Activities
   • Relating research with innovation
   • Research programs and projects engineering
   • Application of Action Research in the integration of academic activities
   • Application of case studies in the integration of academic activities


2. Suggested, non Exclusive, Topics on Research and Consulting
   
   • Relationships between Research and consulting
   • Research via consulting
   • Consulting via research
   • Relating research and consulting as a way of integrating academic research to industry, public and private sectors, and the Society at large.
   • Application of Action Research in the integration of research and consulting
   • Application of case studies in relating research and consulting
   • Application of Action Research in the integration of research and practice
   • Application of case studies in relating research and practice


3. Suggested, Non-Exclusive Topics in Qualitative Research, Methodologies and Applications
   
   • Qualitative Research and Methodologies in Social Sciences
   • Qualitative Research and Methodologies in Science and Engineering Education
   • The problem of induction as a qualitative aspect of quantitative research
   • Phenomenological Research
   • Ethnography
   • Deduction as a quantitative method and induction as qualitative method
   • Grounded Theory Research
   • Case Studies
   • Action-Research
   • Qualitative Studies
   • Qualitative Research Design
   • Virtual Ethnography
   • Data Collection Techniques and Analysis in Qualitative Research
   • Education and Qualitative Research/Methods
   • Philosophical foundations of science in term of the nature of knowledge revealed by quantitative and qualitative methods
   • Qualitative Case Studies and Methodologies
   • On-Line Research: Technologies, Methodologies, and Case Studies.
   • Qualitative Digital Research
   • Research of, and/or via, Social Media
   • Creativity and Qualitative Research/Methods Creativity and Qualitative Research/Methods
   • Creativity and Qualitative Research/Methods
   • Qualitative Research/Methodologies in Management and Organizations
   • Qualitative Research in Design
   • Qualitative Research/Methodologies in Information Systems
   • Qualitative Research/Methodologies in Systems Engineering
   • Qualitative Research/Methodologies and Software Engineering
   • Qualitative Research/Methodologies and Knowledge Engineering
   • Qualitative Research/Methodologies and Collaborative Research/Enquiry
   • Qualitative Research/Methodologies in non-Traditional Engineering Fields

Co-organizers and co-chairs

Dr. Jeremy Horne, President-emeritus, Southwest Area Division, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), USA.
Professor T. Grandon Gill, University of South Florida, USA (Academic Director of the Business Administration Doctorate)
Dr. Suzanne Lunsford, Wright State University, USA.
Professor José Vicente Carrasquero, University Simon Bolivar, Venezuela.
Professor Andrés Tremante, Florida International University, USA.
Dr. Nagib Callaos, University Simon Bolivar and the International Institute of Infomatics and Systemics, USA.