A Program for Fostering Inter-Disciplinary Presentations (FIDP)
As it is known the International Institute of Informatics and Systemics (IIIS) has been trying to foster inter-disciplinary communication which is a main reason for organizing multi-disciplinary conferences [1]. Information regarding the importance of inter-disciplinary communication for intellectual development, analogical (creative) thinking and the solution of real life problems can be found at http://www.iiisci.org/journal/CV$/sci/pdfs/iGA927PM.pdf
With this purpose in mind, the IIIS is planning the implementation of a program to foster and provide (partially, at least) financial support for Inter-Disciplinary Communication. The program for Fostering Inter-Disciplinary Communication (FIDC) will include financial support for journal and/or proceedings publications as well as conferences presentations. This web page contains information related to additional conference presentations and proceedings publications with no additional costs for the participants. Given the limitations of the financial support, some conferences might not include some of the possibilities explained below or might be restricted to a limited number of participants in which case decision would be based on FIFO (First-In-First-Out) decision method, until the limit is reached,
With this purpose in mind we have been, in the IIIS, organizing the following events:
- Conversational sessions, participative panels or participative workshops are scheduled in the first day of the conference (with no parallel sessions) on trans-disciplinary topics in order to foster inter-disciplinary communication in both oral and written ways. This is why attendees to most conversational sessions and participative panels have the option to write an invited paper that would be published, with no additional cost, in the post conference volume of the proceedings.
- Plenary keynote addresses oriented to multi-disciplinary audience on topics that might foster inter-disciplinary communication. These plenary sessions have been increased in 100% since 2011 which generate more organizational costs because the contracted meeting rooms are not being used since plenary sessions have, by definition, no parallel sessions.
Sessions of Inter-disciplinary communications, in the last day of the conference, where participants who made intra-disciplinary presentation of peer reviewed articles have the option of making a second presentation with no additional charge as long as they present their same peer reviewed paper but for inter-disciplinary communication, i.e. without using disciplinary or technical terms. These participants have also the option of writing an invited paper which would be published in the post conference volume of the proceedings with no additional cost. Both, the oral and written presentation, require additional time and intellectual effort, because the presenter/author needs to get into a second level of abstraction. The first level is the required for his/her discipline and then in the second level he/she needs to make abstraction from the disciplinary and technical terms. This second level frequently requires analogical thinking and the identification of a) adequate metaphors as well as b) general words to substitute specific ones (of the respective discipline) but maintaining the meaning while lowering the disciplinary precision of the terms. This requires the intellectual effort required to go from species to genres that include the referred species, from specific precise word to the respective general and less precise concept. This effort is what we are trying to reciprocate with no additional fees for the presentation or the publication.
Periodically, a special publication will be made with the invited papers written for inter-disciplinary communication. It will provide links to the respective papers that were written for intra-disciplinary communication. This is one of the ways by which the IIIS would relate intra- and inter-disciplinary communications [2], which might generate cybernetic loops and potential synergies for the writer and the readers. These special publications of invited papers for inter-disciplinary communications will have special promotion via academic/professional social media as for example Academia.edu (a community of about 30.000.000 academics and researchers), LinkedIn, etc. Readers of any of these invited papers will also have a link to the peer-reviewed paper used for intra-disciplinary communication. This might certainly increase the readership of the paper and, hence, its potential impact.
Those participants whose regular (peer reviewed) presentations were already made in an inter-disciplinary field and oriented to inter-disciplinary communication have the option of working on an invited paper regarding the topic of inter-disciplinary research, education and/or communication (IDREC). Such invited papers might be oriented towards any of the following:
1. Why IDREC is important and necessary for the advancement of Science, real life problems solution, and/or technological innovations,
2. What is or might be IDREC: description of the related concepts supporting any of these three activities as well as the potential relationships and potential cybernetic loops among them and/or
3. How IDREC might be achieved. This issue might be addressed conceptually, via practice-based research and/or reflections, or presenting case studies which level of effectiveness has the potential of generating more similar practices and/or potentially more case studies on this issue.
_______________[1] Some details regarding this purpose are briefly described in the general call for papers which can be found at: https://iiis.org/purpose.asp, http://www.iiis.org/MainPurpose/, and https://iiis.org/purposeactivities.asp
[2] More details regarding the potential synergies of relating intra-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary communication are included in Callaos, N. 2015 (especially in figure 1 and table 2) which can be found at: http://www.iiis.org/Nagib-Callaos/Integrating-different-conceptions-of-conferences