The promotional policy used by the Organizing Committee of the conferences organized by the International Institute of Informatics and Systemics (IIIS) is based on sending the Call for Papers and/or the Invitation to Participate to scholars, researchers, professionals, and practitioners who have presented at least one quality paper in a reputable conference, symposium, or workshop that includes topics similar to some of the ones in the IIIS conference. This promotional policy is oriented to target high quality scholars and professionals in order to continuously increase the quality of the papers presented at the IIIS conferences.

This policy resulted from verifying that other means (publicity in related journals, for example) generated a large percentage of very low quality papers that, consequently, hindered the voluntary work of reviewers, and increased the refusal rate, as well as the processing costs per submitted paper or abstract. The voluntary conference reviewers and the authors of quality papers were paying the economic and non-economic costs of processing a large number of low quality papers. Since the IIIS is a non-profit organization and the conferences organized by it have no financial support, they should finance themselves. Quality authors were paying the reviewing processing costs of low quality papers; which would not be accepted for their presentation at the conference being organized. Hence, a targeted promotion has been implemented via postal and electronic mails.

For the promotion via emails, the IIIS implemented computer-based processes which were integrated with strict, scrupulous and carefully designed human procedures in order to avoid unintentional spamming. From the very high number of spam definitions, the IIIS decided to use the definition approved by the Congress of the United States of America, mainly because the venues of most of its conferences were and are located in the USA. Consequently, the targeted promotional emails are being sent with a complete compliance with the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003-2008. More information about the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003-2008 can be found at the following web page:

Besides the total commitment with the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003-2008, approved by the USA Congress, the Organizing Committees of the IIIS conferences are also urged to fulfill the following ethical issues:

1. They should answer every email they receive, especially, those emails sent by scholars and professionals who perceive they have received spam from us, because they have a different definition of “spamming” or because any other reason. It is an ethical issue to provide reciprocity on this matter. If a recipient of our email took the time to write to us, the least we can do is explain that our intention was not to spam him/her, but to increase the quality of our conferences with his/her proven quality as a scholar or professional.

2. In the very infrequent case that an error or mistake is made by the IIIS staff, the respective Organizing Committee Chair is the one who should explain what happened and apologize if it was actually an error or mistake made by some of our staff. We understand that probably the most adequate definition of spam for the person who feel spammed is his/her own definition of it. But, we could not find a way to adapt to the high diversity of spam definitions, so consequently we chose the one provided by the USA Congress CAN-SPAM Act of 2003-2008 because of the reasons given above. When a person feels strongly that his/her definition of spam is the real one, the respective Organizing Committee Chair is empathic about other spam definitions and tries to explain that we are using the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003-2008 definition because:

As expected, the targeted promotional policy produced conferences with higher quality articles and presentations. This has been proved by the formal feedback the authors have been sending via the web form. This online form has been used to collect participant assessments about the quality of the organizational process and the papers presented at the conference. As examples of this fact, the last two surveys related to the 2008 and 2009 conferences produced the following results:

1. Right after the 2008 collocated conferences were over, all attendees were contacted. 872 visited the survey’s web form and 602 filled it. They were asked the following question "Could you please grade the organizational process of the conference from 1 to 10?" They answered with an average of 8.42 on a scale of 10. 112 scholars rated the conferences at the maximum of 10, 134 rated them at 9, and 107 at 8. This means that 58.7% rated the 2008 collocated conferences in the range of 8-10 on a scale of 10. Just 7 (1.16%) attendees rated it below 5 on a scale of 10. More information and details can be found at https://www.iiis.org/iiis/StatisticsandOpinions/WMSCI2008/

2. With a similar survey for the 2009 collocated conferences, 1159 visited the survey’s web form and 789 filled it. They were asked the following question "Could you please grade the organizational process of the conference from 1 to 10". They answered with an average of 8.64 (slightly more than for 2008 conferences) on a scale of 10. 180 scholars rated the conference at the maximum of 10, 160 rated it at 9, and 155 at 8. This means that 62.74% (a larger percentage than in 2008) rated the 2009 collocated conferences in the range of 8-10 on a scale of 10. Just 7 (0.887%, even a lesser percentage than for 2008 conferences) attendees rated it below 5 on a scale of 10. More information and details can be found at https://www.iiis.org/iiis/StatisticsandOpinions/WMSCI2009/

At Least Two Sets of Deadlines
At least two sets of deadlines are usually planned for the conferences organized by the International Institute of Informatics and Systemics (IIIS) and, sometimes, for the events organized in their contexts. This aspect of the promotional policy is due to the following facts observed since we organized the first conference in 1981:

The International Institute of Informatics and Systemics (IIIS)

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