[AISWorld] CfP - Sustainability - Special Issue on "Business Process Automation and Innovation"

Fri Apr 22 14:03:47 EDT 2022

Colleagues:
In the last 5 years, the paths for placing accepted manuscripts in traditional JCRs indexed journals, with a capacity for reviewing and accepting around 100-120 papers per year, have been stressed. A gross estimation, based on my 15-year period of being an international researcher, is that traditional JCRs journals receive about 500-700 papers per year and whereas they have acceptance rates around 10%-15%, other 15%-20% of rejected papers are still of high quality. Additionally, if we consider that the review-correction-acceptance cycle usually lasts about 6-12 months,  the publication path is really hard.
In contrast, some fee-paid JCRs listed in Q1 and Q2 quartiles are processing and publishing about 1,500-2,000 papers on IT topics per year, with durations among 4-6 weeks for knowing a yes/no acceptance decision. Given these two different models, many researchers are being forced to migrate to the fee-paid model trying to keep the expected quality and take advantage of the underlying principle of fee-paid JCRS of "reject papers only when they are clearly flawed" vs the expected in traditional JCRs as "accept papers only when exhibit soundness AND topic is highly relevant AND the reputation of authors is high (i.e. scientific legitimacy and provenance)". Said it, the JCR metrics seem to be the problem with endorsing some fee-paid OAJ journals.
Finally, changing to Citescore Scopus metrics instead of the JCR ones as the expected quality metrics for academic promotions would solve this problem.
Cheers!
Manuel Mora

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Manuel Mora, EngD.
Full-time Professor and Researcher Level C
ACM Senior Member / Mexican SNI Level II Member
Department of Information Systems
Autonomous University of Aguascalientes
Ave. Universidad 940
Aguascalientes, AGS
Mexico, 20131
Linkedin Weblink<https://www.linkedin.com/in/manuel-mora-37b03a1/> / ResearchGate Weblink<https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Manuel_Mora>
Scholar Google Weblink / <https://scholar.google.com.mx/citations?user=97rTgbkAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra> SCOPUS Weblink<https://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.uri?authorId=25823339800>
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________________________________
From: AISWorld <aisworld-bounces at lists.aisnet.org> on behalf of Vladislav Fomin <vvfomin at gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, April 22, 2022 6:04 AM
To: Ralf Plattfaut <plattfaut.ralf at fh-swf.de>; Amy Van Looy <amy.vanlooy at ugent.be>
Cc: aisworld at lists.aisnet.org <aisworld at lists.aisnet.org>
Subject: Re: [AISWorld] CfP - Sustainability - Special Issue on "Business Process Automation and Innovation"

Dear Ralf, Amy,

While I do not have an intension to discourage ISWORLD community to submit to the SI advertised here, I cannot abstain from sharing the evidence I came across recently…

The evidence I came across recently is mildly speaking. It concerns this particular journal (Sustainability) and the MDPI as a publisher. I believe not many scholars are aware of what is going on with MDPI - you might wish to look into the ongoing discussions on the web and some analysis (for example: https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpaolocrosetto.wordpress.com%2F2021%2F04%2F12%2Fis-mdpi-a-predatory-publisher%2F&data=05%7C01%7Cjose.mora%40edu.uaa.mx%7C01fb2eaeeb7a46c9bce608da24507f5b%7Ce1e2e29221d64849b7104d47d9578ad0%7C0%7C0%7C637862225418623385%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=oedKEmAXqnNTnrDc7YvPnBq0iBE0TJmpVz5lxtpGuXg%3D&reserved=0 <https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpaolocrosetto.wordpress.com%2F2021%2F04%2F12%2Fis-mdpi-a-predatory-publisher%2F&data=05%7C01%7Cjose.mora%40edu.uaa.mx%7C01fb2eaeeb7a46c9bce608da24507f5b%7Ce1e2e29221d64849b7104d47d9578ad0%7C0%7C0%7C637862225418623385%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=oedKEmAXqnNTnrDc7YvPnBq0iBE0TJmpVz5lxtpGuXg%3D&reserved=0>):

- MDPI now runs almost 400 journals and submission-to-publication term ACROSS all journals is about 1 MONTH.
- Sustainability announces 9 special issues PER DAY.
- Only in 2021 Sustainability published 15000 (fifteen thousand) papers!
- Publishing a paper is ONLY possible by paying 2000 CHF fee...

At this volume/rate, there is no way the journal’s editorial board (or anyone else) can have any sensible control over the quality or content of the papers. As a matter of fact, this week I received an invitation to be a Guest Editor for the Special Issue with the thematics which outside of scope of my expertise… It is this and few other “strange things” about Sustainability made me to do a mini-research on this journal and its publisher. For example, I found out that the same scholars organize SEVERAL Special Issues PER ANNUM and in EACH of their organized SIs publish 3-5 of THEIR OWN papers! This led me assume there are discounts/waivers on the publication fee offered to the Guest Editors of the SIs...

In Lithuania, as in many other countries, Sustainability is considered a high-quality journal, as it belongs to Q2 according to Clarivate journal rankings. I guess once the publisher has 400 journals in their portfolio, they can keep the high citation index by cross-referencing from one journal to another. This my conjecture is partially supported by Clarivate journal citation reports data (see the attached). The number of citations of Sustainability has dropped by half in 2020, as compared to 2019 - perhaps due to the growing awareness of scholars about the problem. Also, the percentage of citations from the same journal made almost 50% of the total volume of the citation… What percentage of the “non-self citations” is made by other MDPI journals we do not know...

I will be happy to learn my concerns are unsubstantiated - I hope the Guest Editors of this SI and other members of ISWORLd can share their thought and experience on this forum.

Sincerely

Vladislav

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> On 2022-04-22, at 12:49, Ralf Plattfaut <plattfaut.ralf at fh-swf.de> wrote:
>
> +++ Apologies if you receive multiple copies of this email. Please
> distribute to interested parties +++
>
>
>
> Dear colleagues,
>
>
>
> We are kindly inviting submissions to the special issue on “Business Process
> Automation and Innovation” in Sustainability.
>
>
>
> Sustainability is an open access journal, indexed within Scopus and SSCI/Web
> of Science and ranked C according to VHB-Jourqual 3.
>
>
>
> All details of the call can be found here:
> https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mdpi.com%2Fjournal%2Fsustainability%2Fspecial_issues%2FBusiness_Process_&data=05%7C01%7Cjose.mora%40edu.uaa.mx%7C01fb2eaeeb7a46c9bce608da24507f5b%7Ce1e2e29221d64849b7104d47d9578ad0%7C0%7C0%7C637862225418623385%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=X9kSYStaG1UdSxwRcOpXZHOygVTNl8TRzwINM%2FtHPWI%3D&reserved=0
> Automation_and_Innovation and below this email.
>
>
>
> Deadline is 30th of April 2023 – we welcome early submissions.
>
>
>
> Kind regards,
>
>
>
> Ralf
>
>
>
> +++ CFP +++
>
> Business processes constitute a core concept in modern management. They can
> be understood as “a collection of inter-related events, activities, and
> decision points that involve a number of actors and objects, which
> collectively lead to an outcome that is of value to at least one customer”
> (Dumas et al., 2018, p. 6). Their optimization in terms of automation and
> innovation is of tremendous importance for organizations.
>
> In the last decade, sustainability has become a crucial goal for the
> optimization of business processes (Seidel et al. 2014, vom Brocke et al.
> 2012). First, processes themselves need to be sustainable. Second,
> capabilities for process automation and innovation need to be sustainable.
> Third, the effects of an increasing automation of business processes also
> have effects with regards to sustainability goals. These sustainability
> goals cover all three bottom lines of the triple bottom line model (i.e.,
> economic, environmental, and social goals).
>
> Digital means create more opportunities for the automation and innovation of
> business processes. However, we also see that these digital means have an
> impact on the sustainability of both organizations in general and business
> processes in specific. For instance, processes using Robotic Process
> Automation are prone to failure when the underlying core systems change
> (Syed et al., 2020), or process mining in healthcare runs the risk of
> compromising the privacy of patients (Pika et al., 2020). Alternatively,
> exogenous shocks in the environment require a higher degree of process
> innovation (Röglinger et al. 2022).
>
> As such, more research on the intersection of sustainability and business
> process automation and innovation is needed.
>
> In this call, we motivate research at the intersection of sustainability and
> business process automation and innovation. We welcome research from all
> traditions, different theoretical perspectives, and across different
> contexts. We are open to all methodological and theoretical approaches.
> Topics of interest include (but are not limited to) the following:
>
> *     Sustainable and green business process management;
> *     Methods to innovate business processes with a focus on (economic,
> environmental, and social) sustainability;
> *     Conceptual process modeling for sustainably competitive business
> processes;
> *     Using process automation to increase process sustainability;
> *     Building sustainable capabilities for process automation and
> innovation;
> *     Analyzing the effects of process automation on different
> sustainability measures (e.g., the triple bottom line);
> *     Using process mining and analytics to understand the sustainability
> impact of processes and process changes.
>
> We look forward to receiving your contributions at any time—early
> submissions to the Special Issue are warmly welcomed. Feel free to contact
> us before your submission to assure it fits in the Special Issue.
>
> Ralf Plattfaut
> Amy Van Looy
>
> _______________________________________________
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> AISWorld at lists.aisnet.org

—
Vladislav V. Fomin

Distinguished Professor
Vilnius University
Kaunas Faculty

Visiting Professor
University of Latvia
Faculty of Computing

Editor-in-Chief: Information & Media
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