Really REALLY interdisciplinary

My post on Nagib Callaos' response to SCIgen has attracted a ridiculous number of comments and lots of links, including (thanks Jeremy!) a link from the SCIgen web page. Thanks to everyone for commenting, linking, or just dropping by.

But the best comment so far came from my mom, who quietly forwarded an email she received yesterday. Even with the broadest possible definition of multi-displinary computing research, it's hard to imagine that she's their intended audience. Mom paints portraits for a living. With actual paint.

From: IPSI Conferences
Date: Thu Apr 28, 2005 1:06:49 PM US/Central
To: connieerickson@-------.---
Subject: Invitation to Montenegro, Italy, and Slovenia 2005; c/bb

Dear potential Speaker:

On behalf of the organizing committee, I would like to extend a cordial invitation for you to attend one of the upcoming IPSI BgD multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary conferences.

The first one will take place in Sveti Stefan, Montenegro:

IPSI-2005 MONTENEGRO
Hotel Sveti Stefan (arrival: 1 October 05 / departure: 8 October 05)
Deadlines: 1 May 05 (abstract) / 1 July 05 (full paper)

The second one will take place in Venice, Italy:

IPSI-2005 VENICE
Hotel Luna Baglioni (arrival: 9 November 05 / departure: 14 November 05)
Deadlines: 1 June 05 (abstract) / 1 August 05 (full paper)

The third one will take place on the Bled lake, Slovenia:

IPSI-2005 SLOVENIA
Hotel Toplice (arrival: 8 December 05 / departure: 11 December 05)
Deadlines: 1 July 05 (abstract) & 1 September 05 (full paper)

All IPSI BgD conferences are non-profit. They bring together the elite of the world science; so far, we have had seven Nobel Laureates speaking at the opening ceremonies. The conferences always take place in some of the most attractive places of the world. All those who come to IPSI conferences once, always love to come back (because of the unique professional quality and the extremely creative atmosphere); lists of past participants are on the web, as well as details of future conferences.

These conferences are in line with the newest recommendations of the US National Science Foundation and of the EU research sponsoring agencies, to stress multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary research (M+I+T++ research). The speakers and activities at the conferences truly support this type of scientific interaction.

One of the main topics of this conference is "E-education and E-business with Special Emphasis on Semantic Web and Web Datamining"

Other topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

* Internet
* Computer Science and Engineering
* Mobile Communications/Computing for Science and Business
* Management and Business Administration
* Education
* e-Medicine
* e-Oriented Bio Engineering/Science and Molecular Engineering/Science
* Environmental Protection
* e-Economy
* e-Law
* Technology Based Art and Art to Inspire Technology Developments
* Internet Psychology

If you would like more information on either conference, please reply to this e-mail message.

If you plan to submit an abstract and paper, please let us know immediately for planning purposes. Note that you can submit your paper also to the IPSI Transactions journal.

Sincerely Yours,

Prof. V. Milutinovic, Chairman,
IPSI BgD Conferences

* * * CONTROLLING OUR E-MAILS TO YOU * * *

If you would like to continue to be informed about future IPSI BgD conferences, please reply to this e-mail message with a subject line of SUBSCRIBE.

If you would like to be removed from our mailing list, please reply to this e-mail message with a subject line of REMOVE.

IPSI at least promises a seriously non-trivial review process, even though they don't publish proceedings.

Comments

[Shripad]

I've always been confused by the distinction between "interdisciplinary" and "multidisciplinary". This email introduces the term "transdisciplinary". What next? "Adisciplinary"?

[Bill Tozier]

Antidisciplinary, and perhaps neodisciplinary, would be good.

Some few of us might eventually graduate to bono-disciplinary, but would have to work out a few trust issues first.

[Bill Tozier]

Sorry, that was supposed to be "bondo-disciplinary"

"bono-disciplinary" makes no sense :/

[Mike Stiber]

Anyone know a grad student interested in generating, er, I mean "writing", a paper for IPSI BgD? :^)

Seriously, though, there have been comments about the use of certain conferences as a means of buying CV entries. However, several years ago, when I got my first IIIS invite, I thought about submitting because it sounded like something that might be eclectic and interesting. Luckily, I did some due diligence, and found Justin Zobel's web page on the conference. So, when I see folks with that conference on their CV, I usually think that I dodged a bullet. But, consider someone who presented some legit work there, without suspecting anything out of the ordinary. What do they do? Remove the item from their CV and make like the work never happened? That ignores the fact that another reason for publishing (besides as a performance metric) is to publicize one's work. Retitle the work and present it to another conference, replacing the CV entry? That doesn't seem too ethical. I guess the most honest thing would be to put it on the web (and include in the CV) as a technical report, thus unreviewed. Not very satisfactory.

To me, this gets to the real damage done by such "spamferences": they turn our relationship with conferences to that of consumers of products, who need to carefully vet where we submit lest our work become "orphaned". And how much more difficult does this make it to start a new conference?

Oh, and a final, smartass question about the end of the above invitation:

"If you would like to continue to be informed about future IPSI BgD conferences, please reply to this e-mail message with a subject line of SUBSCRIBE.

If you would like to be removed from our mailing list, please reply to this e-mail message with a subject line of REMOVE."

What happens if you do neither? Is it something like a double-slit experiment?