The International Journal on Computers, Systems, and Signals is seeking submissions for a special issue to be published towards the end of 2003 or the beginning of 2003 on the following topic:

SOFT SYSTEMS APPROACHES TO INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY PROBLEMS

Guest Editors: Dr Don Petkov, Eastern Connecticut State University and Dr Olga Petkova, Central Connecticut State University.

petkovd@easternct.edu

The aim of this special issue is to provide a representation of current research applying various soft systems approaches (known also as Alternative Operations Research Approaches) to practical problems or theoretical issues in the ICT sector. The methods involve one or more of the following (the originators are in brackets): soft systems methodology (Checkland), SAST (Mason and Mitroff), Interactive Planning (Ackoff), Interactive Management (Warfield), Strategic Choice (Friend), Robustness Analysis (Rosenberg), SODA (Eden), Critical Systems Thinking (Jackson, Flood, Midgley, Mingers, Ulrich) and other related methods.

The application areas may include one of the following or related topics:

Information Systems Design
Information Sytems Management
Design of large scale computer systems
Design of Telecommunication systems
Management of Telecommunications

Submit papers before the 11th of August 2003 to petkovd@easternct.edu. The length of a submission should not exceed 6500 words with the references. Please send papers by email in MS Word format. Include any illustrations and tables as they need to appear in the particular place in the text. Use the Harvard method of referencing please. The first page should contain the title, the authors, their affiliation and emails, to whome correspondence be sent, classification about whether the paper is on research in progress, completed research or a case study. The second page should contain only the title (without the authors), an abstract, up to 5 keywords and then follow with the rest of the paper. Remove personal details about the owner of the computer on which the paper is created by selecting in MS Word Tools/Options/Security and click on Remove Personal Information. A paper will be rejected before any reviews if it does not comply with all of the above requirements. The format of the final accepted submissions will be communicated to the authors of the accepted papers additionally. If you have further questions, please do not hesitate to send an email to: petkovd@easternct.edu.

If you have further questions you may direct those to the address below:

Dr D. Petkov,
Associate Professor MIS, Dept of Business Administration,
Eastern Connecticut State University, 83 Windham Street
Willimantic,CT 06226,USA.

tel: 1 860 465 0264
fax: 1 860 465 4469
email: petkovd@easternct.edu

The reviews are expected to be completed by the 19th of September. Then the authors will be notified about any changes suggested by the reviewers. The revised papers, ready for publication, are expected to be recieved from the authors by the 10th of October. Please inform the guest editors if you are willing to serve as a reviewer of submitted papers before the 11th of August 2003.