Informing Science Institute

What is your organization aiming to accomplish?
The Informing Science Institute (ISI) is a mentoring organization. One of the Informing Science Institute’s core principles is helping our fellow colleagues to become better and better: better as an author, as a reviewer, as an editor, and as an editor-in-chief. We use the peer review process of our journals to support author colleagues by providing them with constructive suggestions on improving their work even if a submitted article is not accepted for publication. Our Editors-in-Chief assist reviewers and editors by being coaches and guides to the authors, reviewers, and editors.
ISI Research Topics
ISI current focus is to encourage the sharing of knowledge and collaboration among a wide variety of fields, often using information technology to advance the multidisciplinary study of informing science. These areas can include Business, Communications, Communicating Meaning, Community and Society, Computer Science, Data Management, Distance Education, eCommerce, Education, eLearning, Government, Health Care, History, Information and Library Science, Journalism, Justice and Law, Mathematics, Management, Philosophical Issues, Psychology, Public Policy, Sociology, and Human Resources.

ISI is a family of volunteers worldwide who believe in the value of knowledge sharing. We have created several professional journals in specific fields. Each journal is staffed by several hundred volunteer reviewers, paper editors, and editors-in-chief. The paper’s author submits their paper for review. The journal’s editor-in-chief first reviews it. If the paper is turned down, the editor-in-chief sends the author a development letter containing ideas on improving the paper. Otherwise, the editor-in-chief assigns an editor to the paper and typically five reviewers. The reviewers write mentoring suggestions for the paper. The paper’s editor uses these suggestions and the editor’s own to create a development letter for the paper. The editor’s development letter is reviewed by the editor-in-chief, who either accepts the development letter’s wording or sends it back to the editor with mentoring comments on how to improve that letter. If the author accepts the revision requests, the author submits a revised paper and a letter describing how the revision addresses each of the suggestions in the development letter. Or the author may withdraw the paper at this point. This process continues until the editor recommends acceptance of the paper for publication. If the editor-in-chief approves the editor’s recommendation for acceptance, the paper is passed on to the journal’s publisher, who conducts the final quality control.

We measure our success by the number of volunteer colleagues, the number of website visits, the number of papers submitted, and the number of papers published.

Currently, we have 12 academic journals, hold an annual international conference in a different country, have over 10,000 colleagues and members from 75+ countries and from 600+ organizations. We receive 6000+ website visits per month. In addition, we have published over 50 books that are available on Amazon in paper format and free online.