why another journal on systems?

July 8th, 2013 by hofkirchner


better late than never the journal “systems. connecting matter, life, culture and technology” put its first issue online. the Bertalanffy Center made it possible.

what is different about that journal is that it aims at providing a platform for self-reflection of the systems movement and its plurality of approaches, schools, theories, concepts, application fields etc., whether or not they have “system” in their designation (cybernetics, evolutionary theory, sciences of complexity etc., revolve around the systems concept). it’s a platform for enhancing the discussion between all these strands about their fundamental ideas and about their impact on society.

it is my deep conviction that thinking in systems terms is the best way of thinking transdisciplinarily, which society needs to cope with the global challenges.

the journal was founded during the preparation of the emcsr 2012. when the title of the new journal was to be found, we came across another journal the title of which perfectly seemed to suit our purposes: ”Systems: Journal of Transdisciplinary Systems Science”. that was the journal of the Polish Systems Society. but it stopped production in 2007 when the then editor-in-chief and president of the society, prof Myeczyslaw Bazewicz from the Wroclaw University of Technology, passed away, as we had to learn. thus our journal is, in a way, in memory of this predecssor. it resumes its tradition to emphasise transdisciplinarity.

my friend Shu-Kun Lin from the enterprise mdpi had a very similar idea. he and me had some negotiation on whether or not to combine efforts. yet there was a difference in the respective business models. his journal is open access too, but they levy article processing charges which is only waived for the start of the journal (so for the journal “information” that has left its first phase behind it is now 300,00 chf). our policy is to have our journal free from author fees.

the first isse contains papers of the emcsr 2012.

systemseditorial

editorial of issue 1, volume 1

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