Information Systems and Technologies (IST)

Areas
The Information Systems and Technologies (IST) R&D group embraces three main areas:

  1. IST in organizations and in society;
  2. Adaptive and intelligent IST;
  3. Engineering and management of software-based IST.

The first area focus on the adoption and exploration of IT in organizational/social contexts and on developing grounded design knowledge (e.g., methods, techniques, tools) for enhancing and enabling IT-driven features. The second area focuses on intelligent systems that use data to enhance individual or organizational work (e.g., Business Intelligence and Decision Support). Finally, the third area addresses the engineering and management processes for building and deploying information systems and data.

The three major areas are highly complementary and interdependent, acting as a crosscut research agenda for stimulating cooperation when addressing specific IST research topics, such as: business intelligence & process management, modeling approaches for information systems design, information services, information systems security & audit, metadata, ontologies and linked open data, information systems project & knowledge management, and sustainable development of organizational software.

The IST group covers the full range of research activities that precede innovation, including basic research, technology development and applied research. The studied phenomena include IT artifacts, methods and tools, and also the adoption of IT by individuals or organizations. Also, diverse research methods are used, such as: case studies, field experiments, surveys, laboratory experiments, computer simulations, action-research and panels of specialists.

Impact of research
Overall, the impact of IST research in 2018-2023 can be measured using two key ratios:

a)6.7 indexed (ISI or Scopus) papers per integrated researcher and year;
b) 79.6 KEUR of funded projects per integrated researcher and year;

c) 58,7 KEUR of non-FCT funded projects per integrated researcher and year.

Three major contributions:

1) Internationalization activities

The IST members were involved in a large number of internationalization activities, including research networks, scientific committees and organization of major scientific events. Some highlights are:

– IST is the Portuguese Unit of the European Research Center for Information Systems (ERCIS) research network. IST researchers are actively involved (e.g., as board members) with organizations such as: Association for Geographic Information Laboratories in Europe (AGILE), Association for Information Systems (AIS), International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP), United Nations University Operating Unit on Policy-Driven Electronic Governance (UNU-EGOV), European Federation of Data Driven Innovation Hubs (EUHUBS4DATA) and European Institute of Innovation and Technology – Digital (EIT).

– Several IST researchers are associate editors in international journals, such as Decision Support Systems (ISI JCR Q1, ERA core Rank A*), Expert Systems (JCR Q2) and Data Science and Analytics (JCR Q2), journal Communications of the Association for Information Systems (CAIS – ISSN: 15293181; SCImago Journal Rank Q2), Enterprise Information Systems (EIS – SCImago Journal Rank Q1), International Journal of Knowledge Engineering and Management (IJKEM), Business & Information Systems Engineering Journal, ISSN 0937-6429 (SCImago Journal Rank Q1), Information & Management, European Journal of Information Systems, Project Management Journal;

– Committees of high quality conferences, such as: ECIS (ERA Core A). IJCAI 2023 (CORE A*), VLDB 2018 (CORE A*) and ICONIP 2017 (CORE A), CAiSE (CORE A), RCIS (CORE B) ER’2023 (CORE A), RCIS (CORE B).

2) Funded R&D projects

Captured a total amount of research funds of 10.5 MEUR (79.6 KEUR per integrated researcher and year). This includes international projects, such as Erasmus+ (242 KEUR), H2020 project EQUAL-IST: Gender Equality Plans for Information Sciences and Technology Research Institutions (https://equal-ist.eu/, 150 KEUR). It also includes important national projects, such as Be.Neutral – Projet nº 26, Funded by PRR and IAPMEI (5.010 MEUR for University of Minho), Artificial Intelligence for Business Processes (FOF.BI.57), inserted in the collaboration program Factory of the Future: Smart Manufacturing, nº 039479, POCI-01-0247-FEDER-039479, Funded by COMPETE (273.500 KEUR for U. Minho), e-CIVITAS – Expansão inter-regional da Rede Casas do Conhecimento, POCI-05-5762-FSE-000170, (491KEUR), QVida+ – NORTE-01-0247-FEDER-003446, 2016-2018, Agência Nacional de Inovação, (207 KEUR).

3) Doctoral Programme in Information Systems and Technology (PDTSI)

The IST coordinated the PDTSI. A total of 26 PhDs were successfully completed. Two of these PhDs were co-supervised by international researchers from Universidade Pablo de Olavide, Brasil, and Universitat de València, Spain. The PDTSI students were actively participated in 2 International Doctoral Consortia (ERCIS, ECIS) and . During the 2018-23 period, renowned scholars lectured seminars in the PDTSI, such as Joao Batista, Warwick Business School, UK, Claus Rerup, Frankfurt School of Finance and Management, Germany, Roman Beck, ITU Copenhagen, Denmark. Suprateek Sarker da Universidade da Virginia, USA.

Main publications  in 2018-2023
IDS
P.J. Pereira, P. Cortez and R. Mendes. Multi-objective Grammatical Evolution of Decision Trees for Mobile Marketing user conversion prediction. In Expert Systems with Applications, Elsevier, 168:114287, April, 2021, ISSN 0957-4174 (JCR 2021 8.665 Q1, 34 Google Scholar citations, 19 Scopus citations)
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2020.114287

J. Gonçalves, P. Cortez, M. Carvalho and N. Frazão. A multivariate approach for multi-step demand forecasting in assembly industries: Empirical evidence from an automotive supply chain. In Decision Support Systems, Elsevier, 142:113452, March, 2021, ISSN 0167-9236 (JCR 2021 6.969 Q1, 56 Google Scholar citations, 38 Scopus citations)
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dss.2020.113452

Hak F, Guimarães T, Santos M. Towards effective clinical decision support systems: A systematic review. PLoS One. 2022 Aug 15;17(8):e0272846. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0272846. PMID: 35969526; PMCID: PMC9377614. (JCR 2021 3,752 Q1, 22 Google Scholar citations, 15 Scopus citations)

ISTTOS
Coombs, C., Stacey, P., Kawalek, P., Simeonova, B., Becker, J., Bergener, K., Carvalho, J.Á., Fantinato, M., Garmann-Johnsen, N.F., Grimme, C. and Stein, A., 2021. What is it about humanity that we can’t give away to intelligent machines? A European perspective. International Journal of Information Management, 58, p.102311 (JCR 18.958 Q1, 40 Google Scholar citations, 25 Scopus citations)
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2021.102311

Varajão, J. (2021). Software development in disruptive times. Communications of the ACM, 64(10), 32-35. doi:10.1145/3453932 (JCR 2021 Q1 IF 14.065, 15 Google Scholar citations, 7 Scopus citations)

Varajão, J., Magalhães, L., Freitas, L., & Rocha, P. (2022). Success Management – From theory to practice. International Journal of Project Management, 40(5), 481-498. doi:10.1016/j.ijproman.2022.04.002 (JCR 2022 Q1 IF 8, 33 Google Scholar citations 20 Scopus citations)

SEMAG
Costa, E., Costa, C. & Santos, M.Y. Evaluating partitioning and bucketing strategies for Hive-based Big Data Warehousing systems. J Big Data 6, 34 (2019) JCR 2022 10,835 Q1, 23 Scopus citations)
https://doi.org/10.1186/s40537-019-0196-1

António A.C. Vieira, Luís M.S. Dias, Maribel Y. Santos, Guilherme A.B. Pereira, José A. Oliveira, Supply chain data integration: A literature review, Journal of Industrial Information Integration, Volume 19, 2020, 100161, ISSN 2452-414X (JCR 2019 10,615 Q1, 43 Scopus citations) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jii.2020.100161

Gabriela Fernandes, Eduardo B. Pinto, Madalena Araújo & Ricardo J. Machado (2020) The roles of a Programme and Project Management Office to support collaborative university–industry R&D, Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, 31:5-6, 583-608 (JCR 2020 3,824 Q1, 32 Scopus citations) DOI: 10.1080/14783363.2018.1436963

R&D projects:
IDS
Artificial Intelligence for Business Processes (FOF.BI.57), inserted in the collaboration program Factory of the Future: Smart Manufacturing, nº 039479, POCI-01-0247-FEDER-039479, Funded by COMPETE (273.500 KEUR for U. Minho), PI of ALGORITMI Center: Paulo Cortez, Consortium: ALGORITMI, Bosch Portugal Braga. Duration: July 2018 to December 2021. Summary: The aim is to develop a methodology, a prototype of an integrated computational environment to provide artificial intelligence mechanisms to support Bosch business processes.

PI Manuel Filipe Santos, ICDS4IM – Intelligent Clinical Decision Support for Intensive Medicine, DSAIPA/DS/0084/2018, FCT, 248638,67 EUR, 2018-2022.

ISTTOS
PI Luís Alfredo Martins Amaral, e-CIVITAS – Expansão inter-regional da Rede Casas do Conhecimento, POCI-05-5762-FSE-000170, 491131,08 EUR, 2018-2020.

PI Jorge Vaz Oliveira Sá, QVida+: Estimação Contínua de Qualidade de Vida para Auxílio Eficaz à Decisão Clínica, QVida+ – NORTE-01-0247-FEDER-003446, 2016-2018, Agência Nacional de Inovação, 207245,68 EUR.

SEMAG
Be.Neutral – Projet nº 26, Funded by PRR and IAPMEI (5.010 MEUR for University of Minho), PI of ALGORITMI Center: Ricardo J. Machado, Consortium: ALGORITMI, NOS Comunicações S.A. and others. Duration: January 2022 to December 2025. Summary: Be.Neutral seeks to position Portugal as an exporter of cyber-physical zero-carbon mobility products to cities around the world. Its design arose from an opportunity to develop, industrialize, and operate new mobility products and services (physical devices, connectivity and data science platforms) that are able to quantify the emissions avoided in real time so as to accelerate carbon neutrality by 2030.

PI Ana Alice Rodrigues Pereira Baptista, IViSSEM – 6.849,32 Journal Articles Everyday: Visualize or Perish!, Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia | FCT POCI-01-0145-FEDER-028284 , 239007,68 EUR, 2018-2021.

IST Coordinator:  Manuel Filipe Santos

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