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 2013-2017 can be measured using two key ratios:

a) 6.2 indexed (ISI or Scopus) papers per integrated researcher and year;
b) 42 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:

– The 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), Dublin Core Metadata Initiative and United Nations University Operating Unit on Policy-Driven Electronic Governance (UNU-EGOV).

– IST members have organized the European Conference on Information Systems (http://www.ecis2017.eu/), the second largest annual conference within the Information Systems field (with 550 attendees, ERA core rank A).

– Several IST researchers are associate editors in international journals, such as Decision Support Systems (ISI JCR Q1, ERA core Rank A*), Expert Systems (ISI JCR Q3);

– Committees of high quality conferences, such as: ICIS and VLDB (ERA CORE A*); ECIS, IJCNN and ICONIP (ERA Core A).

2) Funded R&D projects

Captured a total amount of non-FCT research funds of 3.6 MEUR (42 KEUR per integrated researcher and year). This includes international projects, such as European FP7 project C4E: Cloud for Europe (http://www.cloudforeurope.eu/, 60.8 KEUR), H2020 project EQUAL-IST: Gender Equality Plans for Information Sciences and Technology Research Institutions (https://equal-ist.eu/, 150 KEUR) and INTERREG SUDOE HeritageCARE (http://heritagecare.eu/, 225 KEUR). It also includes important national projects, such as SmartEGOV (3000 KEUR), and collaborations with industry, Hovione Pharmaceutical (http://www.hovione.com/, 530 KEUR) and others.

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

The IST coordinated the PDTSI.  A total of 28 PhDs were successfully completed. Two of these PhDs were co-supervised by international researchers from University of Georgia, USA, and Universidade Nacional del Sur, Argentina. Also, the PhDs produced a total of 25 journal articles, including top Q1 journals such as Decision Support Systems or International Journal of Information Management. The PDTSI students were actively involved in the ECIS conference organization and also participated in 5 International Doctoral Consortia (ERCIS, ECIS). During the 2013-17 period, 7 renowned scholars lectured seminars in the PDTSI, such as Jorg Becker, University of Munster, Germany, and Jan Pries-Heje, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Organization of international conferences

ALGORITMI researchers were involved in the organization of several international conferences. As a special highlighted example, IST members have organized the European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS), the second largest annual conference within the Information Systems field (with 550 attendees). Our External Advisor Board (EAB) has considered this organization to be an important merit of ALGORITMI in recent years.

International Associations

As a special highlight, we can give a special attention to ERCIS. The IST R&D group 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)Dublin Core Metadata Initiative and United Nations University Operating Unit on Policy-Driven Electronic Governance (UNU-EGOV).

Main publications  in 2013-2017

Cortez, P., & Embrechts, M. J. (2013). Using sensitivity analysis and visualization techniques to open black box data mining models. Information Sciences, 225:1-17 (ISI JCR Q1 in Information Systems; Scimago SJR Q1 in Information Systems and Management; 65 Scopus and 95 Google Scholar citations).
https://algoritmi.uminho.pt/downloads/IST-01.pdf

Santos, M. Y., e Sá, J. O., Andrade, C., Lima, F. V., Costa, E., Costa, C., Martinho, B. & Galvão, J. (2017). A Big Data system supporting Bosch Braga Industry 4.0 strategy. International Journal of Information Management, 37(6):750-760 (ISI JCR Q1 in Information Science; Scimago SJR Q1 in Information Systems).
https://algoritmi.uminho.pt/downloads/IST-02.pdf

IST Coordinator:  Manuel Filipe Santos

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