Call for Papers for The 2nd World Sustainability Forum
e-conferences, virtually anywhere.
Call for Papers for The 2nd World Sustainability Forum
Research concerned with sustainability and sustainable development is progressing fast. Simultaneously, activities within industry, government and academia are becoming more globalized. Successful research requires interaction with multiple partners around the world. We are facing an obvious need for new types of communication within our scientific community. Sciforum.net electronic conferences provide a platform for fast exchange of the latest research findings, as well as a possibility for global meetings with no limitations related to traveling.
The World Sustainability Forum 2012 (WSF-2012) will cover timely research topics concerned with sustainability and sustainable development. The conference will include six topical sessions focusing on:
1. Environmental Sustainability (Section A).
2. Corporate Sustainability Strategy (Section B).
3. Social Values for a Sustainable Economy (Section C).
4. Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Sources (Section D).
5. Sustainable Urban Development (Section E).
6. Sustainable Development Policy and Practice (Section F).
7. Sustainability Assessment and Policies (Section G).
8. Remote Sensing for Sustainable Management of Land and Biodiversity (Section H)
9. General and Related topics (Section I)
This inter- and multi-disciplinary conference aims to examine, explore and critically engage with issues related to recent insights and advances in these topics. In particular, the conference will encourage both theoretical and practical debates surrounding environmental, economical and social contexts for those who want to go beyond the buzzword.
The conference will be completely free of charge―both to attend and for authors to publish―and is sponsored by MDPI and the scientific journal Sustainability. Selected papers will be published in the journal Sustainability.
The 1st World Sustainability Forum Conference will be held at www.sciforum.net, a new platform developed by MDPI to organize electronic conferences for scholars.
For more information about Sciforum and the importance of electronic conferences, please visit http://www.sciforum.net/about/
Please submit your abstract with max 2500 character (in English) by September 15, 2012. Abstracts should be submitted online at www.wsforum.org. All submissions will be reviewed by our scientific committee. For accepted abstracts, a full draft paper should be submitted by October 20, 2012.
Time Schedule
- Deadline for Abstract Submission: 15 September 2012
- Notification of Acceptance: 30 September 2012
- Deadline for Submission of Full Paper: 20 October 2012
- Forum Open: 1-30 November 2012
Paper Submission Guidelines
Procedure for Submission, Peer-Review, Revision and Acceptance of Conference Proceedings Papers
1. Scholars interested in participating with the conference can submit their abstract (about 200-300 words covering the areas of manuscripts for the proceedings issue) online on this website until 1 October 2012.
2. The Conference Committee will pre-evaluate, based on the submitted abstract, whether a contribution from the authors of the abstract will be welcome for 1st World Sustainability Forum.
All authors will be notified by 15 October 2011 about the acceptance of their abstract.
3. If the abstract is accepted for this conference, the author is asked to submit his manuscript, optionally along with a PowerPoint and/or video presentation of his/her paper, until the submission deadline of 31 October 2012.
4. The manuscripts and presentations will be available on www.wsforum.org for discussion and rating during the time of the conference 1 – 30 November 2012.
5. The Open Access Journal Sustainability will publish the proceedings of the conference as a Special Issue. After the conference, the Conference Committee will select manuscripts that may be included for publication in this Special Issue. Five of the manuscripts with the highest scientific quality will be published free of charge following a successful peer-review.
Proceedings Paper
Manuscripts for the proceedings issue must have the following organization:
• Firstpage:
o Title
o Full author names
o Affiliations (including full postal address) and authors' e-mail addresses
o Abstract
o Keywords
• Introduction
• Methods
• Results and Discussion
• Conclusions
• (Acknowledgements)
• References
Manuscripts should be prepared in MS Word or any other word processor.The publication format will be PDF. The manuscript should count at least 3 pages (incl. figures, tables and references). There is no page limit on the length, although authors are asked to keep their papers as concise as possible.
Presentation Slides
Authors are encouraged to prepare a presentation in PowerPoint or similar software, to be displayed online along with the Manuscript. Slides, if available, will be displayed directly in the website using Sciforum.net's proprietary slides viewer. Slides can be prepared in exactly the same way as for any traditional conference where research results can be presented. Slides should be converted to the PDF format before submission so that our process can easily and automatically convert them for online displaying.
Video Presentations
Besides their active participation within the forum, authors are also encouraged to submit video presentations. If you are interested in submitting, please contact the conference organizer – wsf@mdpi.com to get to know more about the procedure. This is an unique way of presenting your paper and discuss it with peers from all over the world. Make a difference and join us for this project!
Submission of Manuscripts
• Submission: Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.wsforum.org by registering and logging in to this website.
• Accepted File Formats:
o MS Word:Manuscript prepared in MS Word must be converted into a single file before submission. When preparing manuscripts in MS Word, the World Sustainability Forum Microsoft Word template file must be used. Please do not insert any graphics (schemes, figures, etc.) into a movable frame which can superimpose the text and make the layout very difficult.
o LaTeX: ensure to send a copy of your manuscript as a WORD file also, if you decided to use LaTeX. When preparing manuscripts in LaTeX, please use the MDPI LaTeX template files.
Manuscript Preparation
• Paper Format: A4 paper format, the printing area is 17.5 cm x 26.2 cm. The margins should be 1.75 cm on each side of the paper (top, bottom, left, and right sides).
• Formatting / Style: The paper style of the Journal Sustainability should be followed. You may download a template file to prepare your paper. The full titles and the cited papers must be given. Reference numbers should be placed in square brackets [ ], and placed before the punctuation; for example [4] or [1-3], and all the references should be listed separately and as the last section at the end of the manuscript.
• Authors List and Affiliation Format: Authors' full first and last names must be given. Abbreviated middle name can be added. For papers written by various contributors a corresponding author must be designated. The PubMed/MEDLINE format is used for affiliations: complete street address information including city, zip code, state/province, country, and email address should be added. All authors who contributed significantly to the manuscript (including writing a section) should be listed on the first page of the manuscript, below the title of the article. Other parties, who provided only minor contributions, should be listed under Acknowledgments only. A minor contribution might be a discussion with the author, reading through the draft of the manuscript, or performing English corrections.
• Figures, Schemes and Tables: Authors are encouraged to prepare figures and schemes in color. Full color graphics will be published free of charge. Figure and schemes must be numbered (Figure 1, Scheme I, Figure 2, Scheme II, etc.) and a explanatory title must be added. Tables should be inserted into the main text, and numbers and titles for all tables supplied. All table columns should have an explanatory heading. Please supply legends for all figures, schemes and tables. The legends should be prepared as a separate paragraph of the main text and placed in the main text before a table, a figure or a scheme.
• Abstract/Table of Contents Graphic: Authors are encouraged to provide a graphical representation of the paper (in either JPEG, GIF, PNG or PDF format) to be used as a graphic of the paper, along with the abstract, on the Table of Contents. The graphic should not exceed 500 pixels width/height. As an example, authors may review the abstract graphic of following papers:
- http://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/9/1/490
- http://www.mdpi.com/1420-3049/14/1/378
Potential Conflicts of Interest
It is the authors' responsibility to identify and declare any personal circumstances or interests that may be perceived as inappropriately influencing the representation or interpretation of clinical research. If there is no conflict, please state here "The authors declare no conflict of interest." This should be conveyed in a separate "Conflict of Interest" statement preceding the "Acknowledgments" and "References" sections at the end of the manuscript. Financial support for the study must be fully disclosed under "Acknowledgments" section. It is the authors' responsibility to identify and declare any personal circumstances or interests that may be perceived as inappropriately influencing the representation or interpretation of clinical research. If there is no conflict, please state here "The authors declare no conflict of interest." This should be conveyed in a separate "Conflict of Interest" statement preceding the "Acknowledgments" and "References" sections at the end of the manuscript. Financial support for the study must be fully disclosed under "Acknowledgments" section.