Call for Papers
HICSS-45 Minitrack on
OPEN MOVEMENTS:
FLOSS, OPEN CONTENTS, OPEN ACCESS AND OPEN COMMUNITIES
Conference Site: Grand Wailea Maui
Dates: January 4-7, 2012 (Wednesday-Saturday)
HICSS conferences are devoted to the most relevant advances in the information, computer
and system sciences and encompass developments in both theory and practice. Accepted
papers may be theoretical, conceptual, tutorial or descriptive in nature. Those selected
for presentation will be included in the Conference Proceedings published by the IEEE
Computer Society.
Additional detail about the conference may be found on the HICSS primary web site:
http://www.hicss.hawaii.edu
MINITRACK DESCRIPTION
This mini-track covers all aspects of the Open Movement phenomena, such as Free, Libre and
Open Source Software (FLOSS), Open Contents (OC), Open Access Publishing (OA) and Open
Communities (OComm, each with distinctive features and issues:
o FLOSS is a broad term proposed for naming software released under some kind of free or
open source software license. Currently, development and adoption of FLOSS projects spans
a wide range of applications and critical infrastructure.
o Open Content refers to published content (e.g., articles, engineering designs, pictures
or any other type of multimedia) released under some form of open license, allowing the
content to be modified and redistributed. Examples of Open Contents are Wikipedia and
MIT’s Open Courseware. These principles have also been extended to fields such as
scientific collaboratories.
o Open Access Publishing means publishing of works in a way that allows access to
interested users without financial or other barriers. Examples include a variety of Open
Access journals as well as a variety of institutional or topical paper repositories.
o Around all types of projects we often find an active and even devoted community of
developers, users, leaders, authors and readers, exhibiting complex interactions with each
other. Some of the aforementioned projects comprise both types of Open Communities
(developing FLOSS and also open content, e.g., Wikipedia and Creative Commons). We also
find other Open Communities of users in successful large projects, supporting interactions
among users and also with open multimedia contents provided by users themselves, e.g.,
YouTube, MySpace, del.icio.us, Diggit, Twitter and Facebook.
Researchers from a variety of disciplines have turned their attention to the phenomenon of
FLOSS, Open Content, Open Access Publishing and Open Communities, frequently presenting
them as an intriguing new form of Internet-supported work and collaboration. However, open
collaboration and peer production create new challenges, as team members typically work in
a distributed environment, in which contributors can come from many independent
organizations, many working as volunteers rather than employees. The empirical literature
on software engineering, programmers and the social and technical aspects of software
development suggests that such teams would face insurmountable difficulties in developing
quality code or coherent information collections, yet in fact some of these teams have
been remarkably successful. Study of these open projects may thus provide guidance for
improving the performance of these teams and of distributed collaborations more
generally.
As well, open development is an important phenomenon deserving of study in its own right.
Millions of users depend on systems such as Linux and the Internet relies extensively on
FLOSS tools, Furthermore, there exists a clear trend in Public Administrations all over
the world (with some remarkable cases like Australia, The Netherlands and Spain) towards
the promotion and widespread adoption of FLOSS technologies. But many FLOSS projects fail
to take off, suggesting that the necessary success factors are still not well understood.
Wikipedia has quickly become an extensive and widely-used if sometimes controversial
resource. Some studies suggest that, despite the apparent heterogeneity of the group of
authors behind Wikipedia, the accuracy of some of its articles could rival with other
traditional encyclopedic projects like Encyclopedia Britannica. However, we lack a deep
understanding of the conditions of its production that lead to such outcomes.
This mini-track will provide a place for research and conceptual work to address a variety
of questions, such as examining the implications of open content from technical, economic
and policy perspectives. As well, the mini-track welcomes studies of the deployment of
FLOSS and OC studies, exploring the motivations of individuals to contribute to projects.
Studies of the structure and function of open teams and communities are also in the scope
of this mini-track, including analysis of the social networks created by those communities
and their evolution over time. In addition to studies of specific communities, we seek
papers that draw connections across different settings to pose more general questions and
explanations or to explore the design and analysis of novel systems. Possible topics for
this mini-track include (but are not limited to):
o Ideologies behind and motivations for participation in open projects
o Member satisfaction and effectiveness in open projects
o Creators' roles in open projects and their evolution over time
o Leadership, management and policies in open projects
o Distributed project, team and group development and management for open projects
o Distributed collaboration in and coordination of open projects
o User involvement and user support in open projects
o Knowledge management and learning in open projects
o Issues in distributed software development for FLOSS
o Issues in content development in open content and open communities
o Open projects as Communities of Practice and problems implementing open practices
o Social networks of open projects
o Economics of open projects
o Community development and its evolution in Open Communities
o Information quality and credibility of open content
o Applications, adoption and Implementation of open project products
o Systems supporting open projects (e.g., FLOSS "forges", wiki platforms) and
their impact on project success
o Forecasting the evolution of open movements
o New application areas in FLOSS
o Evaluation, comparison, unification and differentiation of technical aspects of open
projects
o Methods for simplifying development, maintenance and multi-platform portability in
FLOSS
o Applications of open source software in education, government and other domains
HOW TO SUBMIT
To submit a paper, follow the author Instructions posted on the conference web site:
http://www.hicss.hawaii.edu/hicss_45/apahome45.htm
o HICSS papers must contain original material. They may not have been previously
published, nor currently submitted elsewhere.
o All papers will be submitted in IEEE double column publication format.
o Submissions are limited to 10 pages including diagrams and references.
o All submissions undergo a double-blind peer review process. Therefore, author name(s)
are not to be included on the manuscript during the June 15 submission process.
o Abstracts are optional, but strongly recommended. You may contact the Minitrack
Chair(s) for guidance or verification of content.
o Submit a paper to only one Minitrack. If a paper is submitted to more than one
minitrack either
paper may be rejected by either minitrack without consultation with author. If you are not
sure of the appropriate Minitrack, submit an abstract to the Track Chair(s) for
determination and/or seek opinion(s) of Minitrack Chair(s) before submitting.
o An individual may be listed as author/co-author on no more than 5 submitted papers.
Track Chairs must approve any names added after submission or acceptance.
IMPORTANT DATES
[Optional] From now until June 1: Prepare abstracts and contact minitrack chairs for
guidance and indication of appropriate content.
15 June 2011: Authors submit full papers by this date.
15 August 2011: Acceptance notices are sent to authors. At this time, at least one author
of an accepted paper should begin visa, fiscal and travel arrangements to attend the
conference to present the paper.
10 September 2011: Manuscripts that have been “conditionally accepted” (A-M Accepted with
Mandatory Changes) must be re-submitted by the authors to the Peer Review Site.
15 September 2011: Authors submit final version of papers following submission
instructions posted on the HICSS web site. At least one author of each paper must register
by this date with specific plans to attend the conference.
15 October 2011: Papers without at least one registered author will be pulled from the
publication process; authors will be notified.
MINITRACK CO-CHAIR CONTACT INFORMATION:
Wolfgang Bein, Center for the Advanced Study of Algorithms, School of Computer Science,
University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 89154 USA. Phone: 702-895-1477. Email: bein(a)cs.unlv.edu
Kevin Crowston, School of Information Studies, Syracuse University, Syracuse, 13244 USA.
Phone: 315-443-1676. Email: crowston(a)syr.edu
Clinton Jeffery, Department of Computer Science, University of Idaho, Moscow Idaho 83844
USA. Phone: 208-885-4789. Email: jeffery(a)cs.uidaho.edu
CONFERENCE ADMINISTRATION:
Conference Chairman: Ralph H. Sprague, Jr. E-mail: sprague(a)hawaii.edu
Conference Administrator: Sandra Laney. E-mail: hicss(a)hawaii.edu