[Wikimedia-l] WikiSym 2013: Wikipedia Research Track CFP

[Heather Ford]

WikiSym 2013: Wikipedia Research Track Call for Papers
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WikiSym, the 9th International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration
OpenSym, the 2013 International Symposium on Open Collaboration
August 5-7, 2013 | Hong Kong, China

About the Conference

The 2013 Joint International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration (WikiSym + OpenSym) is the premier conference on open collaboration research, including wiki and social media, Wikipedia, open source, open access, open data and open government research. WikiSym is in its 9th year and will be complemented by OpenSym, a new conference on open collaboration research and an adjunct to the successful WikiSym conference series.

WikiSym + OpenSym 2013 will be held jointly in Hong Kong, China on August 5-7, 2013.

The joint conference will contain peer-reviewed research tracks on

• Wikis, social media, and open collaboration research (WikiSym 2013)
• Wikipedia research (WikiSym 2013)
• Open source research (OpenSym 2013)
• Open access, open data, and open government research (OpenSym 2013)

You are looking at the call for papers for the Wikipedia research track. For the other call for papers, please see http://www.wikisym.org/email

In addition, the conference will provide open space (“unconference meetings”), experience reports, tutorials, workshops, panels, demos as well as a Doctoral Symposium. For community track information as well as the Doctoral Symposium please see http://www.wikisym.org/email

The open space track is a key ingredient of the event that distinguishes WikiSym + OpenSym 2013 from other conferences. It is an integral part of the program that makes it easy to talk to other researchers and stretch your imagination and conversations beyond the limits of your own subdiscipline, exposing you to the full breadth of open collaboration research. The open space track is entirely participant-organized, is open for everyone, and requires no submission or review. For more information please see http://www.wikisym.org/openspace/

Finally, the conference will feature exciting invited speakers and a social program in Hong Kong, one of the most interesting cities on this planet. For more please see http://www.wikisym.org/email

Submissions Sought

Topics of interest to the Wikipedia research track include, but are not limited to:

• What do particular articles or groups or articles tell us about the norms, governance and architecture of Wikipedia and its impact on media, politics and the social sphere? How is information on Wikipedia being shaped by the materiality of Wikipedia infrastructure?

• What is the impact of all/some of Wikipedia’s 211 language editions having on achieving the project’s goal to represent the “sum of all human knowledge”? Do smaller language editions follow the same development path as larger language editions? Can different representations in different languages tell us anything about cultural, national or regional differences?

• What are the gendered dimensions of Wikipedia editing? How are issues around power, knowledge and representation drawn into focus by gender, geography and other gaps and imbalances in Wikipedia editing?

• What skills/competencies/connections/world views are required to become an empowered member of the Wikimedia community? What does a Wikipedia literate person look like? How are those skills/competencies/connections/world views obtained and enacted?

• Does Wikipedia enact an open source of authoritative knowledge that impacts learning in formal and informal settings? For instance, how do students employ Wikipedia as a covert/overt source in their papers or as a generative site for problem formulation? Or how is Wikipedia being used as a serendipitous experience of knowledge acquisition? What methods can be employed to understand these varied utilizations?

• What is the effect of outreach initiatives involving the growing institutionalisation of Wikipedia activities? As galleries, libraries, archives and museums hire Wikipedians-in-residence to digitize, showcase and/or represent their collections, is Wikipedia able to fill some its key knowledge gaps? Or are there unintended effects of this institutionalization of knowledge?

• What are the methodological challenges to studying Wikipedia? How are researchers engaging with innovative methodologies to solve some of these problems? How are other researchers using traditional or well-established methods to study Wikipedia?

• How are wiki projects other than Wikipedia evolving? What are the benefits to studying other wiki projects and can comparisons and generalisations be made from our observations of these systems?

• How does information contained in Wikipedia shape our understanding of broader social, economic, and political practices and processes? What theoretical frameworks in social, economic, legal and other relevant theoretical traditions can be applied to enrich the academic discourse on Wikipedia?

The following types of submissions are invited:

• Long research papers (5 to 10 pages)
• Short research papers (1 to 4 pages)
• Research posters (1 to 2 pages)
• Research presentations (1 to 10 pages)

Submissions for experience reports (long and short), tutorials, workshops, panels, non-research posters, and demos are also sought but are handled through the community track, please see http://www.wikisym.org/email

Submissions to WikiSym + OpenSym’s Doctoral Symposium are also sought but are handled through a separate website, please see http://www.wikisym.org/email

Research papers present integrative reviews or original reports of substantive new theoretical or empirical work about Wikipedia. Research papers will be reviewed by the Wikipedia research track program committee to meet rigorous academic standards of publication. Papers will be reviewed for relevance, conceptual quality, innovation and clarity of presentation. They should be written in English. At least one author of accepted papers is required to attend the conference in order to present the paper.

Research presentations present integrative reviews or original reports of substantive new theoretical or empirical work about Wikipedia. This is a new format is specifically aimed at the requirements of social science researchers enabling those researchers to use WikiSym as a pre-publication venue before journal publication. Only the abstracts of these papers will be published as part of the proceedings thus leaving open the opportunity for journal publication at a later date. Research papers will be reviewed by the Wikipedia research track program committee to meet rigorous academic standards. Papers will be reviewed for relevance, conceptual quality, innovation and clarity of presentation. They should be written in English. At least one author is required to attend the conference in order to present the paper.

Research poster presentations enable researchers to present late-breaking research results, significant research work in progress, or research work that is best communicated in conversation. WikiSym + OpenSym’s lively poster sessions let conference attendees exchange ideas one-on-one with authors, and let authors discuss their work in detail with those attendees most deeply interested in the topic. Successful applicants will display their posters, up to 1x2m in size, at a special session during the event.

WikiSym + OpenSym seeks to accommodate the needs of the different research disciplines it draws on.

Submission Logistics

For a submission, please use the the ACM SIG Proceedings Format, see http://www.acm.org/sigs/publications/proceedings-templates

All submissions are due:

• Date: March 17, 2012 (notification: May 17, 2013)
• Submission site: https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=wikisym2013 (choose ‘Wikipedia Track’)

As long as it is March 17 (or April 14) somewhere on Earth, the system will accept your submission.

Committee

Heather Ford - Co-Chair
Affiliation: Oxford Internet Institute, Oxford University
Home page URL: http://hblog.org<http://hblog.org/>

Mark Graham - Co-Chair
Affiliation: Oxford Internet Institute, Oxford University
Home page URL: http://www.zerogeography.net/

Megan Finn
Affiliation: Microsoft Research, New England
Home page URL: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/people/megfin/

Stuart Geiger
Affiliation: UC-Berkeley School of Information
Home page URL: http://www.stuartgeiger.com<http://www.stuartgeiger.com/>

Brent Hecht
Affiliation: Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Minnesota
Home page URL: http://www.brenthecht.com<http://www.brenthecht.com/>

Brian Keegan
Affiliation: Northeastern University
Home page URL: www.brianckeegan.com<http://www.brianckeegan.com/>

Wen Lin
Affiliation: Newcastle University
Home page URL: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/gps/staff/profile/wen.lin

Felipe Ortega
Affiliation: Researcher, Dept. of Statistics and Operations Research, University Rey Juan Carlos.
Home page URL: http://felipeortega.net<http://felipeortega.net/>

Dan Perkel
Affiliation: IDEO
Home page URL: http://blogs.ischool.berkeley.edu/dperkel/

Joseph Reagle
Affiliation: Northeastern University
Home page URL: http://reagle.org/joseph/

Jodi Schneider
Affiliation: DERI, NUI Galway
Home page URL: http://jodischneider.com/jodi.html

Monica Stephens
Affiliation: Humboldt State University
Home page URL: https://sites.google.com/a/email.arizona.edu/stephens/

Dario Taraborelli
Affiliation: Wikimedia Foundation
Home page URL: http://nitens.org/taraborelli

Robert West
Affiliation: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
Home page URL: http://ai.stanford.edu/~west1/

Matthew W. Wilson
Affiliation: Department of Geography, University of Kentucky
Home page URL: http://matthew-w-wilson.com<http://matthew-w-wilson.com/>

Taha Yasseri
Affiliation: Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford
Home page URL: http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/yasseri/

Matthew Zook
Affiliation: University of Kentucky
Home page URL: zook.info<http://zook.info/>

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Heather Ford
Oxford Internet Institute Doctoral Programme
www.ethnographymatters.net<http://www.ethnographymatters.net/>
@hfordsa on Twitter
http://hblog.org<http://hblog.org/>