Call for papers: HICSS minitrack on Open Movements

[Kevin Crowston <crowston syr edu>]

                                        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 cs unlv edu

Kevin Crowston, School of Information Studies, Syracuse University, Syracuse, 13244 USA. Phone: 315-443-1676. Email: crowston syr edu

Clinton Jeffery, Department of Computer Science, University of Idaho, Moscow Idaho 83844 USA. Phone: 208-885-4789. Email: jeffery cs uidaho edu


CONFERENCE ADMINISTRATION:

Conference Chairman: Ralph H. Sprague, Jr. E-mail: sprague hawaii edu
Conference Administrator: Sandra Laney. E-mail: hicss hawaii edu