[open-government] cfp JeDEM SI on Open and Visual Access to Information

[Dimitris Gouscos]

              /* apologies for cross postings */

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    JeDEM - eJournal of eDemocracy and Open Government
                    http://jedem.org
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The eJournal of eDemocracy and Open Government (JeDEM) is a peer-reviewed open access publication providing researchers and practitioners the opportunity to advance the practice and understanding of eDemocracy, eGovernment, eParticipation. The journal aims to bridge innovative, insightful and stimulating research, testing and findings with practice and the work conducted by governments, NPOs, NGOs and professionals. Given the different backgrounds of the editors, JeDEM encourages articles which come from different disciplines or adopt an interdisciplinary approach, including eVoting, ePolitics, eSociety, business IT, applied computer gaming and simulation, cyberpsychology, usability, decision sciences, marketing, economics, psychology, sociology, media studies, communication studies, political science, philosophy, law, policy, legislation, and ethics. JeDEM provides up-to-date articles with ideas to be discussed, used and implemented, whilst at the same time also being a repository of knowledge.

JeDEM publishes ongoing and completed research, case studies and project descriptions  that are selected after a rigorous blind review by experts in the field.

JeDEM is indexed with EBSCO, DOAJ, Google scholar, and the Public Knowledge Project metadata harvester.

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                     Call For Papers
Special Issue 1/2016: Open and Visual Access to Information
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Guest Editors
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o Dimitris Gouscos, Department of Communication and Media Studies, University of Athens, Greece
o Thomas J. Lampoltshammer, Department for E-Governance and Administration, Danube University Krems, Austria
o Michael Leitner, Department of Geography and Anthropology, Louisiana State University, USA

Subject coverage
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In our current era, data-driven approaches influence all aspects of daily life. The fast and effective handling of these data is a crucial point of keeping our society working. Yet, the sheer amount of data being produced even at this very moment is often to big to be interpreted and understood in a correct and timely fashion. It is this complexity and criticality that renders the usability and accessibility of data and the inherent information even more important. This becomes even more obvious, when taking into account that most of today’s approaches to data analytics and interpretation focus on experts and their requirements rather than on non-experts. This does not only lead to a limitation regarding the usefulness of data but also critically impacts the foundations of our society regarding open access to data and information - data democracy so to say.

At the same time, citizens are demanding more access to information and transparency regarding their data handling and want to use new data based services. Yet, only opening up data and providing tools to interact with them does not automatically lead to new knowledge or understanding. Efforts to open up the meaning of information by introducing new access layers, such as visual representations, as an easier interface to hardly readable texts and numbers, are also gaining in popularity. Still, these efforts are risking to introduce new problems as well: opening up information with a multitude of different technologies can create a new tower of Babel, whereas visualizing information with different techniques is inevitably highlighting certain parts or meanings of this information and low-lighting, so to say, others.

As experience accumulates, it becomes clear that open and/or visual access to information cannot effectively be treated as an add-on, which comes of interest only after this information has been produced. On the contrary, open/visual access requirements ideally need to pervade the entire information life-cycle, from final dissemination up to initial design. In this respect, design of information emerges as an issue in its own right, especially under the need to guide design processes by provisions for the openness and visualizability of the information finally produced. This need, at the same time, creates important echos for the eventual (re)design of large corpora of information that already exist.

In this context, the special issue on Open and Visual Access to Information of the JeDEM Journal for eDemocracy invites submissions dedicated, but not limited to, the following topics:

Open Data Analytics
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o Cloud and network analytics
o Predictive analytics
o Real-time analytics
o Monitoring and measurements of ICT infrastructures
o Distributed data analytics architectures
o Theory and algorithms for scalable descriptive statistical modeling
o Theory and algorithms of scalable predictive statistical modeling
o Scalable analytics techniques for spatio-temporal data
o Scalable data analytics algorithms in large graphs
o Quality of open data and standards
o Institutionalisation of open data and project descriptions

Open Data Visualization
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o Emerging techniques, forms and tools for information visualization
o From expert to crowd-sourced visualizations of information
o Digital tools for engaging public input
o Cloud computing as an infrastructure for information visualization
o Data design for open and visual access
o Visual communication and graphic design
o Data visualization in journalism and citizen communication
o Case studies of open data visualization

Open Access to Legal Information
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o From official legal sources to crowd-sourced legal information
o Standardization efforts for open legal information and legal data
o Emerging techniques for legal information visualization
o Legal information design for open and visual access
o New sources of legal information: social media, smart phones, sensors, IoT
o Taxonomic approaches to legal information, from texts to (big) data
o Open access to legal information as a catalyst for citizen empowerment
o Open access to legal information as an asset for entrepreneurship

Author guidelines
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Length of paper: 7,500-12,000 words, all drafts have to be typed double-spaced, the format has to be Word for processing reasons.
JeDEM encourages scientific papers as well as project descriptions and reflections. Scientific papers follow a double-blind peer review process.
More Guidelines for authors and template can be found at http://jedem.org/index.php/jedem/about/submissions#authorGuidelines.

Important dates
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Submission deadline:    10 June 2016
End of peer review:     10 July 2016
Editorial decisions:    20 July 2016
Publication:            31 October 2016

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