Call For Participation
Free Culture Research Workshop 2009
Berkman Center for Internet & Society / Harvard University
(with additional support from the NEXA center at the Politecnico di
Torino and iCommons)
The Free Culture 2009 research workshop builds on the enthusiasm
generated by the First Interdisciplinary Research Workshop on Free
Culture which took place during the 2008 iSummit in Sapporo, Japan.
It presents a unique opportunity for scholars whose work contributes
to the promotion, study or criticism of an emerging Free Culture, to
engage with a multidisciplinary group of academic peers and
practitioners, identify the most important research opportunities
and challenges, and attempt to chart the future of Free Culture.
Our aim is to provide an opportunity for scholars and practitioners
to discuss their findings, experiences, and vision for a Free
Culture with peers whose backgrounds extend beyond individual
disciplines, because we believe that the wider participation in the
creative process (and consequently in the formation and
dissemination of our modern culture) enabled by new Internet
technologies, innovative legal solutions and new business models,
are far-reaching and therefore deserve to be examined through the
lens of multidisciplinary inquiry. More specifically, this year's
workshop will be focused on:
(a) participant interaction and joint reflection on key findings
from cutting edge research in the field
(b) the development of a research agenda, with the identification of
key topics for future research
(c) facilitating research collaborations and exchange of ideas
between different academic institutions engaged in Free Culture research
(d) fostering useful academic outputs over the next 12+ months
(e) considering policy recommendations or a policy orientation that
may emerge as a result of Free Culture research and scholarship
Program design and participant selection will be guided by these
objectives, as set by the organizing committee in consultation with
the host institution.
Venue
Harvard University
Event format
The event will consist mainly of sessions oriented towards
discussion and idea generation. The organizing committee will
therefore strive to convene those parties that will be most helpful
in engendering dialogue and providing perspectives on the future of
free culture research. To that end we will do our utmost to convene
academics and others who have already made an impact with their
works and actions in shaping the landscape of free culture. An open
call for short essays (similar in length to an extended abstract,
for details see below) will complement this effort and provide
opportunities for wider participation and discussion. Submitted
essays will be reviewed by the program committee and the authors of
accepted submissions will be invited to attend the event. We will
only be able to accept a small number of participants through the
open call given the small size of the event, and we seek your
understanding in this respect. Every accepted essay will be
disseminated before, during and after the workshop and will provide
useful inputs for the structuring of the discussions and working
sessions to take place during the event. However, we wish to
emphasize that the focus this year will be on participant
interaction and idea generation rather than on traditional podium
presentation. Being invited to the workshop is therefore also not a
guarantee that you will be able to present your own work, but rather
an invitation to contribute your expertise and perspectives to the
discussions and outcomes that the workshop will foster.
Dates
* Submission of short essays: Aug 9, 2009
* Notification of acceptance: Aug 23, 2009
* Event: October 23, 2009
Short essays
Interested parties should submit a short essay with a title and
brief text (about 1,000-1,500 words) consisting of:
* A reflection on the main findings of the author's more recent
work (from research, any type of scholarship, or practice,
depending on the author's background) and how these relate to the
topic of Free Culture.
* At most 3 key challenges arising from these findings that the
participants of this workshop and/or relevant third parties could
attempt to address during and/or after the event (remember,
accepted essays will be posted online).
In the same document the author should include:
* References, if any, cited appropriately in the main document,
in APA, BlueBook or ACM format (not included in the word limit)
* A separate paragraph explaining why this essay will be of
broad enough interest and have the potential to generate
interesting discussions during and after the event (not included in
the word limit)
* A short bio of the author (not included in the word limit)
Given the discussion/working-session focus of the event we may not
invite authors whose work may have academic merit but lack a clear
fit with the objectives of the event. This also means that we do not
encourage the submission of short essays that simply report on
research findings, without establishing why a broader community of
participants should care about the findings and what we can learn
from them about the future of free culture research and practice.
Forward-thinking and agenda-setting thought pieces (which should be
clearly informed by one's own research or practice-related
experience) will be preferred.
Note that if your submission is accepted through the open call we
would expect that your home institution will assist with travel
support and we will provide letters of invitation to that end, if
needed. We especially encourage submissions from developing
countries and will try to provide assistance where possible to
participants from such countries. Note that there will be no
ideological 'litmus test' of any sort applied to submissions, i.e.
all viewpoints are welcome and submissions will be judged purely on
their potential to generate interesting discussions and point to new
research directions. We especially welcome critical voices.
Topics
Even if we may not be looking for 'traditional' paper presentations
this year, you may find it useful to look at this list of research
topics that we are generally interested in:
* Studies on the use and growth of open/free licensing models
* Critical analyses of the role of Creative Commons or similar
models in promoting a Free Culture
* Building innovative technical, legal, organizational, or
business solutions and interfaces between the sharing economy and
the commercial economy
* Modeling incentives, innovation and community dynamics in open
collaborative peer production and in related social networks
* Economic models for the sustainability of commons-based production
* Successes and failures of open licensing
* Analyses of policies, court rulings or industry moves that
influence the future of Free Culture
* Regional studies of Free Culture with global lessons/implications
* Lessons from implementations of open/free licensing and
distribution models for specific communities
* Definitions of openness and freedom for different media types,
users and communities
* Broader sociopolitical, legal and cultural implications of
Free Culture initiatives and peer production practices
* Free Culture, Memory Institutions and the broader Public Sector
* Open Science/ Research/ Education
* Cooperation theory and practice, dynamics of cooperation and
competition
* Methodological approaches for studying the characteristics,
history, impact or growth of Free Culture
Submission Guidelines
Short essays must be submitted by the given deadline for peer
review. Submission entails a commitment that at least one author
will attend the event in the case of acceptance. Also, authors grant
the organizers the right to publish accepted submissions in the form
of online proceedings or a similar format. In addition, accepted
submissions will be automatically licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 3.0 Unported license, unless the authors explicitly
state in their submission that they wish to opt out of this
licensing agreement. We encourage authors to use said license in
order to promote open access to scholarly work, although decisions
to opt out will be respected and will not influence the review
process in any way. In any case, authors of accepted essays cannot
opt out from the basic condition that they grant the organizers the
right to publish the essays online. Please submit your short essay
in PDF, Word or plain text format at:
<https://www.easychair.org/login.cgi?conf=freeculture2009>https://www.easychair.org/login.cgi?conf=freeculture2009
(you will need an easychair account to submit, you can create one on
the spot if you don't already have one).
Organizing Committee
The organizing committee is tasked with setting the basic framework
and agenda for this year's event, coordinating activities before,
during, and after the event, and ensuring that the experience will
be valuable for all participants.
* Amar Ashar, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, USA
* Yochai Benkler, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, USA
* Giorgos Cheliotis, National University of Singapore, Singapore
* Juan Carlos De Martin, NEXA Center for Internet and Society, Italy
* Terry Fisher, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, USA
* Urs Gasser, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, USA
* Lawrence Lessig, Harvard University, USA
* Colin Maclay, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, USA
* Elizabeth Stark, Yale University and iCommons, USA
* Prodromos Tsiavos, London School of Economics, UK
* Jude Yew, University of Michigan, USA (Review Process
Coordinator, jyew AT umich DOT edu)
* Jonathan Zittrain, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, USA
Academic Program Committee
The academic program committee comprises senior scholars, recognized
thought leaders and some promising young scholars from around the
world. Its main task will be to assist in the review of submitted manuscripts.
* Bodo Balazs, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary
* Yochai Benkler, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, USA
* Giorgos Cheliotis, National University of Singapore, Singapore
* Tyng-Ruey Chuang, Academia Sinica, Taiwan
* Juan Carlos De Martin, NEXA Center for Internet & Society, Italy
* Melanie Dulong de Rosnay, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands
* Terry Fisher, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, USA
* Urs Gasser, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, USA
* James Grimmelmann, New York Law School, USA
* Herkko Hietanen, Helsinki Institute for Information Technology, Finland
* Minjeong Kim, Colorado State University, USA
* Mathias Klang, Lund University, Sweden
* Karim Lakhani, Harvard University, USA
* Ronaldo Lemos, Fundacao Getulio Vargas, Brazil
* Lawrence Lessig, Harvard University, USA
* Lawrence Liang, Alternative Law Forum, India
* John Palfrey, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, USA
* Wolf Richter, Oxford University, UK
* Anil Samtani, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
* Jan Philipp Schmidt, UWC/UNU-MERIT, the Netherlands
* Elizabeth Stark, Yale University, USA
* Victoria Stodden, Yale University
* Alek Tarkowski, University of Warsaw, Poland
* Anas Tawileh, Cardiff University, UK
* Prodromos Tsiavos, London School of Economics, UK
* Ariel Vercelli, Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, Argentina
* Jude Yew, University of Michigan, USA
* Jonathan Zittrain, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, USA
Note
If you have questions about the event, or wish to be kept updated on
this and related topics, please subscribe to the commons-research
mailing list at:
<http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-research>http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-research
You can then send your emails to
<(commons-research /at/ lists.ibiblio.htm)>(commons-research /at/ lists.ibiblio.org)
and one of the organizers and/or other members of the list will
follow up on your query.
This CFP can be found on the Berkman Center's website here:
<http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/node/5486>http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/node/5486.
