[ecrea] Journal of Community Informatics: Call for Papers for Special issue on Open Data

*Journal of Community Informatics: Call for Papers for Special issue on 
Open Data *

- Deadline for abstracts: 31st March 2011

***Call for Proposals***

The Journal of Community Informatics (http://ci-journal.net) is a focal 
point for the communication of research that is of interest to a global 
network of academics, Community Informatics practitioners and national 
and multi-lateral policy makers.

We invite submission of original, unpublished articles for a forthcoming 
special edition of the Journal that will focus on Open Data. We welcome 
research articles, case studies and notes from the field. All research 
articles will be double blind peer-reviewed. Insights and analytical 
perspectives from practitioners and policy makers in the form of notes 
from the field or case studies are also encouraged. These will not be 
peer-reviewed.

***Why a special issue on Open Data***

In many countries across the world, discussions, policies and 
developments are actively emerging around open access to government 
data. It is believed that opening up government data to citizens is 
critical for enforcing transparency and accountability within the 
government. Open data is also seen as holding the potential to bring 
about greater citizens, participation, empowering citizens to ask 
questions of their governments via not only the data that is made openly 
available but also through the interpretations that different 
stakeholders make of the open data. Besides advocacy for open data on 
grounds of democracy, it is also argued that opening government data can 
have significant economic potential, generating new industries and 
innovations.

Whilst some open government data initiatives are being led by 
governments, other open data projects are taking a grassroots approach, 
collecting and curating government data in reusable digital formats 
which can be used by specific communities at the grassroots and/or macro 
datasets that can be used/received/applied in different ways in 
different local/grassroots contexts. INGOs, NGOs and various civil 
society and community based organizations are also getting involved with 
open data activities, from sharing data they hold regarding aid flows, 
health, education, crime, land records, demographics, etc, to actively 
sourcing public data through freedom of information and right to 
information acts. The publishing of open data on the Internet can make 
it part of a global eco-system of data, and efforts
are underway in technology, advocacy and policy-making communities to 
develop standards, approaches and tools for linking and analysing these 
new open data resources. At the same time, there are questions 
surrounding the very notion of  "openness" , primarily whether openness 
and open data have negative repercussions for particular groups of 
citizens in certain social, geographic, political, demographic, cultural 
and other grassroots contexts.

In sum then, what we find in society today is not only various practices 
relating to open data, but also an active shift in paradigms about 
access and use of information and data, and notions of ?openness? and
?information/data?. These emerging/renewed paradigms are also 
configuring/reconfiguring understandings and practices of community and 
citizenship. We therefore find it imperative to engage with crucial
questions that are emerging from these paradigm shifts as well as the 
related policy initiatives, programmatic action and field experiences.

***Some of the questions that we hope this special issue will explore 
are:***

1) How are citizens? groups, grassroots organizations, NGOs, diverse 
civil society associations and other public and private entities 
negotiating with different arms of the state to provide access to 
government data both in the presence and absence of official open data 
policies, freedom/right of information legislations and similar 
commitments on the part of governments?

2) What are the various models of open data that are operational in 
practice in different parts of the world? What are the different ways in 
which open data are being used by and for the grassroots and what are 
the impacts (positive, negative, paradoxical) of such open data for 
communities and groups at the grassroots?

3) Who/which actors are involved in opening up what kinds of data? What 
are their stakes in opening up such data and making it available for the 
public?

4) What are the different technologies that are being used for 
publishing, storing and archiving open data? What are the 
challenges/issues that various grassroots users and the stakeholders, 
experience with respect to these technologies i.e., design, scale, 
costs, dissemination of the open data to different publics and realizing 
the potential of open data?

5) What notions of openness and publicness are at work in both policies 
as well as initiatives concerning open data and what impacts do these 
notions have on grassroots? practitioners and users?

6) Following from the above, what are the implications of opening up 
different kinds of data for privacy, security and local level practices 
and information systems?


***Thematic focus***
The following suggested areas of thematic focus (policy, technology, 
uses, impacts) give a non-exhaustive list of potential topic areas for 
articles or case studies. The core interest of the special issue is 
addressing each of these themes from, or taking into account, 
grassroots, local citizen and community perspectives.

A) Different policy and practice approaches to open data and open 
government data
B) Diverse uses of open data and their impacts
C) Technologies that are deployed for implementing open data and their 
implications
D) Critical assessments of stakeholders and stakes in opening up 
different kinds of data.


***Submission***
Abstracts are invited in the first instance, to be submitted by e-mail to
(jociopendata /at/ gmail.com).

- Deadline for abstracts: 31st March 2011
- Deadline for complete paper submissions: 15th September 2011
- Publication date is forthcoming

Please send abstracts, in the first instance, of up to 300 words to
(jociopendata /at/ gmail.com).

For information about JCI submission requirements, including author
guidelines, please visit:
http://www.ci-journal.net/index.php/ciej/about/submissions#onlineSubmissions

***Guest Editors***
Zainab Bawa -Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) RAW fellow
(bawazainab79 /at/ gmail.com)

Tim Davies - Director, Practical Participation
http://www.practicalparticipation.co.uk/odi/
(tim /at/ practicalparticipation.co.uk) | @timdavies | +447834856303