[Reader-list] Call for Papers - Journal of Community Informatics, Special Issue on Open Data

[Zainab Bawa]

Journal of Community Informatics:

Call for Papers for Special issue on Open Data

Guest editors:  Tim Davies, Practical Participation and Zainab Bawa, CIS-RAW
fellow

Call for Proposals
The Journal of Community Informatics
(http://ci-journal.net)<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We invite submission of original, unpublished articles for a forthcoming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?




   1. 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?



   1. 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?



   1. 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?



   1. 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?



   1. 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.

   1. Different policy and practice approaches to open data and open
   government data
   2. Diverse uses of open data and their impacts
   3. Technologies that are deployed for implementing open data and their
   implications
   4. 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)
tim at practicalparticipation.co.uk | @timdavies | +447834856303

-- 
Zainab Bawa
Ph.D. Student and Independent Researcher

http://writerruns.wordpress.com/
... ambling along roads and courses, not knowing whether I am running
towards a destination or whether the act of running is destination in itself