[AISWorld] CFP: Special Issue of The Journal of Community Informatics: Research Methods for Community Informatics

[michael gurstein]

Call for Papers: The Journal of Community Informatics
(http://ci-journal.net)

Special Issue - Research Methods for Community Informatics

The Journal of Community Informatics (JoCI) is seeking scholarly articles
and notes from the field for a special issue on Research Methods for
Community Informatics. Community Informatics is the study and the practice
of enabling communities with Information and Communications Technologies
(ICTs). JoCI is an international journal that focuses on how researchers and
practitioners work with communities towards the effective use of ICTs to
improve their processes, achieve their objectives, overcome the "digital
divides" that exist both within and between communities, and empower
communities and citizens. This is possible in areas such as health, cultural
production, civic management and e-governance, among others. JoCI is a focal
point for the communication of research of interest to a global network of
academics, community informatics practitioners, and national and
multi-lateral policy makers. JoCI is currently indexed in the IBSS and
Google Scholar as well as several indexes of Open Access journals. Efforts
are underway concerning additional scholarly indexing. More information
regarding JoCI is available at http://ci-journal.net.

The guest editors for the special issue are: Dr. Colin Rhinesmith
(University of Oklahoma, USA), Dr. Mark Wolfe (University of Alberta,
Canada), and Andy Bytheway (Retired Professor of Information Management at
the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, South Africa).

Objective

This special issue will focus on the methods used to investigate how ICTs
can support local economic development, social justice, and political
empowerment. Community Informatics (CI) is a point of convergence concerning
the use of ICTs for diverse stakeholders, including community leaders and
activists, nonprofit groups, policymakers, users/citizens, and the range of
academics working across (and integrating) disciplines as diverse as
Information Studies, Management, Computer Science, Social Work, Planning and
Development Studies. This diversity brings with it a range of methodological
approaches - and tensions - to the field of CI. The special issue seeks to
both disentangle and organize the use of existing methods in CI research and
to explore innovative new approaches used by researchers and practitioners
in their work with communities.

Topics

This special issue seeks articles focused on methodological topics and
issues related to community informatics research. We encourage contributions
that come from a wide range of perspectives, including (but not limited to):

Conceptual foundations. What are the pros and cons of positivist,
interpretivist, and critical methods in the CI context?
Data elicitation. What techniques are needed for reliable data to be
collected in local communities, and what is the role of the cloud, "big
data," and data analytics in this context?
Measures of success. What is the extent to which key variables and measures
of CI investment success are actually understood?
Ethics. How are research ethics understood in the context of CI work?
Comparative analysis. How can shared local and global research resources be
developed for comparative studies in different regions of the world?
Cross-cultural studies. How are data elicitation techniques and methods used
in a cross-cultural context?
Extant theory. What is the applicability of other extant theories from
related research areas (e.g., MIS, anthropology, science and technology
studies, etc.) to the field of CI methodology?

We also invite authors to submit "Notes from the Field" from CI
practitioners and policy makers that describe relevant methodological topics
and issues.

Submission procedure and deadlines

Full original and unpublished articles for this special issue should be
submitted via the JoCI website. Authors are invited to submit full-length
papers between 5000-7000 words and notes from the field between 3000-5000
words. All full-length research articles will be double blind peer-reviewed.
Notes from the field containing insights and analytical perspectives from
practitioners and policy makers are also encouraged - these will not be
peer-reviewed. All authors should provide a note to the editors via the
website indicating their interest in having their submissions considered for
the special issue on "Research Methods for Community Informatics."
Interested authors should consult the journal's editorial policies and
author guidelines for submissions at
http://ci-journal.net/index.php/ciej/information/authors.  

Full article draft submissions due: November 15, 2014.
Notes from the field due: December 15, 2014.

All inquiries should be directed to:

Colin Rhinesmith,
Guest Editor
Email: crhines at illinois.edu (before August 1, 2014) / crhinesmith at ou.edu
(after August 1, 2014)

---
Colin Rhinesmith, Ph.D.
Graduate School of Library and Information Science University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign http://people.lis.illinois.edu/~crhines

















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