Call for Participation

E-Infrastructures for Research Collaboration: The Case of the Social Sciences and Humanities

Workshop at CSCW 2017, Portland, Oregon, February 25 or 26

https://eresearchinfssh2017.wordpress.com/


== Important Dates

Dec 19 | Submissions Due
Jan 6 | Notifications
Jan 11 | Early Registration
Jan 31 | Camera-ready
Feb 25 or 26 | Workshop at CSCW


== Call for Participation

Collaborative research practices are a highly interesting domain for CSCW. So far, CSCW has mainly focused on computation- and/or data-intensive research endeavors. Here, resources are typically pooled via common e-infrastructures for data access and processing, a set-up requiring additional layers of coordination. Such a focus largely foregrounds the sciences and other fields that rely on highly structured (or structure-able) data and the routinized processes of analysis.

In contrast, in this one-day workshop we discuss the conditions and challenges characteristic of research collaboration in the qualitative social sciences and humanities (SSH). In particular, we examine the sociotechnical infrastructures that enable and support research practices that—in comparison with the collaborative paradigm of the natural sciences—tend to be less structured, compartmentalized, and routinized, but more fluid, flexible, and open-ended. The workshop seeks to collect empirical insights and design experiences, preparing the grounds for a comprehensive understanding of the role of e-infrastructures for collaborative research practices in SSH.

We particularly invite submissions that draw out the core characteristics, challenges, and trends faced by groups of researchers in the SSH from experiential, theoretical, empirical or design perspectives.

Key topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

* Reflections and meta-perspectives on collaboration in the SSH.
* Empirical studies of collaborative research practices in the SSH, possibly taking on one or more of the following questions:
* What are the infrastructures/resources that social scientists and humanists draw on? How do they do so? And, where do resources come from?
* What has been the trajectory of change relative to digitization of resources, tools, and infrastructures?
* Empirical studies of the invisible work to make collaborative research in the SSH work.
* Studies of the (participatory) design, use, education, and appropriation of new digital tools, platforms, infrastructures for collaboration in the SSH.
* Implications of digital methodologies for training and interdisciplinarity in the SSH.


== Submission Details

We invite 2-4 page position or experience papers in ACM Extended Abstracts format. Submissions should be e-mailed to the organizers by December 19, 2016.

Please e-mail submissions to [email protected].

Submissions will be reviewed by the workshop organizers. We expect to accept a maximum of about 20 participants based on the submissions' relevance to the workshop themes.


== Organizers

Matthias Korn, University of Siegen
Marén Schorch, University of Siegen
Volkmar Pipek, University of Siegen
Matthew Bietz, University of California, Irvine
Carsten Østerlund, Syracuse University
Rob Procter, University of Warwick
David Ribes, University of Washington
Robin Williams, The University of Edinburgh