Updated Call for Papers for a Data Literacy Workshop at Web Sci 2015

(This CFP has been updated to reflect a link to a special issue of Journal of Community Informatics and a new URL for the workshop)

This year Web Sci 2015 will, for the first time, include a workshop on Data Literacy with the aim of establishing data literacy as a topic of academic study. The workshop will be linked to a planned special issue of the Journal of Community Informatics.

The workshop will run on the afternoon of the 30th of June.

Important Dates

All deadlines are midnight UK time on the date specified.

Papers submitted by: 17th May
Notification to authors: 26th May
Workshop: 30th June

Topics

To this end we invite submissions of papers on the following topics:

What do we mean by data literacy? Is there one kind of data literacy or many? What skills, knowledge and attitudes does it include? How does it relate to other types of literacy (digital, numerical, statistical and linguistic)?

Why do we need data literacy? What are the social, political, economic, technical issues it can address?

How should data literacy be achieved? Is it best done through education, training, or behaviour change. What tools and support are required for data literacy?

What are the broader political, social and philosophical implications of data literacy?

For example:

Should technology be driving such fundamental skills?
How does this compare to other technologies such as the printing press that have created a need for new “literacies”?
Does data literacy compound the digital divide at another level?
Can it lead to open data having a more visible impact?

Who should be data literate? Should everyone become a data specialist by learning how to deal with raw data, or we assume that we need specialists in order to “translate” data to the society?

What are the practical implications of data literacy? What should private and public sector organisations do about data literacy? How should data literacy participate in education and research?

Submissions can be of two types:

Completed long papers (8-10pp)
Short papers experience related, position papers, research in progress (3-5pp)

In either case we encourage linking to other media such as video clips or software.

All accepted papers will be published on the workshop website. This will be done several days before the workshop in order to facilitate discussion in the plenary section of the workshop. The organizing committee will select the best papers to be presented at the workshop on the 30th of June. If papers reach the required standard but the authors are unable to attend the workshop, they will also be published.

Authors of published papers will be encouraged to expand their paper to journal length and submit them for possible publication in a planned special issue of the Journal of Community Informatics in 2016.

Selection criteria for papers

The selection criteria are adapted from the Springer LNCS. Submissions should:

Be written in English;
Fit with the workshop theme;
Have a clear motivation (why the problem is interesting theoretically and/or practically);
Conceptual development and grounding in prior literature (given the nascent nature of the topic it is not expected that the prior literature is about data literacy);
Methodological adequacy (if relevant);
Adequate list of references to related work and grounding theories;
Interesting findings;
Well-structured and clearly written paper;
Maximum length of paper: 10 pages for full papers, 5 pages for short papers; and
Conform to Web Sci 2015 rules for formatting.

Papers will be subjected to double blind review by 2 reviewers for rigor, relevance, originality and clarity of presentation and then the accepted papers will be chosen by the organising committee based on the reviewers’ assessment. Papers should be anonymised, i.e. all information identifying the authors removed, and submitted via Easychair.

Contact: mark.frank at soton.ac.uk