Calls for papers

International Journal of Web Based Communities
Special Issue on: "Web 2.0 Goes Academia: Innovative Scenarios for Socio-technical Communities"
Guest Editor: Isa Jahnke, Dortmund University of Technology, Germany
Web 2.0 is – as O’Reilly (2005) said – a “second generation of Internet-based services”. The common idea is to enable people to collaborate and share information online in new ways, such as in wikis, communication tools, social networking applications, and social tagging. Figure 1 confronts the two concepts and lists examples from Web 2.0 usage in academia.
Web 2.0 |
Examplesi: |
|
Encylopedia Britannica Online, etc. |
wikipedia.com |
Wikis for lectures; pepysdiary.comii |
Personal websites |
Blogging (e.g., IBM developerWorks Blogsiii) |
Personal Netvibes.comiv (based on RSS-Feeds) and Blogs |
Publishing |
Participation (e.g., discussion boards) |
Jabref (Open source based on LaTex, BibTex) in combination with Bibsonomyv |
Directories (taxonomy) |
Social tagging, social bookmarking (e.g., del.icio.usvi) |
|
Content management systems |
Wikis |
OpenUniversity http://www.netvibes.com/openlearn |
Telephone |
Instant messaging (e.g., ICQ), VoIP (e.g., Skype) |
Instant Messaging, Microblogging with Twitter |
GPS non internet-based |
New location-based services (mobile devices, e.g., Dodgeballvii) |
“tell us where you are and we locate researchers of your network so you can meet up” |
Newsgroups |
Social networking (e.g., facebook / xing.comviii) / online communities |
Facebook for searching and finding researchers and practitioners, e.g. e-Science-Community |
-> Download of information: one-to-many |
-> Communication & collaboration about information (many2many) |
-> Creating innovative ways for research and teaching |
Web 2.0 and Social Software focus on new or existing software systems which are influenced by human communication and collaboration, or, to put it another way, Web 2.0 is heavily reliant on social interaction, and so social web-based applications generate and require a human-centred design approach.
The number of users of Web 2.0 applications in private settings (e.g., leisure) is very high. However, in organisations and institutions, Web 2.0 concepts or such combined applications are still at an early stage. The same is true for universities. There are some Web 2.0 tools in universities, in particular Wikis and Blogs, but the usage of these tools for supporting teaching, learning or research is not yet fully developed. How can Web 2.0 support community-based learning or research processes in academia?
The aim is to collect proposals for academic practice with Web 2.0, to specify research questions dealing with Web 2.0 in academia or to discuss new research methods and their challenges in this topic (e.g., e-ethnography). The special issue wants to share practical experience or research results about using Web 2.0 in teaching and research, for example, e-learning goes Web 2.0, scientific communities go Web 2.0 or research publications go Web 2.0. Therefore, we strongly encourage researchers and practitioners who have ideas or experience of using Web 2.0 applications in academia to submit a paper.
Subject CoverageResearch questions the special issue will focus include, but are not limited to:
- What Web 2.0 applications exist in universities, in research or in learning?
- Do Web 2.0 applications in academia make a difference to existing Internet applications like email, content management systems or newsgroups?
- Do you have success stories or success criteria of Web 2.0 usage in academic fields?
- What changes are observable or essential when introducing Web 2.0 concepts in teaching or research settings?
- How can we introduce Web 2.0 applications in the academic world?
- What is the negative side of Web 2.0 in Academia with respect to plagiarism and "Wikipedia-only" references in student theses?
Notes for Prospective Authors
Submitted papers should not have been previously published nor be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere
All papers are refereed through a peer review process. A guide for authors, sample copies and other relevant information for submitting papers are available on the Author Guidelines page
Important Dates
Deadline for paper submission: 3 August 2008
NEW Deadline for notifications (accepted / rejected papers): 8 December, 2008