Calls for papers

 

International Journal of Computers in Healthcare

 

Special Edition on: "Towards Systems in Support of Reminiscence Work"

Guest Editors:
Maurice Mulvenna, University of Ulster, UK
Arlene Astell, University of St Andrews, UK
Huiru Zheng, University of Ulster, UK
Terence Wright, University of Ulster, UK

In Europe by 2050, the number of ‘oldest old’ aged 80+ is expected to grow by 180%. For example, in 1951, there were 300 people aged 100 and over in the UK. By the year 2031, it is estimated that this figure could boom to 36,000. Life expectancy has been rising on average by 2.5 years per decade in Europe. This growing number of people with significant leisure time available, often socially isolated, who will live for longer, may benefit from the stimulus offered by reminiscing activities, either individually or offered via networked services. Reminiscing includes a range of activities and traditional tools aimed at stimulating thoughts, feelings and memories of times gone by. For example, these could be recalling significant cultural issues, events, old friendships or places. Reminiscing can help elderly people to improve health and wellbeing. The impact of reminiscing work as an intervention has been demonstrated for a range of populations, such as people with dementia.

Reminiscence systems offer the potential to address the reflective needs of a growing number of people. This emerging area requires research and development to progress thinking and new systems, based upon inter-disciplinary work. This special issue is intended to foster new thinking and innovations in reminiscence systems, encompassing research in technical areas of relevance including computer science as well as social and health sciences, psychology and the arts.

The published papers are expected to present high quality material that illustrates the broad range of exciting work being carried out across the work in reminiscence systems. This special issue will serve as a landmark source in the area, and as a reference to educators, practitioners, researchers and graduate students interested in updating their knowledge about or active in reminiscence and reminiscence systems.

The special issue will include suitably upgraded papers from the Reminiscence Systems Workshop 2009 (http://www.reminiscencesystems.com/) together with other submitted papers.

Subject Coverage
Areas of interest include, but are not limited to, the following topics:

• Reminiscing system design
• Reminiscing as a therapeutic intervention
• Personalised reminiscence systems
• Human interactive interfaces
• Social aspects of using reminiscing systems
• Accessibility and reminiscing systems
• Multimedia content in reminiscing systems
• Reminiscing networks
• User-centered and participative design in reminiscence systems
• Constructing narrative threads from content
• Authoring content in reminiscence systems
• Intelligent content repurposing in reminiscence systems
• Applications of reminiscence systems

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

Manuscript due: 1 November 2009

1st round notification: 1 December 2009

Revised paper due: 1 February 2010

Submission of final revised paper: 1 March 2010