Call for papers

The International Conference on Social Informatics (SocInfo19) is an interdisciplinary venue that brings together researchers from the computational and social sciences to help fill the gap between the two communities. The goal of the conference is to provide a forum to help practitioners from the two disciplines define common research objectives and explore methodologies. The organizers welcome a broad range of contributions, from those that apply methods from the social sciences to the study of socio-technical systems, to the application of computational methods to the study of complex social processes and the use of social concepts in the design of information systems.

SocInfo19 offers an opportunity for the dissemination of knowledge between the two communities by soliciting presentations of original research papers and experience-based case studies in computer science, sociology, psychology, political science, anthropology, economics, linguistics, artificial intelligence, social network analysis, and other disciplines that can shed light on the open questions in the growing field of computational social science.

SocInfo19 will also offer keynote talks and invited talks that will be tailored to enhance the collaboration between the two research cultures in an era when social interactions are ubiquitous and span offline, online and augmented reality worlds.

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

• New theories, methods and objectives in computational social science
• Computational models of social phenomena, including behavior modeling
• Dynamics of social collaborative systems
• Social network analysis and mining
• Mining big social data
• Social influence and social contagions
• Web mining and its social interpretations
• Quantifying offline phenomena through online data
• Rich representations of social ties
• Security, privacy, trust, reputation, and incentive issues
• Opinion mining and social media analytics
• Credibility of online content
• Health informatics
• Social media and health behaviors
• Algorithms and protocols inspired by human societies
• Equity in social and information systems
• Social choice mechanisms in the e-society
• Social applications of the semantic Web
• Social psychology and personality
• Virtual communities (e.g., open-source, multiplayer gaming, etc.)
• Impact of technology on socio-economic, security, defense aspects
• Urban informatics
• Forecasting of social phenomena
• Socio-economic systems and applications
• Collective intelligence and social cognition
• Ethics of computational research on human behavior
• Science and technology studies approaches to computational social science
• Digital and Computational Demography

We solicit submission of three types of contribution:

• Full papers: should not exceed 12 pages (excluding references and any appendix), to be presented orally;
• Short papers: should not exceed 6 pages (excluding references and any appendix), to be presented orally;
• Abstracts: should be 1 page (excluding references), to be presented as posters;

Submissions will be reviewed through a double-blind review process (names of the authors invisible). To ensure a thorough and fair review process, this year’s conference will rely on a two-tier review process and we will enforce strict review guidelines to provide even higher-quality feedback to authors. To further incentivize useful and detailed feedback to authors, contributions of best reviewers will be rewarded with special mentions.

As in previous years, accepted papers will appear in Springer's Lecture Note Series in Computer Science. We will also allow accepted papers to be presented without publication in the conference proceedings, if the authors choose to do so. Some of the full paper submissions may be accepted as short papers after review by the Program Committee. A small set of particularly high quality and important papers will be selected for journal publication.

Formatting and anonymization. Because SocInfo will publish proceedings, manuscripts should be formatted according to Springer LNCS paper formatting guidelines.
Please ensure that you have anonymized the pdf file for you submission by removing all author names and affiliations and any other information in the manuscript which can be used to identify the author(s).

Conflicts of interests. Some program committee members may have a potential conflict of interest that can prevent them from evaluating you fairly (e.g. they are your colleagues or colleagues of your co-authors). Please declare conflict of interest and provide a brief explanation.
Please check the list of our 175 program committee members and mark any conflicts of interest using the instructions provided below.
If you are making a new submission, after the submission is made you will be asked to mark conflicts of interests.
For existing submissions, you should access the submission and click on "Declare Conflicts".

Call for workshops

The SocInfo’19 Committee invites proposals for the Workshops Day of the conference. All workshops will be held on Monday, November 18, 2019, at the Hilton Hotel (which is the same venue as the main conference).

Workshops should provide participants an opportunity to discuss issues with a selected focus. They can address conceptual, methodological, or practical topics that are of interest to members of the social informatics community, including those from computer science, information science, social science, and computational social science disciplines. To foster interaction and exchange of ideas, all workshops will be kept small, with up to a maximum of 40 participants. Although workshop organizers will be provided flexibility in terms of the format of their workshop, we discourage organizing workshops as mini-conferences dominated by long talks and short discussions. Instead, we encourage organizers to create workshop plans incorporating different types of activities, such as, for example, games, brainstorming sessions, or opportunities for networking. We particularly encourage workshop themes that promote interdisciplinary discussion and provide the opportunity for those working in different fields represented at Social Informatics, including developers and practitioners, to participate.

The format of workshops will be determined by their organizers. The workshop chairs will review each submission and select those with the highest scores on originality, interdisciplinarity, coherence with the conference aims, and ability to attract an audience.

Please email your proposal in a single pdf file to the workshop chairs at socinfo2019workshops@googlegroups.com before the deadline. For additional information please contact the workshop chairs at the same address.

• A concise title.
• The names, affiliations, and contact information of the organizers. The main contact author should be specified. A typical proposal should include no more than four co-chairs.
• Proposed duration of the workshop – half or full day (3-4 hours or 6-7 hours).
• A short abstract describing the scope and main objective/goal of the workshop. Identify the specific issues and/or research questions the workshop will focus on, with a brief discussion of (1) why the workshop topic is important; (2) why the workshop is timely; and (3) how it is relevant to social informatics.
• A two/three paragraph description of the workshop topic and themes.
• A description of the proposed workshop format and a detailed list of proposed activities, with special emphasis on those activities that distinguish it from a mini-conference (e.g., tutorials, breakout discussions, games, brainstorming sessions, challenges, group activities).
• An approximate timeline of the activities.
• A description of how workshop submissions will be evaluated and selected (invited contributions, peer review, etc.). In case a PC is needed, provide a tentative list of the members. An indication of the maximum number of participants and a description of when workshop submissions will be selected: by the time of registration, by some predefined criteria or else.
• Historical information about the workshop, if available. Short description of the previous editions reporting highlights and details about the approximate number of attendees and number of submissions.
• A list of other related workshops held previously at related conferences, if any (list does not have to be exhaustive), together with a brief statement on how the proposed workshop differs from or how it follows-up on work presented at previous workshops.
• A short bio for each member of the organizing committee, including a description of their relevant expertise. Strong proposals include organizers who bring differing perspectives to the workshop topic and who are actively connected to the communities of potential participants.
• A list of the equipment and supplies needed to run the workshop.
• Additionally, we encourage workshop organizers to create web-based resources for their workshops so that advertising, submission, and organization can be handled online.

• Ridhi Kashyap, University of Oxford, UK
• Minsu Park, Cornell University, USA

Call for tutorials

The SocInfo’19 Committee invites proposals for the Tutorials Day of the conference. All tutorials will be held on Tuesday, November 18, 2019, at West Bay Hilton, Doha.

Tutorials will cover computational social science topics consistent with the subject area of the SocInfo conference.

Tutorials will generally be half a day, however based on proposed schedules and activities, a full day tutorial may be warranted. Tutorial chairs may suggest lengths based on proposed scope.

Please email your proposal in a single pdf file to the tutorial chairs at socinfo2019tutorials@googlegroups.com before the deadline. For additional information please contact the tutorial chairs at the same address.

• Tutorial title and short summary: including motivation for the topic, relevance to the conference and specific objectives/outcomes for the tutorial (300 words).
• Names, affiliation(s) and contact information for organizer(s).
• Schedule and activities: including pointers to any sample code/slides/etc. that the organizers have used previously that would be applicable, and detailed description of any activities.
• Precedent (if applicable): a list of previous tutorials at SocInfo or related conferences, and a brief description of how the proposed tutorial builds on or differs from them.
• Requirements/equipment: a list of what will be required (e.g. wifi, projector, room with no tables, etc.).
• Capacity: estimate about the number of attendees (or range) for which this tutorial would be suitable.
• Audience: target attendees, any pre-requisite background.

• Bogdan State, Facebook, USA
• Rumi Chunara, New York University, USA

Springer’s Lecture Note Series in Computer Science

Volume editors:

• Ingmar Weber, Qatar Computing Research Institute, HBKU, Doha, Qatar
• Kareem M. Darwish, Qatar Computing Research Institute, HBKU, Doha, Qatar
• Claudia Wagner, University of Koblenz-Landau, Mainz, Germany
• Emilio Zagheni, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany
• Laura Nelson, Northeastern University, Boston, USA
• Samin Aref, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany
• Fabian Flöck, GESIS-Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Cologne, Germany

Conference proceedings are now available online: SocInfo 2019, LNCS 11864