[Air-L] FW: Call for Papers: Special issue - Community Informatics and Data Literacy

[Michael Gurstein]

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Call for Papers: Special issue - Community Informatics and Data Literacy
Journal of Community Informatics ( <http://ci-journal.net/>
http://ci-journal.net) Submissions due 30th September.

A special issue of the international Journal of Community Informatics (
<http://ci-journal.net/> http://ci-journal.net) will be devoted to Data
Literacy. Community Informatics (CI) is the study and the practice of
enabling communities with Information and Communications Technologies
(ICTs).  This special issue will focus on the role of data literacy in using
ICT to empower and enable communities. The issue is expected to be published
in June 2016. The Journal of Community Informatics is a focal point for the
communication of research of interest to a global network of academics,
community informatics practitioners and national and multi-lateral policy
makers.

Call for papers
The field of CI seeks to explore the potential of information and
communication technologies and their applications for social and economic
development efforts at the community level. It particularly seeks to ensure
that marginalized individuals and communities can benefit from the
opportunities that ICTs can provide. Increasingly data literacy has been
identified as a requirement to make effective use of these opportunities.
However, very little attention has been paid to defining what data literacy
means or how it can be achieved.

 

Data literacy refers to the skills, knowledge and context needed to make
effective use of data on the web. It includes the ICT skills to find, access
and manipulate data; the statistical and subject matter skills to interpret
and use the data; and also the context needed to provide the opportunity and
motivation to use the data. It can be seen as a characteristic of an
individual or a community. Recently there have been calls for greater data
literacy from communities as diverse as the open data movement (who see it
as essential if open data is to fulfil its promise of greater transparency
and engagement) and the citizen science movement (who see it as required for
citizens to understand, engage in, and support science). This raises
fundamental concerns in CI such as the power of those who are data literate
relative to those who are not, and the right of experts to demand skills of
the population as a whole. However, these debates need to be unDERpinned
with a clearer and more detailed description of what data literacy is and
why it is needed. Work on data literacy has remained the preserve of
educationalists and librarians, but the increased use of data in many areas
has created a pressing need for a more multi-disciplinary view.

 

For this special issue of the Journal on Data Literacy, we are inviting
submissions
of original, unpublished articles. Potential topics include (but are not
limited to):

What do we mean by data literacy? 

Why do we need data literacy? 

How should data literacy be achieved?

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

What are the practical implications of data literacy? 

 

We welcome research articles, along with case studies and notes from the
field. All research articles will be double blind peer-reviewed. Insights
and analytical perspectives from practitioners and policy makers in the form
of notes from the field or case studies are also encouraged - these will not
be peer-reviewed.

 

Closing date for submission of full papers:

30 September 2015

 

Submission Process & Guidelines

 

Authors need to register
<http://ci-journal.net/index.php/ciej/user/register>  with the Journal prior
to submitting or, if already registered, can simply log in
<http://ci-journal.net/index.php/ciej/user/register>  and begin the
five-step process.


Guest editors:

Alan Tygel

Mark Frank

Johanna Walker

Judie Attard