CALL FOR PAPERS 1st International Conference on e-Social Science Manchester June 22-24, 2005 Initial Announcement and Call for Submissions www.ncess.ac.uk/conference-05/

Overview The vision of the ‘Grid’ first emerged as a solution to the highly specialised computing infrastructure requirements of particle physics. The past five years, however, have seen the Grid’s potential recognised by the wider scientific research community and the emergence of new forms of research practice now encapsulated in the notion of ‘e-Research’.

Now, members of the social science research community in the UK and elsewhere are beginning to explore how they can use the Grid and the prospects for ‘e-Social Science’. This year, for example, has seen the creation in the UK of the National Centre for e-Social Science (NCeSS).

The opportunities presented by the Grid for social science research are numerous and intriguing. The Grid will make it possible for new computational tools to be brought to bear on a diverse range of social science research problems; it will make established social science datasets more readily accessible, easier to integrate and to share; it will make feasible the collection and curation of new kinds of data on an unprecedented scale. Beyond enhancing existing research methods, however, e-Social Science also brings with it the prospect of articulating a radically new research agenda and encouraging the formation of new forms of research community.

Realising the full potential for e-Social Science will be a major challenge and calls for a major collaborative effort from social scientists and Grid technologists. As a contribution to meeting this challenge, NCeSS is very pleased to announce the first international conference on e-Social Science.

We invite contributions from members of the social science and Grid research communities with experience of – or interests in – exploring, developing and applying e-Social Science research methods, practices, tools and technologies.

Submission categories include: full and short papers, posters, workshops and tutorials.

Topics of interest include, but are not restricted to, the following:

* Case studies of e-Social Science in practice * Studies of (e-)Research and (e-)Social Science research practices * The benefits and challenges of large scale collaborative research * Enhancing existing social science research methods through e-Social Science * Innovation in research methods through e-Social Science * Socio-technical issues in the development of e-Social Science research methods * Ethical issues and challenges in the collection, integration, sharing and analysis of sociological data * New sources and forms of sociological data * Standards for metadata, ontologies, annotation, curation, etc. * Middleware for data collection, sharing and integration * Tools for data mining, visualisation, analysis, modelling and collaborative research * Understanding requirements for research tools and middleware

Submission requirements for full and short papers, posters Authors are requested to submit an abstract of approximately 1000-1500 words.

Submissions will be subject to independent review and a final decision will be made by the conference programme committee. Authors of submissions not accepted as full papers may be invited to submit a short paper or poster instead.

Accepted full and short papers will be published in the conference proceedings.

Submission requirements for workshop and tutorials: Workshop and tutorial organisers are requested to submit a one page outline of the topic, format, likely audience, special requirements.

Deadlines and submission instructions Paper and poster abstracts, workshop and tutorial outlines: February 1st, 2005.

Submission instructions will appear on the conference web site in January.

Authors will be informed of the programme committee’s decision on March 14th, 2005.

Dr Gillian Sinclair Programme Manager ESRC National Centre for e-Social Science (NCeSS) University of Manchester Dover Street Building Dover Street Manchester UK M13 9PL

Tel: 0161 275 1380 Email: gillian.sinclair@ncess.ac.uk Website: http://www.ncess.ac.uk News mailing list: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/E-SOCIAL-SCIENCE-NEWS