[BOAI] Call For Participation: Free Culture Research Workshop 2009

[Iryna Kuchma]

Open Science/ Research/ Education is one of the topics to be addressed

the event falls during Open Access Week: http://www.openaccessweek.org/

http://nexa.polito.it/call-participation-free-culture-research-workshop-2009

Call For Participation
Free Culture Research Workshop 2009

Berkman Center for Internet & Society / Harvard University
(with additional support from the NEXA Center at the Politecnico di Torino
and iCommons)

The Free Culture 2009 research workshop builds on the enthusiasm generated
by the First Interdisciplinary Research Workshop on Free Culture which took
place during the 2008 iSummit in Sapporo, Japan. It presents a unique
opportunity for scholars whose work contributes to the promotion, study or
criticism of an emerging Free Culture, to engage with a multidisciplinary
group of academic peers and practitioners, identify the most important
research opportunities and challenges, and attempt to chart the future of
Free Culture.

Our aim is to provide an opportunity for scholars and practitioners to
discuss their findings, experiences, and vision for a Free Culture with
peers whose backgrounds extend beyond individual disciplines, because we
believe that the wider participation in the creative process (and
consequently in the formation and dissemination of our modern culture)
enabled by new Internet technologies, innovative legal solutions and new
business models, are far-reaching and therefore deserve to be examined
through the lens of multidisciplinary inquiry. More specifically, this
year's workshop will be focused on:

(a) participant interaction and joint reflection on key findings from
cutting edge research in the field
(b) the development of a research agenda, with the identification of key
topics for future research
(c) facilitating research collaborations and exchange of ideas between
different academic institutions engaged in Free Culture research
(d) fostering useful academic outputs over the next 12+ months
(e) considering policy recommendations or a policy orientation that may
emerge as a result of Free Culture research and scholarship

Program design and participant selection will be guided by these objectives,
as set by the organizing committee in consultation with the host
institution.

Venue
Harvard University

Event format

The event will consist mainly of sessions oriented towards discussion and
idea generation. The organizing committee will therefore strive to convene
those parties that will be most helpful in engendering dialogue and
providing perspectives on the future of free culture research. To that end
we will do our utmost to convene academics and others who have already made
an impact with their works and actions in shaping the landscape of free
culture. An open call for short essays (similar in length to an extended
abstract, for details see below) will complement this effort and provide
opportunities for wider participation and discussion. Submitted essays will
be reviewed by the program committee and the authors of accepted submissions
will be invited to attend the event. We will only be able to accept a small
number of participants through the open call given the small size of the
event, and we seek your understanding in this respect. Every accepted essay
will be disseminated before, during and after the workshop and will provide
useful inputs for the structuring of the discussions and working sessions to
take place during the event. However, we wish to emphasize that the focus
this year will be on participant interaction and idea generation rather than
on traditional podium presentation. Being invited to the workshop is
therefore also not a guarantee that you will be able to present your own
work, but rather an invitation to contribute your expertise and perspectives
to the discussions and outcomes that the workshop will foster.

Dates
Submission of short essays: Aug 9, 2009
Notification of acceptance: Aug 23, 2009
Event: October 23, 2009

Short essays

Interested parties should submit a short essay with a title and brief text
(about 1,000-1,500 words) consisting of:
A reflection on the main findings of the author's more recent work (from
research, any type of scholarship, or practice, depending on the author's
background) and how these relate to the topic of Free Culture.
At most 3 key challenges arising from these findings that the participants
of this workshop and/or relevant third parties could attempt to address
during and/or after the event (remember, accepted essays will be posted
online).

In the same document the author should include:
References, if any, cited appropriately in the main document, in APA,
BlueBook or ACM format (not included in the word limit)
A separate paragraph explaining why this essay will be of broad enough
interest and have the potential to generate interesting discussions during
and after the event (not included in the word limit)
A short bio of the author (not included in the word limit)

Given the discussion/working-session focus of the event we may not invite
authors whose work may have academic merit but lack a clear fit with the
objectives of the event. This also means that we do not encourage the
submission of short essays that simply report on research findings, without
establishing why a broader community of participants should care about the
findings and what we can learn from them about the future of free culture
research and practice. Forward-thinking and agenda-setting thought pieces
(which should be clearly informed by one's own research or practice-related
experience) will be preferred.

Note that if your submission is accepted through the open call we would
expect that your home institution will assist with travel support and we
will provide letters of invitation to that end, if needed.* We especially
encourage submissions from developing countries and will try to provide
assistance where possible to participants from such countries.* Note that
there will be no ideological 'litmus test' of any sort applied to
submissions, i.e. all viewpoints are welcome and submissions will be judged
purely on their potential to generate interesting discussions and point to
new research directions. We especially welcome critical voices.

Topics

Even if we may not be looking for 'traditional' paper presentations
this year, you may find it useful to look at this list of research topics
that we are generally interested in:
Studies on the use and growth of open/free licensing models
Critical analyses of the role of Creative Commons or similar models in
promoting a Free Culture
Building innovative technical, legal, organizational, or business solutions
and interfaces between the sharing economy and the commercial economy
Modeling incentives, innovation and community dynamics in open collaborative
peer production and in related social networks
Economic models for the sustainability of commons-based production
Successes and failures of open licensing
Analyses of policies, court rulings or industry moves that influence the
future of Free Culture
Regional studies of Free Culture with global lessons/implications
Lessons from implementations of open/free licensing and distribution models
for specific communities
Definitions of openness and freedom for different media types, users and
communities
Broader sociopolitical, legal and cultural implications of Free Culture
initiatives and peer production practices
Free Culture, Memory Institutions and the broader Public Sector
Open Science/ Research/ Education
Cooperation theory and practice, dynamics of cooperation and competition
Methodological approaches for studying the characteristics, history, impact
or growth of Free Culture
Submission Guidelines

Short essays must be submitted by the given deadline for peer review.
Submission entails a commitment that at least one author will attend the
event in the case of acceptance. Also, authors grant the organizers the
right to publish accepted submissions in the form of online proceedings or a
similar format. In addition, accepted submissions will be automatically
licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license, unless
the authors explicitly state in their submission that they wish to opt out
of this licensing agreement. We
encourage authors to use said license in order to promote open access to
scholarly work, although decisions to opt out will be respected and will not
influence the review process in any way. In any case, authors of accepted
essays cannot opt out from the basic condition that they grant the
organizers the right to publish the essays online. Please submit your short
essay in PDF, Word or plain text format at:
https://www.easychair.org/login.cgi?conf=freeculture2009 (you will need an
easychair account to submit, you can create one on the spot if you don't
already have one).

Organizing Committee

The organizing committee is tasked with setting the basic framework and
agenda for this year's event, coordinating activities before, during, and
after the event, and ensuring that the experience will be valuable for all
participants.
Amar Ashar, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, USA
Yochai Benkler, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, USA
Giorgos Cheliotis, National University of Singapore, Singapore
Juan Carlos De Martin, NEXA Center for Internet and Society, Italy
Terry Fisher, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, USA
Urs Gasser, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, USA
Lawrence Lessig, Harvard University, USA
Colin Maclay, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, USA
Elizabeth Stark, Yale University and iCommons, USA
Prodromos Tsiavos, London School of Economics, UK
Jude Yew, University of Michigan, USA
Jonathan Zittrain, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, USA
Academic Program Committee

The academic program committee comprises senior scholars, recognized thought
leaders and some promising young scholars from around the world. Its main
task will be to assist in the review of submitted manuscripts.
Bodo Balazs, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary
Yochai Benkler, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, USA
Giorgos Cheliotis, National University of Singapore, Singapore
Tyng-Ruey Chuang, Academia Sinica, Taiwan
Juan Carlos De Martin, NEXA Center for Internet & Society, Italy
Melanie Dulong de Rosnay, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Terry Fisher, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, USA
Urs Gasser, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, USA
James Grimmelmann, New York Law School, USA
Herkko Hietanen, Helsinki Institute for Information Technology, Finland
Minjeong Kim, Colorado State University, USA
Mathias Klang, Lund University, Sweden
Karim Lakhani, Harvard University, USA
Ronaldo Lemos, Fundacao Getulio Vargas, Brazil
Lawrence Lessig, Harvard University, USA
Lawrence Liang, Alternative Law Forum, India
John Palfrey, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, USA
Wolf Richter, Oxford University, UK
Anil Samtani, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Jan Philipp Schmidt, UWC/UNU-MERIT, the Netherlands
Elizabeth Stark, Yale University, USA
Alek Tarkowski, University of Warsaw, Poland
Anas Tawileh, Cardiff University, UK
Prodromos Tsiavos, London School of Economics, UK
Ariel Vercelli, Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, Argentina
Jude Yew, University of Michigan, USA
Jonathan Zittrain, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, USA

Note
If you have questions about the event, or wish to be kept updated on this
and related topics, please subscribe to the commons-research mailing list
at: http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-research
(
http://nexa.polito.it/call-participation-free-culture-research-workshop-2009
)
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