End of June seems to be the conference date in 2012. After Olga pointed to the Call for Papers to this year’s SASE conference in Boston, I am happy to announce the Call for Paper for the “Wikipedia Academy 2012: Research and Free Knowledge” taking place in Berlin June 29 to July 1, 2012. To some degree, this conference resembles the “Free Culture Research Conference” held in 2010 (see also: “Retrospect” and “Conference Documentation“), in that it tries to gather researchers of different disciplines working on free knowledge in general and Wikipedia in particular.

The Wikipedia Academy is hosted by the Alexander on Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, Freie Universitaet Berlin, and Wikimedia Germany. Extended abstracts can be submitted by March 31 (see Submission Process). Topics of interest are:

Wikipedia Analytics

  • Wikis and Wikipedia as a research tool
  • Analyzing Wikipedia as a source of “Big Data”
  • Assessing and measuring the quality of Wikipedia articles

Wikipedia Global

  • Relations and Differences between different Wikipedia language versions
  • Differences between and critique of free/open knowledge ideologies
  • Regional studies of Wikipedia and free knowledge with global lessons

Sharing Cultures and Practices

  • Sharing culture(s) in Wikipedia and other projects of commons-based peer production
  • Incentives, innovation and community dynamics in open collaborative peer production
  • Wiki theory and wiki practices

Research on Users of and Contributors to Wikipedia

  • Diversity among users of and contributors to Wikipedia
  • Influencing participation by adapting user interfaces in open collaborative settings
  • Using information visualization as information instrument to users and contributors

Economic and Regulatory Aspects of Free Knowledge

  • Economic, regulatory and societal implications of (increased) access to free knowledge
  • Different Modes of Governance: Emergence of Order and Coordination in Wikipedia
  • The role of licensing decisions for Wikipedia and other collaborative forms of knowledge production

(leonhard)