Apologies for Cross Posting +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 4th International Conference on e-Social Science Manchester, June 18th-20th, 2008 Initial Announcement and Call for Submissions The aim of the conference on e-Social Science is to bring together leading international representatives of the social science, e- Infrastructure/cyberinfrastructure and e-Research communities in order to improve mutual awareness, harmonize understanding and instigate coordinated activities to accelerate research, development and deployment of powerful, new research methods and tools for the social sciences and beyond. We invite contributions from members of the social science, e- Infrastructure/cyberinfrastructure and e-Research communities with experience of, or interests in: 1) exploring, developing, and applying new methods, practices, and tools afforded by new infrastructure technologies - such as the Grid and Web 2.0 - in order to further social science research; and 2) studying issues impacting on the wider take-up of e- Research. Submission categories include: full and short papers, posters, demos, workshops, tutorials and panels. Topics of interest include, but are not restricted to, the following: Case studies of the application of e-Social Science research methods to substantive social science problems Case studies of (e-)Research and (e-)Social Science research practices, including benefits and challenges of collaboration (both small and large scale) across disciplinary and geographical boundaries Advances in tools and techniques for quantitative and qualitative e-Social Science, including statistical analysis, simulation, data mining, text mining, social network analysis and collaborative environments Infrastructure and services for e-Social Science, including data collection, discovery, sharing and integration, standards for metadata, ontologies, annotation, curation Enabling new sources and forms of sociological data through e-Social Science, including ethical issues and challenges in the collection, integration, sharing and analysis of sociological and other personal data The e-Research technical roadmap, including grids, web 2.0 and their future (co-evolution) Socio-technical issues in the development of e-Research, including usability challenges for the design of research tools and middleware, factors influencing the wider adoption and sustainability of e- Infrastructure Submission Guidelines To submit a paper, workshop, panel or demo, you must first register at the submission website and then follow the instructions. Please indicate the category of your submission: long paper (10 pages), short paper (6 pages), poster, workshop, panel or demo. Demo submissions should include a statement of technical requirements. Authors of papers (long and short) and posters must submit an abstract of approximately 1000-1500 words. Workshop, demo, tutorial and panel organisers must submit a one page outline of the topic, format, likely audience, special requirements. Submissions (paper and poster abstracts, workshop, panel and demo outlines) will be subject to independent review and a final decision will be made by the conference programme committee. Authors of submissions not accepted as long papers may be invited to submit a short paper or poster instead. Paper authors will be informed of the programme committee’s decision during the week commencing 17th March, 2008. Workshop, panel, poster and demo authors will be informed of the programme committee's decision during the week commencing 7th April 2008. Accepted long and short papers will be published in the conference proceedings. Templates for the camera-ready copies of long and short papers are available here Guidelines for posters and demos will be available in due course. Submission Deadlines Paper abstracts: February 11th, 2008. Workshop, tutorial and panel outlines: February 22nd, 2008. Poster and demo abstracts: March 21st, 2008. Final versions of long and short papers: 16th May 2008