AIM:
Social sciences are moving in a direction in which their various constituent parts are sharing a common set of foundations, languages and platforms, which makes the social sciences be unprecedentedly behavioral, algorithmic and computational. At the turn of the 21st century, a group of computer scientists and social scientists worked together to initiate new series of conferences and to establish new academic organizations to give momentum to this emerging integration now known as computational social sciences.

Among the largest of such conferences, WCSS is sponsored by the three regional scientific associations on social simulations: ESSA (the European Social Simulation Association), PAAA (Pacific Asian Association for Agent-based Approach in Social Systems Sciences) and CSSS (Computational Social Science Society, US). It aims at bringing together researchers and practitioners from diverse fields on social simulations, whether theoretical, experimental, practical, or technical, to present the latest results of various researches and to discuss emergent phenomena and modeling issues of a variety of research subjects related to social simulations, which will provide further understanding on social complex problems.


TOPIC:
We invite special sessions of topics include, but are not limited to:

1. Tools and methods:
   • Programming computational frameworks
   • Simulation experiment software
   • Role playing games and social simulation
   • Social Simulation and Laboratory Experiments
   • Socially inspired software applications (peer-to-peer, distributed trust etc.)
   • Model replication and validation
   • Advanced computing technologies (e.g. the grid) and social simulation
2. Theory:
   • Social Processes of Science
   • Methods, Algorithms, and Data
3. Applications of Agent-based Modeling:
   • Social Norms
   • Social Complexity
   • Policy issues
   • Emergence of social structures and norms
   • Trust and norm dynamics, reputation
   • Social conflict and cooperation
   • Market dynamics and consumer behaviour
   • Integrated social/physical modeling for environmental policy
   • Resource management and environmental practices
   • Social networks and their dynamics
   • Information and opinion dynamics
   • Computational Organization Theory
   • Group decisions and collective behaviors
   • Emergence and evolution of institutions
   • Innovation diffusion
   • Societal transitions
   • Industry and economy issues

The proposal of a special session, with a maximum of 500 words, has to be submitted to the program chair Chung-Ching Tai at [log in to unmask], no later than April 1, 2012. The decision will be made within two weeks. Once approved, the special session call will be announced on the website. The organizer(s) will have their own committee to review the paper submitted to the special session(s), and then make acceptance decisions and prepare their own program in due course. Normally, each session should have a minimum of three papers and a maximum of five papers. The following information should be included in the proposal:

• Title of proposed session
• An introduction stating the importance of the topic and the rationale for the proposed session.
• Short biography of the Special Session organizer(s)

The registration fee for the special session organizer is waived. All papers accepted and presented in the special sessions will be treated equally in terms of the post-conference publication opportunities.


IMPORTANT DATES:
April 1, 2012: Special session, workshop, and tutorial proposal deadline
May 1, 2012: Paper submission deadline
June 16, 2012: Paper acceptance notification
July 06, 2012: Early registration deadline
July, 24, 2012: Camera-ready copies of accepted papers due
September 4-7, 2012: Conference Dates


POST-PROCEEDINGS:
A series of WCSS proceedings have been and will be published by Springer as a consequence of the successful WCSS2006, WCSS2008, and WCSS2010. Outstanding submissions presented in WCSS2012 will also be selected to be published as book chapters in the WCSS proceedings.