Call for abstracts: RefResh Workshop @ SocInfo 2020

Apologies for cross-posting.

==== Call for Extended Abstracts ====
2nd Workshop on Reframing Research (RefResh 2020) at the 12th International Conference on Social Informatics (SocInfo 2020)

Date: 6th October 2020
Venue: Pisa, Italy (COVID updates may follow. It should be possible to attend online.)
Twitter: https://twitter.com/refreshworkshop
Twitter Hashtag: #RefResh20
More information at https://refresh20.infrascience.isti.cnr.it<https://refresh20.infrascience.isti.cnr.it/>
Contact: refresh20@easychair.org<mailto:refresh20@easychair.org>


# IMPORTANT DATES
- Submission deadline: 15th August 2020, 23:59 Anywhere on Earth (UTC-12)
- Notification of acceptance: 31st August 2020


#OVERVIEW
Over the last decade, research scaled up tremendously in terms of publications, research data, authors, contributing institutions, projects, and funding opportunities. Nowadays scientific progress, with its estimated 250 million literature corpus, promoted research to a multifaceted, high-frequency, global-scale phenomenon that can be approached computationally thanks to the vast amount of data available.
It is therefore of paramount importance to study such an articulated, evolving system in order to understand its dynamics, patterns, internal equilibria, and interactions among the diverse scientific actors and entities. In particular, recent studies have proved that a holistic study of research as a complex phenomenon inserted in a delicate socioeconomic and geopolitical context, rather than as an isolated, context-unaware system, can provide a deeper understanding on how research and researchers influence and are influenced by the world outside academia.


# DESCRIPTION
The main objective of the workshop is to bring together researchers from both quantitative and qualitative studies, practitioners and policy-makers working in the field of academic research, scholarly communication, and knowledge production in order to reframe research in relation to the underlying socioeconomic and geopolitical canvas. In particular, we intend to encourage interdisciplinary analysis that considers research as a complex system that influences and is influenced by society, economics, culture, and politics. This would include (computational) analysis of academic social networks and interactions among different communities, exploration of factors influencing or preventing scientific collaboration and knowledge dissemination, exploration of trends, polarisations and biases in research, methodologies, indicators and measures for assessing research impact on society and industry, policies and practices fostering better scientific progress, and so on.


# TOPICS OF INTEREST
We encourage the submission of extended abstracts covering, but not limited to, one or more of the following topics:
- Mutual influence of research, industry, politics, and society
- The societal impact of research
- Research equality, fair opportunities and access to funding streams
- Gender, racial, geographical trends and biases
- Analysis of researchers mobility and careers trajectories
- Predatory publishing and bogus conferences
- Misrepresentation of science and public opinion mining
- Research and fake (scientific) news
- Acceleration of scientific progress
- Structure and evolution of research
- Evolution and diffusion of research concepts across research areas
- Impact of interdisciplinary research
- Analysis of patterns and trends in academia
- Application and analysis of the FAIR data principles
- Impact of Open Access and Open Science mandates
- Policymaking and strategic decisions for research
- Traditional publishing caveat, critiques and alternative models
- Novel peer review practices
- Tools for exploring and analysing research dynamics


# SUBMISSIONS
RefResh 2020 looks for extended abstracts around the listed topics summarising the work to be presented.
We encourage researchers also to submit extended abstracts of work that has already been published and/or submit work in progress.
Research, data and position papers are welcome.
Submissions have to be up to 3 pages (in English) including references, tables and figures in Springer LNCS format (available at http://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-guidelines).
Extended abstracts have to be submitted as PDF files through EasyChair conference management system at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=refresh20.
The extended abstracts will be evaluated according to their significance, originality, technical content, style, clarity, and relevance to the workshop.
RefResh workshop also supports the Linked Research principles; we applaud authors having the care to consider them when preparing their manuscripts.
We intend to publish the accepted abstracts on the workshop website and as an Open Access post-print collection on Zenodo (https://zenodo.org<https://zenodo.org/>).


# REGISTRATION
The acceptance notification of the workshop is aligned with the conference registration. If an abstract is accepted, at least one author must register for SocInfo and present it during the RefResh 2020 workshop.


Andrea Mannocci
Francesco Osborne
Paolo Manghi
(RefResh 2020 chairs)