Friday 1 August 2014

Big Data & Society - Early Career Researcher Forum

As part of its effort to expand beyond traditional types of academic publication, Big Data & Society has introduced an Early Career Researcher Forum targeted to scholars finishing or having recently completed advanced graduate degrees.  More specifically the ECR forum seeks work by researchers reflecting about some of the challenges of their work (related to Big Data topics) in about 1000 to 2000 words with a range of illustrations, figures, etc. as well as a brief bio (100 words).  The goal is to encourage reflexive submissions that explore what it means to be a researcher studying issues concerning big data and society.  As guidance we ask authors to consider a series of questions (addressing any or all of these):
  • What kinds of challenges empirically and/or methodologically have you encountered in your work?
  • Do you have an example of these challenges, particularly one that can be shared in an online forum such as the journal offers, i.e., with visualizations, graphs, etc.?
  • Does Big Data allow you to ask new questions or explore old issues?
  • Are there questions that your data can not answer? Why? What else is necessary?
  • Why is your research important and interesting?
  • How do you relate back to your home discipline, and do your colleagues understand you?
In addition to targeted submissions, the Early Career Researcher forum accepts unsolicited contributions and encourages those who are interested to correspond with the co-editors (Irina Shklovski and Matthew Zook) for guidance.