CALL FOR PAPERS: 'SOCIO-TECHNICAL DYNAMICS IN THE FREE/LIBRE OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE (FLOSS) SOCIAL WOR

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Call for Papers for a special issue 'Socio-technical Dynamics in the Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) Social World' in the journal

 Science Studies, an Interdisciplinary Journal for Science andTechnology Studies (http://www.sciencestudies.fi/), to be published autumn 2007

The development of Free/Libre Open Source Software not only intrigues computer scientists to review processes and methods in software engineering, but also stimulates social scientists to look into what have become a mythical phenomenon of our digital era. Questions around how distributed groups of individuals work together in an on-line environment, seemingly without formal ties, to produce high-quality software that acquire cross-sector acceptance continue to puzzle social scientists. Over the past years, anthropologists, economist, historians, lawyers, philosophers, and sociologists have tried to provide various explanations to the phenomenon of on-line social networking, on-line collaboration and on-line knowledge creation and sharing (i.e. common-based peer production). However, the existing body of literature on FLOSS faces a bottleneck, namely that of lacking a STS-inspired empirical investigation of the multiplicity of FLOSS-practices. Here, we try to raise some provocative questions: What kind of questions do FLOSS-practices and networks pose to STS? And does STS really possess theoretical tools that are good enough to analyse the FLOSS development? Might it be that the materiality ? and the immateriality ? of code needs theoretical and methodological contributions from other fields in social sciences such as politics and economics (such as network effects, lock in and abstract objects)? But then, that challenge is also bidirectional: How does the theoretical vocabularies and the empirical methods of STS add something new to the more economical understandings of FLOSS?

This special issue aims to meet these theoretical and methodological challenges in both FLOSS and STS studies. It does so by encouraging research based on qualitative research methodologies and methods. Such a qualitative inquiry challenges the universally vocal and normative way of depicting FLOSS culture and practices (e.g. a homogeneous gift-giving and volunteering culture). The special issue will take a practice-based view to exploring multiple cultures and practices in developing, localizing, appropriating, commodifying, customizing FLOSS. The issue would also like to address the diversity in FLOSS communities through asking how seemingly global FLOSS culture is translated (un)successfully into different contexts and locales.

We believe that this issue will demystify several stereotypes and misunderstandings about FLOSS and shed light on many emerging and changing cultural and socio-technical practices in our digital society and knowledge driven economies. Thinking reciprocally, we would also like to allow peculiar im/materialities of FLOSS practices challenge the way STS has traditionally dealt with socio-technical networks.

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Instructions to authors
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Manuscripts in English in any area relevant to the special issue should be submitted electronically to the guest editor Yuwei Lin <yuwei{at}ylin.org and Lars Risan <lars.risan{at}tik.uio.no. You will normally receive an acknowledgement within a few days. Please provide email addresses for all authors.

Papers, no exceeding 10,000 words including notes, references and abstract, are accepted in electronic format, with Open Document Text (.odt) or OpenOffice.org 1.0 Text Document (.sxw) being the preferred formats (other formats are acceptable by prior arrangement). Files should not be security protected, and should be anonymised. The editors reserve the right to make the style of presentation uniform prior to publication, whilst making every effort not to alter the content of an article. Paper submission will be acknowledged via email. Subsequent enquiries concerning paper progress should be made to the guest editor Yuwei Lin <yuwei{at}ylin.org and Lars Risan <lars.risan{at}tik.uio.no.

For details of preparation of the manuscript, see the Science Studies Journal website http://www.sciencestudies.fi/?q=authors/#preparationofmanuscripts and http://www.sciencestudies.fi/authors.

Important dates:

October 29, 2006: full paper submissions to guest editors. January 15, 2007: Guest editors and authors complete manuscripts and round robin referee each other?s articles. February 7, 2007: Guest editors submit a complete set of articles to
Science Studies for review. Science Studies may return articles for revision if needed before sending to outside referees.
April 25: Deadline for referee reports to be sent back to Science Studies. Reports and decisions sent to authors and guest editors. August 22: Final Copy Due