Call For Papers

About the Conference

Held in cooperation with ACM SIGCHI and ACM SIGCAS, ICTD2012 will provide an international forum for scholarly researchers exploring the role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in social, political, and economic development. The conference program and accepted papers will reflect and deepen the multidisciplinary nature of ICTD research, with anticipated representation from anthropology, computer science, communication, design, economics, electrical engineering, geography, information science, political science, public health, sociology, and so on.

Submitted papers are subject to a rigorous and selective double-blind peer review; accepted papers will appear in electronic conference proceedings and will be archived in the ACM digital library. A subset of the papers will also appear in a special issue of Information Technologies & International Development.

ICTD2012 is the fifth of an ongoing series of conferences occurring every one-and-a-half years; previous conferences have taken place in: Berkeley, CA (USA) ICTD 2006; Bangalore (India) ICTD 2007; Doha (Qatar) ICTD 2009; and London (United Kingdom) ICTD 2010.

For the purposes of this conference the term “ICT” comprises electronic technologies for information processing and communication, as well as platforms that are built on such technologies. “Development” means international development, including, but not restricted to, poverty alleviation, education, agriculture, healthcare, general communication, gender equality, governance, infrastructure, environment and sustainable livelihoods. Papers considering novel designs, new technologies, project assessments, policy analyses, impact studies, theoretical contributions, social issues around ICT and development, and so forth will be considered. Well-analyzed negative results from which generalizable conclusions can be drawn are also sought.

Relevant papers reporting high-quality original research are solicited. Full papers will be reviewed by a multidisciplinary panel, and evaluated according to their novel research contribution, methodological soundness, theoretical framing and reference to related work, quality of analysis, and quality of writing and presentation. Authors are encouraged (but not required) to address the diversity of approaches in ICTD research by providing context, implications, and actionable guidance to researchers and practitioners beyond the authors’ primary domains.

Only original, unpublished, full research papers in English will be considered. Submissions not meeting a minimum bar of academic research writing will be rejected without full review. Papers should contain a maximum of 8000 words. Reviews are double blind, so papers should not include author names or other information that would identify the authors (references to previous work by the authors should be in the third person).

Papers must uploaded by the deadline, July 22, 2011 (11:59pm UTC). Papers should contain a maximum of 8000 words. Formatting instructions and links to the upload page can be found at the conference submissions page. Authors will be required to sign a copyright release for publication in the conference proceedings.

Authors of top rated papers, as determined by the reviewers, will be invited to give a plenary talk. Authors of the remaining highly rated papers will be invited to give a poster. Papers accompanying plenary presentations and posters will appear in separate sections in the proceedings. Thus while all papers in the proceedings should be considered full length and peer reviewed conference papers, authors may wish to note that for plenary presentations the accept rate will be calculated as (plenary presentations/all submissions), while for poster presentations the accept rate will be calculated as (all accepted papers/all submissions).