OpenSym 2017 Program Published

A few hours ago, OpenSym 2017 kicked off in Galway. For those that don’t know, OpenSym is the International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration (it was called WikiSym until 2014). Its the premier academic venue focused on research on wikis, open collboration, and peer production.

This year, Claudia Müller-Birn and I served as co-chairs of the academic program. Acting as program chair for an ACM conference like OpenSym is more like being a journal editor than a conference organizer. Claudia and I drafted and publicized a call for papers, recruited Associate Chairs and members of a program committee who would review papers and make decisions, coordinated reviews and final decisions, elicited author responses, sent tons of email to notify everybody about everything, and dealt with problems as they came up. It was a lot of work! With the schedule set, and the proceedings now online, our job is officially over!

OpenSym reviewed 43 papers this year and accepted 20 giving the conference a 46.5% acceptance rate. This is similar to both the number of submissions and the acceptance rates for previous years.

In addition to papers, we received 3 extended abstracts for posters for the academic program and accepted 1. There were an additional 7 promising papers that were not accepted but whose authors were invited to present posters and who will be doing so at the conference. The authors of posters will have extended abstracted about their posters published in the non-archival companion proceedings.

The list of papers being published and presented at OpenSym includes:

• What do Wikidata and Wikipedia have in common? An analysis of their use of external references by Alessandro Piscopo (University of Southampton), Pavlos Vougiouklis (University of Southampton), Lucie-Aimee Kaffee (University of Southampton), Christopher Phethean (University of Southampton), Jonathon Hare (University of Southampton), Elena Simperl (University of Southampton)
• On the Relationship between Newcomer Motivations and Contribution Barriers in Open Source Projects by Christoph Hannebauer (Universitat Duisburg-Essen), Volker Gruhn (Universitat Duisburg-Essen)
• How are Open Source Practices Possible within a Medical Diagnostics Company? Developing and Testing a Maturity Model of Inner Source Implementation by Remo Eckert (University of Bern), Sathya Kay Meyer (University of Bern), Matthias Stuermer (University of Bern)
• An end-to-end learning solution for assessing quality of Wikipedia articles by Quang-Vinh Dang (University de Lorraine), Claudia-Lavinia Ignat (INRIA)
• Before the Sense of ‘We’: Identity Work as a Bridge from Mass Collaboration to Group Emergence by Arto Lanamaki (Interact Research Unit, University of Oulu), Juho Lindman (University of Gothenburg / Chalmers)
• Opening up New Channels for Scholarly Review, Dissemination, and Assessment by Edit Gorogh (University of Gottingen), Michela Vignoli (Austrian Institute of Technology Vienna), Eleni Toli (University of Athens), Electra Sifacaki (University of Athens), Peter Kraker (Know Center), Hasani-Mavriqi (Know Center), Stephan Gauch (German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies [DZHW]), Daniela Luzi (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche Rome), Mappet Walker (Frontiers), Clemens Blümel (German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies [DZHW] & Humboldt University Berlin)
• Everyday Creativity on a University Campus: Crafting a Challenge to Journey Beyond the Formal by Sally McHugh (NUI Galway), Fiona Concannon (NUI Galway), Tony Hall (NUI Galway)
• Implementing Federated Social Networking: Report from the Trenches by Gabriel Dos Santos Silva (University of Brasilia), Paulo Meirelles (LOSS Competence Center, University of San Paulo Larissa Reis (Colivre), Antonio Terceiro (Colivre), Fabio Kon (FLOSS Competence Center, University of San Paulo
• On Licensing and Other Conditions for Contributing to Widely Used Open Source Projects: An Exploratory Analysis by Jonas Gamalielsson (University of Skovde), Bjorn Lundell (University of Skovde)
• SMW Based VRE for Addressing Multi-Layered Data Analysis:The Use Case of Classroom Interaction Interpretation by Cornelia Veja (German Institute for International Educational Research [DIPF]), Kendra Sticht (University of Munster), Christoph Schindler (German Institute for International Educational Research [DIPF]), Helge Kminek (Goethe University Frankfurt)
• Social Identity and Social Media Activities in Equity Crowdfunding by Sean Nevin (University College Cork), Rob Gleasure (University College Cork), Philip O’Reilly (University College Cork), Joseph Feller (University College Cork), Shanping Li (Zhejiang University), Jerry Cristoforo (State Street Corporation
• QueryShare: Working Together to Facilitate Exploratory Multimedia Searches without Skill in Creating by Masahiro Hamasaki (National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology), Masataka Goto (National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology)
• Exploring the Application of Blockchain Technology to Combat the Effects of Social Loafing in Cross Functional Group Projects by Kevin O’Leary (University College Cork), Philip O’Reilly (University College Cork), Joseph Feller (University College Cork), Rob Gleasure (University College Cork), Shanping Li (Zhejiang University), Jerry Cristoforo (State Street Corporation)
• A Glimpse into Babel: An Analysis of Multilingualism in Wikidata by Lucie-Aimee Kaffee (University of Southampton), Alessandro Piscopo (University of Southampton), Pavlos Vougiouklis (University of Southampton), Elena Simperl (University of Southampton), Leslie Carr (University of Southampton), Lydia Pintscher (Wikimedia Deutschland)
• The Lives and Deaths of Open Source Code Forge by Megan Squire (Elon University)
• Brazilian Public Software Portal: An Integrated Platform for Collaborative Development by Paulo Meirelles (University of Brasilia), Hilmer Rodrigues Neri (Universidade de Brasilia), Antonio Terceiro (Colivre), Melissa Wen (Colivre), Rodrigo Siqueira (University of San Paulo), Lucas Kanashiro (University of San Paulo)
• Understanding Organization and Open Source Community Relations through the Attraction-Selection-Attrition Model by Georg J.P. Link (University of Nebraska at Omaha), Debora Jeske (University College Cork)
• The Many Hats and the Broken Binoculars: State of the Practice in Developer Community Management by Hanna Maenpaa (Helsinki University), Fabian Fagerholm (Helsinski University), Myriam Munezero (Helsinki University), Tommi Mikkonen (Helsinki University)
• Interpolating Quality Dynamics in Wikipedia and Demonstrating the Keilana Effect by Aaron Halfaker (Wikimedia Foundation)
• Open Educational Practices in Higher Education by Catherine Cronin (NUI Galway) [Author elected for presentation without archival publication.]

The following extended abstracts for posters will be published in the companion to the proceedings:

• Current and alternate approaches to personalization in online learning by Debora Jeske (University College Cork), Mammed Bagher (Edinburgh Napier University), Nadia Pantidi (University College Cork)
• An Author Network to Classify Open Online Discussions by Mattias Mano (i3-Centre de Recherches en Gestion, Ecole Polytechnique), Jean-Michel Dalle (University Pierre et Marie Curie), Joanna Tomasik (Centrale Supelec)
• How is Value Created within an Inner Source Environment? by Noel Carroll (University of Limerick)
• Open Peer Review CMS Support by Oliver Zendel (Austrian Institute of Technology), Matthias Schorghuber (Austrian Institute of Technology), Michela Vignoli (Austrian Institute of Technology)
• Managing Risk in Business Centric Crowdfunding Platforms by Peter Stack (University College Cork), Joe Feller (University College Cork), Phil O’Reilly (University College Cork), Rob Gleasure (University College Cork), Shanping Li (Zhejiang University), Jerry Cristoforo (State Street Corporation)
• Stick or Twist: Balancing Blockchain Decentralisation and Miner Pooling by David Sheehan (University College Cork), Rob Gleasure (University College Cork), Joe Feller (University College Cork), Shanping Li (Zheijiang University), Jerry Cristiforo (State Street)
• Sharing Knowledge about Open Source Licenses at DLR by Andreas Schreiber (German Aerospace Center), Carina Haupt (German Aerospace Center)
• When to Use Rewards in Charitable Crowdfunding by Stephen Warren (University College Cork), Rob Gleasure (University College Cork), Philip O’Reilly (University College Cork), Joseph Feller (University College Cork), Shanping Li (Zheijang University), Jerry Christoforo (State Street Corporation)

There was also a doctoral consortium and a non-academic ”industry track” which Claudia and I weren’t involved in coordinating.

As part of running the program, we tried a bunch of new things this year including:

• A move away from separate tracks back to a singlec combined model with Associate Chairs.
• Bidding for papers among both Associate Chairs and normal PC members.
• An author rebuttal/response period where authors got to respond to reviews and reviewers.
• An elimination of page limits for papers. This meant that the category of notes also disappeared. Reviewers were instructed to evaluate the degree to which papers’ contributions were commensurate to their length.

I’m working on a longer post that will evaluate these changes. Until then, enjoy Galway if you were lucky enough to be there. If you couldn’t make it, enjoy the proceedings online!

You can learn more about OpenSym on it’s Wikipedia article on the OpenSym website. You can find details on the schedule and the program itself at its temporary home on the OpenSym website. I’ll update this page with a link to the ACM Digital Library page when it gets posted.