New Springer Journal “Quality and User Experience”

In 2016, the Springer journal “Quality and User Experience” was launched (Editors-in-Chief: S. Möller; M. Tscheligi). It presents research on the human experience and quality perception of digital media, telecommunication and Information Communications Technology (ICT) products and interactive services. It explores human-centered and technology-centered approaches and examines a range of perspectives on quality of experience. Coverage includes mobile and pervasive applications, augmented and virtual reality, gaming, video conferencing, telepresence, and video-on-demand. Tactics can be human centered (e.g., to characterize user perceptions) or technology centered (to guide product development). As a result of this research, technologies, products and systems can be evaluated and optimized to provide optimum experience; this optimization process is also targeted by the journal.

The journal promotes integration of knowledge by assembling a range of disciplinary perspectives on experience quality: quality of experience (QoE), user experience (UX), quality management, usability engineering, human-centered design, cognitive processes, subjective audio & video quality assessment, and human-computer interaction.

The journal will encourage and enable first class research from any scientific discipline that contributes to and shows relevance to quality of experience and user experience. Examples include: development of a new metric based on subjective or objective analysis; taxonomies and models to define and explain quality of experience and user experience; relationship to other concepts such as user acceptance or value systems; lab or situated studies delivering insights to specific experience aspects, discussion of influence factors on UX and QoE and their relationships; the significance of time for the dynamics of user experience and quality of experience, relevant insights from different disciplines such as design, psychology, social sciences or material science; research in contextual experiences to capture specific situations including specific domain aspects; tools and frameworks towards the development of next generation experiences; methods to capture, analyze, design and evaluate user experience and quality of experience; user experience research related to special user groups, special needs as well personal differences; insights on the design of experiences from the constructive as well as from the process perspective; experience design approaches and methods; viewpoints on the meaning of experience design; and experience design for specific application domains.  

Please note that QUEX offers permanent free access to all articles published in 2016 and 2017.

More information: http://link.springer.com/journal/41233

Impact factor: Conferences vs. Journals

This week, my boss (Hermann Hellwagner) entered my office with the following paper:

Jilin Chen and Joseph A. Konstan. 2009. Conference paper selectivity and impact. Commun. ACM 53, 6 (June 2009), 79-83. DOI=10.1145/1743546.1743569 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1743546.1743569

Reading the abstract ...

Studying the metadata of the ACM Digital Library (http://www.acm.org/dl), we found that papers in low-acceptance-rate conferences have higher impact than those in high-acceptance-rate conferences within ACM, where impact is measured by the number of citations received. We also found that highly selective conferences—those that accept 30% or less of submissions—are cited at a rate comparable to or greater than ACM Transactions and journals.

... I got confirmation that submitting papers to high-quality conferences is still a good thing and - next to that - I was wondering whether someone has done something similar for the IEEE Computer Society (doing a quick/simple search in CSDL, I couldn't find it).

Many (young) researchers are confronted with the requirement (coming from their institution, Ph.D. supervisor, etc.) submitting papers to journals rather than conferences. This is often justified with the higher impact factor of journals (compared to conferences). Another reason - I think - is that submitting papers to journals is much cheaper than conferences due to travel expenses. However, I believe attending a high-quality conference and presenting a paper there, discussing with other researchers on-site/face-to-face and socializing with them (having dinner etc) is much more worth, specifically when someone enters a new domain (btw. successful journal publications will then follow automatically, no worries).

While I certainly agree with the conclusions from the article mentioned above, I think one important aspect is missing. If

papers in highly selective conferences—acceptance rates of 30% or less—should continue to be treated as first-class research contributions with impact comparable to, or better than, journal papers

then what's the reason of having journal publications (or journals at all ...)? Both conference proceedings and journals are accessible through digital libraries offering search facilities better than the office desk with a huge stack of paper. Thus, having it printed somewhere can no longer be the reason. Ah yes, there was this other issue with the travel expenses which is acknowledged but probably it's worth thinking about new ways of remote participation (e.g., I'm attending ACM MMSys'11 end of February which enables that) or other means of interaction, e.g., through social networks. The latter is something that is currently being explored within the IEEE Computer Society, specifically within Computing Now but also the newly established Special Technical Communities (STCs) as mentioned by Sorel Reisman in his IEEE Computer president's message from January 2011.

By the end of 2011, we'll have launched pilot Special Technical Communities in social networking, cloud computing, gaming, education, software engineering, and green computing.

If you're interested in joining the first one - social networking - please contact me via http://www.computer.org/stcsn.

CfP: Special Issue of MTAP on Semantic Multimedia

Call for Papers: Multimedia Tools and Applications, Springer

*** Special issue on "Semantic Multimedia" ***

Growing amounts of multimedia data of various modalities (video, audio, 3D objects, etc.) make management, distribution of and access to multimedia material ever harder, both for lay and professional users. Novel approaches, bridging the large disparity between descriptors computed automatically from multimedia content and subjectivity and context in user interpretation and interaction, are required. It still needs to be further explored how technologies from different research areas can be used to increase the value of multimedia content, e.g. to assist multimedia representation, analysis and annotation with semantics and knowledge based methods.
This special issue invites high quality contributions addressing related theoretical and practical aspects of semantic multimedia. We especially invite the submission of extended versions of papers presented at the 4th International Conference on Semantic and Digital Media Technologies (SAMT 2009) and at the attached workshops.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
SEMANTIC ANALYSIS OF MULTIMEDIA
- Knowledge assisted multimedia analysis
- Content-based multimedia analysis linked with natural language/speech processing

SEMANTIC RETRIEVAL OF MULTIMEDIA
- Semantic-driven multimedia indexing and retrieval
- Semantic retrieval of 3D objects
- Machine Learning and relevance feedback for finding semantics
- Semantic-driven multimedia content adaptation/summarization

SEMANTIC METADATA MANAGEMENT OF MULTIMEDIA
- Metadata management for multimedia
- Multimedia ontologies and infrastructures
- Standards bridging the multimedia and knowledge domains  

USER INTERFACES FOR SEMANTIC MULTIMEDIA
- Interfaces and personalization for interaction with large multimedia repositories
- Semantic media annotation
- Inference and machine learning for semi-automatic annotation
- Browsing multimedia archives
- Device-specific access to and adaptation of multimedia

SEMANTICS IN VISUALIZATION AND COMPUTER GRAPHICS
- illustrative depiction and rendering
- mapping meaning to presentation content
- smart virtual environments
- supporting knowledge discovery

APPLICATIONS OF SEMANTIC MULTIMEDIA
- Social multimedia tagging
- Context, user, network, semantics-aware media engineering
- Multimedia mash-ups
- Case studies with clear, innovative lessons learned

Important Dates
--------------------------
Submission of papers: 15 February 2010
Submission of final accepted papers: 15 May 2010
Submissions
--------------------------
All the papers should be full journal length versions and follow the guidelines set out by Multimedia Tools and Applications (http://www.springer.com/computer/information+systems/journal/11042).
Submissions should be uploaded to http://mtap.editorialmanager.com choosing "Semantic Multimedia" as article type, no later than February 15, 2010.

Guest Editors
--------------------------
Werner Bailer, JOANNEUM RESEARCH, Austria
Bernard Mérialdo, Eurecom, France
Yiannis Kompatsiaris, ITI, Greece
Tat-Seng Chua, National University of Singapore
The CfP can be found at http://www.samt2009.org/sites/default/files/mtap_cfp_flyer_v1.pdf

Future Internet: Special Issue "Metadata and Markup"

This special issue of the journal Future Internet seeks papers reporting high quality theoretical or practical work on Metadata and Markup. As data about data, metadata describes information about documents, events, locations or people but also addresses qualitative aspects, language, and include information about context or conditions of use. It may be used for naming, describing, cataloguing, and indication ownership of a resource. Metadata helps to facilitate the understanding and the management of data objects. While the metadata describes characteristics about the data, the markup identifies the specific type of data content and acts as a container for that document instance. Mark-up languages allow for the inclusion of many types of metadata ranging from simple dates or keywords up to highly-granular information such as Dublin Core or e-GMS.

We are looking for high-quality, original papers on any aspect of Metadata and Markup including topics such as standards for supporting knowledge markup, e.g., RDFa, microformats, GRDDL, multimedia annotation (e.g., by using MPEG-7), collaborative, shared tagging and annotation, semantic annotation in Semantic Wikis, semantic authoring and publishing, document engineering, deriving semantics from document structure and content, ontology-based authoring and markup, knowledge markup in the Semantic Web, using semantic annotations to define knowledge, integrated software architecture based on semantic annotation, annotation of software components, linguistic aspects of semantic annotations, text mining for creating knowledge markup, mining semantic information from blogs, forums or news sources, collaborative, shared tagging and annotation, evaluation of annotation frameworks, deriving formal semantics from (flat or hierarchical) tagging systems, vocabularies and ontologies for semantic authoring and annotation, tools for supporting knowledge markup, semantic annotation, sematic authoring, etc.

Andreas Dengel, Ph. D.
Guest Editor

Submission Information

All papers should be submitted to futureinternet@mdpi.org. To be published continuously until the deadline and papers will be listed together at the special issue website.

Submitted papers should not have been published nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere. All papers are refereed through a peer-review process. A guide for authors is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Future Internet is a new international, peer-reviewed, quarterly open access journal published by Molecular Diversity Preservation International (MDPI).

Open Access publication is free of charge in the first few issues to be published in 2009.

Keywords

• metadata and the web
• semantics, semantic web
• metadata capture and creation
• metadata lifecycle
• metadata schemes and ontologies
• defition of metadata

Second and Final Call (Till May 30) Virtual Worlds: Technology, Economy, and Standards (Journal of Virtual Worlds Research)

Second and Final Call (Till May 30) Virtual Worlds: Technology, Economy, and Standards (Journal of Virtual Worlds Research)

All the deadlines and technical details are listed here: www.metaverse-labs.com/tes

This is the second and final call for submission for the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Vol 2 Issue 3 on the theme of Virtual Worlds: Technology, Economy, and Standards

In this special issue we are looking to examine the often hidden relations between technology, economy, and standards in the specific field of Virtual Worlds.

Second Call quick deadlines. (see all details here)

30-May-2009 – You submit an updated or new abstract.
15-Jun-2009 – We send initial response.
All the deadlines and technical detailes are listed here: www.metaverse-labs.com/tes

Issue Editors
Dr. Yesha Y. Sivan, Metaverse-Labs Ltd. and Shenkar College
J.H.A. (Jean) Gelissen, Philips Research
Prof. Robert Bloomfield, Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University
From the first call we got (and tentativly accapted) papers re:
Langauge Standards in virtual worlds.
What technology and standards we need for virtual labratories.
The economy of Piracy vs Control: Various Models of Virtual World Governance and their impact on Player Experience
Virtual Worlds Standards : do we need them?
World of Warcraft, AOL, and the Disneyization of a Niche Market
Payback of Mining Activities Within Entropia Universe.
Measuring aggregate production in a virtual economy using log data.
Virtual Worlds standards: view from the trenches (of someone who is doing it).
and more... (Note: All first call authors were notified already).
Format
We are relatively open re the abstract format:
Make it 1-3 pages (1 full page in condense form is fine... but do not limit yourself).
Use the first page to tell us the gist of your submission
what is the format ("full research papers, research-in-brief papers, “think-pieces,” essays, monographs, interactive online exhibits with accompanying detailed descriptions, and other forms of scholarship).
Try to answer how your proposed work relates to the concepts of Technology, Economy, and Standards.
List other relevant papers or theories.
Try to share what is unique about this submission.
Overview
We assume that:
1. Virtual Worlds are destined to become big; big in the sense of meaningful, influential, and making money for various current and new players. Every aspect of our lives will be affected by virtual worlds. Beyond being another media, Virtual Worlds will be part of our regular lives, they are going to enhance, improve, and better our quality of life. Much like the internet, virtual worlds will allow us to do “traditional” things more effectively, and do other things anew.

2. Real Virtual Worlds are defined as an integration of four factors: 3D view of the world Community, Creation, and Commerce (AKA 3D3C). The more we have of these factors the closer we get to real virtual worlds. In that sense IMVU, Second Life, and Entropia are more Real Virtual Worlds than Club Penguin, World of Warcraft, and SIMS on-line.

3. “Standards” as a concept and mechanism are often misunderstood. People often link standards with competing concepts: open and free on one hand and propriety patents, limitation of creativity on the other hand. Like many other human constructs, standards are not inherently good or bad – what you do with a standard gives them value: be it good or bad.

4. Currently the virtual worlds industry operates more like the Computer Gaming Industry than like the internet industry. Each developer, be it private (e.g., Linden, Forterra) or an open source (e.g., Sun Darkstar, OpenSim) is developing its own server, client, and rules of engagement. The inherent rationale of these efforts is a combination of “we know best” and “we will conquer the world.” While this may be the case (see Microsoft Windows, Apple iPod, or Google search), the common public good calls for a connected system like the internet, where different forces can innovate in particular spots of the value chain.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):
Specific standards or family of standards that can impact virtual worlds.
Economic analysis of specific standards for specific firms.
Discussion on Privacy, Authentication, and related issue (for example Open ID).
Legal Aspects of virtual worlds that can be set in the technical specs.
Review of relevant technology platforms, their pros, and cons.
Case studies of large-scale standardization efforts (Windows, Linux, GSM) and the lesson learned from them to virtual worlds.
Visions of the virtual world’s universal access system (network and station).
Comparing related terms such as working code, for and not-for-profit efforts, open source, formal systems.
Key places were standards matter (looking for the mouse and windows of virtual worlds) in other words the interfaces to and from the real (physical) world.
Economic analysis of various externalities in the field.
Winning stories of standards in the field (be it private, public, open, etc).
Example of wrong standards, failed standards, and other things to learn from.
Short term winnings (VRML) vs. Long term value.
What do we need to add to current standards so they will be used in virtual worlds (ISBN 3D? OpenID3D? etc).
The impact of open standards on close systems (Android); the impact of propriety technology (iPhone).
Connection various legal formats (GPL, LGPL) and new technologies (i.e., Grid/cloud for virtual worlds).
Spirit
The editors of this issue specifically encourage short papers on specific examples (past, present, or future). If you need to use Jargon or acronyms please spell them and explain. Assume the readers are versed with various aspects of virtual worlds and not necessary with economy, technology or standards. The link to real virtual worlds should be clearly spelled. Papers will influence the development of MPEG-V (the official ISO effort to develop global standards between real and virtual worlds.

Guidelines and Deadlines
We welcome submissions in the form of full research papers, research-in-brief papers, “think-pieces,” essays, monographs, interactive online exhibits with accompanying detailed descriptions, and other forms of scholarship.

All the deadlines and technical detailes are listed here: www.metaverse-labs.com/tes