Calls for papers

 

International Journal of Web Based Communities

 

Special Issue on: "Web Communities for Giving"

Guest Editor:
Dr. Gaetano La Russa, University of Eastern Finland

In general, fundraising is more than a social activity in which the wealthier are asked to donate part of their wealth to the benefit of other physical or social entities. Fundraising has become (consciously or not) a complementary socio-political approach by which individuals, groups or corporations develop strategies to approach and remedy specific and/or general problems in the sectors of poverty, health, education, development, demographic unbalance, migration and so on. The professionalism of fundraisers and their understanding of the reasons that lie behind the success or failure of their raising money strategies dictate not only the support dimension to the final beneficiaries of their campaigns but also the survival of the fundraising organisations themselves.

Despite a fundraising world yearly turnover that has surpassed half a trillion dollars, the need for investments and intervention remains high. Non-government organisations (NGOs) have been encouraged by governments and super-state international organisations into taking an active role to tackle poverty, support health care and assist in human migrations and dislocations. The potentiality that the web possess to enable fundraisers and NGOs to reach people, provide services, collect and organise resources has recently put a focus on the empowering means for the web-communities for giving.

The potential communication role that the web has proven to play for the communities has attracted the interests of both raising as consolidating fundraising organisations. In attempts to become e-based efficient magnets for givers, efforts and resources have been invested into creating attractive motivational web sites. Failures and short-coming results have highlighted the need for studies and deep insights to attempt defining some sort of sectorial guidelines to the use of researchers, fundraisers, non-profit organisations and governmental officers. As an attempt to creating an objective analysis and perspective considerations of the web-communities for giving we endeavour gathering top scientist and sector representatives’ know-how and shed light on this crucial issue.

Subject Coverage
Suitable topics include, but are not limited, to the following:

• Social planning and web design
• The psychology of representation data
• Strategic investment in social media
• Web architectures for fundraisers
• Web architectures and simplification
• Graphic representations and tools for interactivity
• Network revolutions and interacting services
• Reality through virtual reality
• Cognition in online giving
• Monitoring trends in social media
• Collaborative technologies for strategy planning
• Design of online systems for motivational giving
• E-learning, behaviours and cognition in online giving
• Emotional behavior and design of web interfaces
• Innovating assistive technologies for the web
• Transparent NGOs for stakeholders
• Safety and e-commerce for cooperative communities
• The power of individuals in web giving communities

Notes for Prospective Authors

Submitted papers should not have been previously published nor be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere. (N.B. Conference papers may only be submitted if the paper has been completely re-written and if appropriate written permissions have been obtained from any copyright holders of the original paper).

All papers are refereed through a peer review process.

All papers must be submitted online. To submit a paper, please read our Submitting articles page.

If you have any queries concerning this special issue, please email the Guest Editor:
Dr. Gaetano La Russa larussa@cs.joensuu.fi

or

Dr. Piet Kommers
(Executive Editor of the IJWBC)
kommers@edte.utwente.nl

Important Dates

Manuscripts due by: 30 September, 2016

Review notification: 30 November, 2016

Submission of revised papers: 30 January, 2017

Notification of final review results: 15 February, 2017