TPRC42 welcomes submissions of abstract of papers to be presented at the annual conference. Proposals should be submitted by March 31, 2014, at http://www.tprc.org. Acceptances/rejections will be provided by May 30, 2014.
Research topics of particular interest this year include, but are by no means limited to:
- Assessment of performance with respect to policy goals (including specification of performance metrics)
- The effect of Internet, telecommunications and media on society (e.g., community and economic development, politics, education, environment, ICTD, digital divide)
- Critical theoretical analyses of communications, information and Internet policy and practices (e.g., assessing race, gender, or class effects)
- Programs (public, non-profit, private) to increase access to, and adoption of, communication technologies and services
- Competition, antitrust, and the role of regulation in the market
- Market structure and ownership in the media, Internet and communications industry sectors
- Defining and allocating scarce resources, including spectrum, rights of way, numbers, and domain names
- Intellectual property issues, including copyright, patent, trademark, and trade secret
- Network architecture (reliability, security, interoperability, etc.)
- Public funding, state-aid, ownership arrangements, and infrastructure and services financing
- Consumer and end-user experience and welfare
- Performance and efficiency indicators, such as pricing and quality issues
- Data protection/privacy, security, and surveillance
- New Internet- and telecommunications-enabled business models (e.g., over-the-top video providers, healthcare delivery and monitoring, etc.)
TPRC42 is interested in papers discussing communications, information, and Internet policy at all levels of analysis and in all countries and regions, including regional and international comparisons.
Abstracts should be submitted by March 31, 2014. Acceptances/rejections will be provided by May 30, 2014. These notifications are sent to the submitting author only. Please do not hesitate to direct questions concerning acceptances/rejections to info@tprc.org. Complete papers for accepted abstracts will be due to TPRC on August 15, 2014. Papers not submitted in final form by the due date will be removed from the program.
At least one author is expected to attend the conference to present an accepted submission. A person may present not more than one paper at the conference. If multiple papers are submitted by a single author, at most one of them will be accepted. If there are multiple papers with the same or overlapping co-authors, different authors will be required to present each accepted paper. Presenting authors will be expected to participate in a preparatory conference call in early June.
A paper that has been published, or has been accepted for publication in final form at the date of submission, in a peer-reviewed journal or conference proceeding, in a law review, or as a chapter in a published book, will not be accepted for TPRC. Material that has been published or presented in other venues (e.g., dissertations, working papers, position papers, documents in repositories like SSRN, and non-reviewed conferences) is acceptable.
Review Criteria
Papers for the main program are selected on the basis of submitted abstracts. The review process is single blind and does not provide feedback to authors.
TPRC is a research conference that focuses on results and insight, not advocacy. Participants generally have substantial background knowledge about communications, information, and Internet issues and come to the conference seeking new perspectives. To aid the Program Committee in selecting the most appropriate papers for presentation, abstracts should adhere to the following guidelines:
- Abstracts should be 400 to 600 words in length. Shorter abstracts are unlikely to provide sufficient detail to permit the Committee to evaluate adequately the proposed research. Material beyond the length limit will not be considered.
- The abstract should not contain a detailed literature review. The reviewers will likely be familiar with the topic of the paper and will require at most a short paragraph of background.
- The largest part of the abstract should describe the proposed research in as much detail as is necessary. This includes (a) a clear statement of the objective of the paper including, where appropriate, the insight developed or hypothesis being tested; (b) a description of the analytic method employed to develop the paper’s results or test its hypotheses; (c) a description of the data assembled to support these insights or perform these tests; and (d) a short explanation as to why the research is novel. While the proposed research need not involve empirical methods, the conference is seeking scholarship that significantly advances current research or research methods.
- If the paper is substantially complete, the abstract should summarize the results. Further, the author should state whether the paper has already been presented or published in an acceptable venue (e.g. dissertation, working paper, position paper, document in SSRN, or a non-reviewed conference), and, if so, provide details of when and where.
- If the author DOES NOT wish to have the proposal considered for presentation in the Poster session (see below), the abstract should make that clear.
- The abstract SHOULD NOT CONTAIN the author’s biographical information.
Posters
The TPRC42 program includes a Poster session, and every abstract and student paper submitted will be considered simultaneously for presentation as a Poster. In addition, proposals may be submitted specifically for the Poster session. The same research topics and criteria for selection will apply to Posters and Papers. All proposals should be submitted by March 31, 2014, at http://www.tprc.org. Acceptances/rejections will be provided by May 30, 2014.
Posters will be presented during the breaks on Friday and Saturday in the same space and at the same time as demonstrations.
In a typical Poster session, participants display materials that show the highlights of their project. Printed poster boards or sheets of paper with a title, abstract, core results, graphs, charts, etc. that are attached in a meaningful sequence to a poster board are equally acceptable. A Poster is intended to present research in a manner that the topic, dataset, and main results are immediately identifiable, and so as to ensure that the empirical questions and hypotheses guiding the work are noted.