International Journal of Communications Law & Policy

CALL(S) FOR PAPERS

Writing Competition and Call for Papers
Workshop on Interoperability (June 23-24,2009)
- Download the PDF text of the Call for Papers here -

Deadline for writing competition: May 15th, 2009
Deadline for Journal publication: September 15th, 2009

The Innovation & Regulation Chair at the Ecole Polytechnique of Paris and the International Journal of Communications Law and Policy (IJCLP) are pleased to announce their first joint call for interdisciplinary papers in occasion of the Workshop on Interoperability taking place on June 23-24, 2009 in Paris, France.

We invite students, scholars, policy-makers, technologists, practitioners and industry representatives to submit papers on interoperability related issues, analyzed from a legal, economic and/or technological perspective.

Conference Description

Interoperability may be defined as the ability of two or more systems to exchange information between them or to ask services one another. Software interoperability has been at the core of several recent antitrust cases and policy debates, as the European Community's Microsoft case and the discussion concerning interoperability between Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems. Web 2.0 related developments, such as mega-sites and mashups, involve significant interoperability issues as well.
The Workshop will bring together scholars from various fields of research (including economics, law and technology), operators and policy makers from the US and Europe to examine the issue of interoperability at various levels, encompassing a positive analysis of the legal status of interoperability information, but also a more economically founded analysis of compatibility between different systems in innovation driven markets (potentially with several normative implications).

A non-inclusive list of panel topics for the Workshop includes interoperability issues arising with respect to:

- Technology, engineering, infrastructure & open innovation (API, mashups, widgets, RSS; integration and aggregation between services/sites/layers; security problems);
- Legal concerns from a descriptive and normative point of view (protection of interfaces and standards; antitrust related issues; public policies and innovation policies involving interoperability; consumer aspects);
- Economic and business strategies (theoretical modelling and interoperability, with particular reference to multi-sided markets; business models involving integration, outsourcing and embeddedness; user generated content related issues; open vs. proprietary strategies);
- Prospective developments and other open issues (empirical measurements; the Internet of Things).

We encourage creative approaches and we welcome the submission of theoretical contributions, case studies, empirical researches or surveys offering new keys to the reading of interoperability related issues.

A full conference description, including a dedicated bibliography and speakers' bios and abstracts, will be made available at the Innovation & Regulation Chair's website, http://innovation-regulation.enst.fr/. Conference proceedings will be published in a dedicated printed volume of the IJCLP, as well as made available under an open access policy at the IJCLP's website at http://www.ijclp.net/.

Writing Competition

Submissions for the writing competition must be received by noon EST, May 15th, 2009. The author of the winning paper will be invited to present his/her work at a panel during the conference and he/she will receive coverage of his/her travel to and accommodations at Paris. At its discretion, the selection committee, composed of representatives of the Chair, may extend the aforementioned invitation to the best runners-up. Selected papers will be announced by June 1st, 2009. The authors of the award-winning papers will automatically be invited to publish their work in a special volume of the International Journal of Communications Law & Policy ( http://www.ijclp.net) devoted to Interoperability.

Journal Publication

Submissions for publication must be received by noon EST, September 15th, 2009. The selection committee, composed of representatives of the Chair, will review and consider all submissions for publication in the special volume of the journal, including submissions for the writing competition. Authors will be notified of acceptance by November 15th, 2009.

Submission Guidelines

Submissions for the writing competition must be received by May 15th, 2008 (full papers). All submissions should be written in English and submitted in .doc, .rtf, .odt, or .pdf format. Submissions should conform to academic citation standards (for more information look at http://www.ijclp.net/submissions.html) and be no longer than 15,000 words (footnotes included), including an abstract of no more than 300 words.

Authors who are not participating in the writing competition have to submit long abstracts of at least 1,500 words by the deadline of July 15th, 2009. The final deadline for submission of full papers for publication in the special issue of the IJCLP is September 15th, 2009.
Submissions should be e-mailed simultaneously to Simone Francesco Bonetti, Chief editor of the IJCLP ( simo.bonetti@tiscali.it); Pierre-Jean Benghozi, Director of the Innovation & Regulation Chair at the Ecole Polytechnique ( pierre-jean.benghozi@polytechnique.edu); and Federico Morando, Associate editor of the IJCLP and co-organizer or the Workshop ( federico.morando@email.it).

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