The fifth decennial Aarhus conference, Critical Alternatives, aims to set new agendas for theory and practice in computing for quality of human life.
While the early Aarhus conferences, from 1975 and onwards, focussed on computing in working life, computing today is influencing most parts of human life (civic life, the welfare state, health, learning, leisure, culture, intimacy, ...), thereby calling for critical alternatives in a general quality of life perspective.
We call for papers offering new agendas for alternatives with computing technologies — methodologically, theoretically, or through new forms of societal or otherwise critical engagement.
Current trends in research on computing for quality of life point to areas such as aesthetics, artistic practices, political activism and civic engagement as areas that could fruitfully inform the critical alternatives in computing discourse. Moreover, we expect to accept submissions from a broad range of perspectives including social science, humanities, engineering, computing, design etc.
Critical Alternatives in particular appreciates contributions that focus on the (technological) specifics of computing technologies related to quality of life.
We invite submissions from authors who understand themselves in line with the previous Aarhus Conferences, as well as authors from other fields who want to contribute to the ongoing discourse on computing for critical alternatives.
In particular we invite agenda setting papers, and are thereby less interested in papers that report on small increments in an established line of research. We expect papers to present an academically sound argument.
Critical Alternatives calls for papers in two substantially different categories, full papers and short papers.
Full papers are expected to be influential throughout the next decennium by addressing fundamental issues and proposing new agendas or in other ways offering research contributions with the potential for long-standing impact. Full papers should make a lasting and significant contribution to our knowledge and understanding of critical alternatives related to the design of information technology and computing. Peer review will be rigorous ensuring high academic quality as well as relevance for the continuous development of a critical discourse on alternatives in computing for quality of life. Acceptance rate is expected to be below 25 percent.
In summary, submitted papers will evaluated based on the extent the submission:
offers a strong contribution to theory and practice in computing for quality of human life
provides new perspectives
offers critical alternatives
has potential for long lasting impact
Short papers is a significantly more inclusive category than full papers. We invite contributions that, while academically sound, can inspire the discourse on critical alternatives in computing for quality of live. Compared to Full Papers, Short Papers may offer a more limited discussion of related work, or they may, for example, provide cases of critical alternative designs, method or theoretical concepts, without a full evaluation or with less detailed explanation.
Accepted papers will be printed in the proceedings which will be included in the ACM digital library. Volume one will contain the full papers whereas volume two will contain short papers, workshop descriptions etc.
The Aarhus2015 review process follows a double-blind reviews (done by invited reviewers from the program committee) that are complemented by a meta-review (done by a primary reviewer/PC member).
