May 26, 09.00 – 17.00 (Fürstenberghaus, Room  F102)

The advent of open data is posing new challenges in the study of digital innovation in information systems. Originating in efforts for more transparency in government operations, open data is rapidly becoming an important resource for business organisations. There are several industry reports and white papers discussing the benefits of open data and its potential for disrupting various industries with innovative products and solutions. However, there is sparse academic research studying in more depth the impact of open data in organisations and society at large. And yet, as an open data ecosystem is coming into being there are several issues that need to be examined. These include the ways companies of varying sizes are using open data as a strategic resource, the types of innovation propelled by open data, the business models for generating income with open data but also, the properties of a business ecosystem combining economic targets with social impact. These topics make a strong case for studying open data as a phenomenon on its own right in the broader area of digital innovation.

Information Systems is a field well equipped to fruitfully examine such a multifaceted phenomenon. Current research trends on the role of digital objects in innovation, the strategic use of data by organisations as well as socio-material accounts of business practices provide useful theoretical and methodological tools to study the role of open data in organisations. At the same time, open data has the potential, as a research topic, to renew long-standing work on information infrastructures and business models with novel insights on the way companies build data-driven operations that create new revenue streams at the same time they offer innovative solutions. 

The aim of the workshop is to bring together work on open data from various strands of research within the IS field in order to exchange views and set the way forward for research on the topic. There are great opportunities to examine current trends in open data through a variety of theoretical and empirical lenses and establish a comprehensive research agenda for open data in IS. This will both provide a better understanding of a very dynamic phenomenon but also enrich the IS agenda. We invite both theoretical and empirical papers from researchers with a broad range of methodological approaches that will significantly contribute to our understanding of open data.

Topics of interest:

• Theoretical models for the study of open data as a social and technological phenomenon
• Business challenges for using open data as a strategic resource (e.g. licensing, quality, mixing open and proprietary data)
• Business models and industry structures for innovative use of open data
• Case studies of open data innovation by large companies (e.g. open innovation, organizational inertia, IT governance)
• Studies on the role of startups in catalyzing the demand for open data in the ecosystem and building new information infrastructures
• Theories and evidence of open data innovation and diffusion across different contexts (e.g. education, environment, food, finance)

Paper handling

Position papers should be maximum 2 pages (approx 1500 words), and should clearly and distinctly address one or more issues pertinent to open data research. Full papers should be max 10 pages (approx 6000 words), while research-in-progress should be max 5 pages (approx 3000 words). Authors should follow the ECIS paper format. Irrespective of the form, all submissions should be designed to support in-depth discussions during the workshop. The workshop will not retain copyright of the submitted papers as the aim is to help develop them for publication in academic journals.

Paper submission will be done via EasyChair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=odns15
The papers will be peer-reviewed.

Important dates

• Submissions open: 1st December 2014
• Submissions due: 7th March 2015
• Notification of acceptance: 4th April 2015 (in time for early bird registration to ECIS)

Website of the Workshop

http://theodi.org/ecis2015-workshop-opendata

Organizing Committee

Dr Elpida Prasopoulou is researcher at the Open Data Institute. Her research examines how digital innovation is reconfiguring the ways people experience the world and gradually reshapes social and organizational practices. At the ODI, Elpida works on the development of evidence on the role of open data in society with a special interest on the development of the open data ecosystem. She has worked in several inter-disciplinary projects (EPSRC and EU) on digital innovation and its impact on government, business organizations and society. Her research has been published at the European Journal of Information Systems (EJIS) and all the major academic conferences in the field of Information Systems and Science and Technology Studies (e.g. ECIS, ICIS, IFIP 8.2, IPA, 4S Annual Meeting).  Elpida holds a PhD in Information Systems from the Athens University of Economics and Business. She previously held research posts at the London School of Economics (LSE) and the University of Essex.

Web page: http://theodi.org/team/elpida-prasopoulou

Matti Rossi is a professor of information systems at Aalto University School of Business. He holds a Ph.D. degree in Business Administration from the University of Jyväskylä. He has worked as research fellow at Erasmus University Rotterdam, as a visiting assistant professor at Georgia State University, Atlanta and visiting researcher at Claremont Graduate University. His research papers have appeared in journals such as MIS Quarterly, IEEE Software, Journal of AIS, Information and Organization, Information and Management, and Information Systems, and over forty of them have appeared in conferences such as ICIS, HICSS and CAiSE. He is the editor in chief of Communications of the Association for Information Systems. He has been a senior editor at JAIS and Database for Advances in Information Systems and serves as an associate editor for MIS Quarterly. He was a co-chair of DESRIST 2007, 2008 and 2014 and program co-chair of DESRIST 2013, program co-chair for ECIS 2011, organizing chair for IRIS 2004, organizing committee member and technology chair for ICIS’98 and minitrack chair for Hawaii International Conference on Systems Sciences 98 - 15. He has been the principal investigator in several major research projects funded by the technological development center of Finland and Academy of Finland. Matti Rossi is a member of IEEE, ACM and AIS. He has been involved in the development of two research prototypes and further commercial products, which are sold by MetaCASE Consulting Plc., Jyväskylä, Finland. MetaEdit Personal is a single user CASE tool, used in 30 countries and in more than 20 Universities. MetaEdit+ is a multi-user integrated CASE tool, selected among the three most innovative new software tools at CeBIT’95 by Byte and used for the development of user interfaces for Nokia’s feature phones. He was the winner of the 2013 Millennium Distinction Award of Technology Academy of Finland for open source and data research.

Web page: http://people.aalto.fi/matti.rossi

Prof. Sören Auer holds the chair for Enterprise Information Systems at University of Bonn and leads a research group at Fraunhofer Institute for Analysis and Information Systems (IAIS). Sören has made substantial contributions to social and semantic web technologies, knowledge engineering, usability, as well as databases and information systems. Sören is author of over 80 peer-reviewed scientific publications. Sören is leading the European Union’s FP7-ICT flagship project LOD2 comprising 15 partners from 11 countries. He is co-founder of several high-impact research and community projects such as DBpedia, SlideWiki.org, LinkedGeoData and OntoWiki. organiser and co-programme chair of renowned scientific conferences, area editor of the Semantic Web Journal, serves as an expert for industry, EC, W3C and advisory board member of the Open Knowledge Foundation.

Web page: http://eis.iai.uni-bonn.de

Dr Athanasia (Nancy) Pouloudi is Associate Professor in Information Systems Management and Department Chair in the Department of Management Science and Technology at the Athens University of Economics and Business (AUEB), Greece. She holds a first degree in Informatics (AUEB, Greece), and an MSc and PhD degree in Information Systems (London School of Economics, UK). Nancy favors an interpretive research approach to the study of organizational and social issues in information systems adoption. Her research agenda entails bringing to the fore the social dimension of interorganizational systems, acknowledging and revealing complex stakeholder relationships. She has acted as scientific coordinator for AUEB in a number European Projects on e-government, e-business and e-inclusion. She has served as Region 2 (Europe-Middle East-Africa) Representative of the Association for Information Systems (AIS), and is former Senior Associate Editor of the European Journal of Information Systems and Associate Editor of IT & People. She is a member of the Editorial Boards of Information & Management, Health Policy & Technology and the International Journal of Society, Information, Communication and Ethics.

Web page: http://istlab.dmst.aueb.gr/content/members/m_pouloudi.html

Dr Tom Heath is Head of Research at the Open Data Institute, where he has responsibility for developing and managing the ODI's research programme. Reflecting the breadth of interest in open data this programme is multidisciplinary in nature, with an emphasis in the computing and social sciences, and includes both publicly and commercially funded projects. Tom oversees collaborative research proposals and projects involving the ODI, in addition to the institute's internship and visiting researcher programmes. Tom joined the ODI from Talis Group, where he led internal research and data science programmes drawing heavily on Open and Linked Data. He is the co-author of several highly cited publications on the topic of Linked Data, and the recipient of a number of awards including Semantic Web Challenge winner 2007 and STI International PhD of the Year 2008/9. Tom has a BSc in Psychology from the University of Liverpool and a PhD in Computer Science from The Open University.

Web page: http://theodi.org/team/tom-heath