ICTD 2017 will be held November 16-19, 2017 in Lahore, Pakistan.   The full paper submission deadline is May 8, 2017.  Here is the call for papers.

Richard Anderson and Carleen Maitland,  PC co-chairs

Lahore, Pakistan | 16-19 November 2017

Call for Papers and Notes

The ninth International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD2017), to be hosted at the Information Technology University from November 16-19, 2017, invites you to submit Full Papers and Notes. ICTD2017 will provide an international forum for scholarly researchers to explore the role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in social, political, and economic development. The ICTD conferences have been taking place approximately every 18 months since 2006.

Important dates

May 8, 2017: Deadline for submission of Full Papers

July 1, 2017: Notification of acceptances for Full Papers

July 14, 2017 (tentative): Deadline for submission of Notes 

September 1, 2017 (tentative): Notification of acceptances for Notes

September 15, 2017 (tentative):  Camera-ready Full Papers and Notes due

All submission are due 11:59 pm UTC. 

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) continually become more pervasive in the lives of people around the world. With increasing relevance, ICTs are used in daily life from markets to health care, education to governance, family life to artistic expression. Diverse groups across the world interact with, are affected by, and can shape the design of these technologies. The ICTD conference provides a forum for analyzing, critiquing and refining the ways in which individuals, communities and societies interact with and make use of these tools and platforms. There are multidisciplinary challenges associated with the engineering, application and adoption of ICTs in developing regions and/or for development, with implications for design, policy, and practice.

For the purposes of this conference, the term “ICT” comprises electronic technologies for information processing and communication, as well as systems, interventions, and platforms that are built on such technologies. “Development” includes, but is not restricted to, poverty alleviation, education, agriculture, healthcare, general communication, gender equality, governance, infrastructure, environment and sustainable livelihoods. The conference program will reflect the multidisciplinary nature of ICTD research, with anticipated contributions from fields including (but not limited to) anthropology, computer science, communication, design, economics, electrical engineering, geography, human-computer interaction, information science, information systems, political science, public health, and sociology.

Full Papers

• An ICTD Full Paper, which is up to 10 pages in the ACM two-column format (including figures and tables but excluding references), must make a new research contribution and provide complete and substantial support for its results and conclusions. Accepted papers typically represent a major advance for the field of ICTD. Full Papers will be evaluated via double-blind peer review by a multidisciplinary panel of at least three readers, one of whom will come from outside the paper’s disciplinary domain in order to ensure broad readability. Accepted Full Papers will be presented as oral presentations at the conference.
• Full Papers will be evaluated according to their novel research contribution, methodological soundness, theoretical framing and reference to related work, quality of analysis, and quality of writing and presentation. Manuscripts considering novel designs, new technologies, project assessments, policy analyses, impact studies, theoretical contributions, social issues around ICT and development, and so forth will be considered. Well-analyzed negative results from which generalizable conclusions can be drawn are also sought. Authors are encouraged (but not required) to address the diversity of approaches in ICTD research by providing context, implications, and actionable guidance to researchers and practitioners beyond the authors’ primary domains. Full Papers typically present mature work whereas Notes (see below) are used for presenting preliminary research that is still work-in-progress.
• See additional specifications under “All Submissions” below.

Notes

• With a shorter 4-page limit (excluding references), Notes are intended to introduce work-in-progress that may be published later in a journal, as well as to document shorter project write-ups. An ICTD Note is likely to have a more focused and succinct research contribution to the ICTD field than Full Papers. For example, Notes on novel ICTD systems may not cover the entire design of the system but may instead go into depth in specific areas (e.g., how the system was evaluated with real users or how the formative work to create the system was conducted). Notes are also not expected to include a discussion of related work that is as broad and complete as that of a submission to the Full Papers venue. Accepted Notes will be presented as poster presentations at the conference.
• Notes will be evaluated by at least two multidisciplinary reviewers in a double-blind fashion and will be assessed according to their research contribution, methodological soundness, quality of analysis, and quality of writing, and presentation. Manuscripts considering novel designs, new technologies, project assessments, policy analyses, impact studies, theoretical contributions, social issues around ICT and development, and so forth will be considered. However Notes need not necessarily be as comprehensive, novel, or generalizable as Full Papers. Notes authors will be invited to present a poster.
• See additional specifications under “All Submissions” below.

All Submissions

• Only original, unpublished, research papers in English will be considered. Full Papers and Notes must use the ACM templates (LaTex and Word), and must be no longer than 10 pages and 4 pages respectively. (The main text, figures, tables, footnotes, etc. excluding references must fit within these page limits.) Additional material may be included in an Appendix, but the text within the page limits must read as a standalone work. Submissions longer than the page limits, not in the template format, not related to the conference themes, and/or not meeting a minimum bar of academic research writing will be rejected without full review.
• For each accepted Full Paper and Note, at least one of the authors will be required to register and present it at ICTD2017. If not, the submission will not be published in the final proceedings. For Full Papers, see the ACM’s copyright policies and options.  Copyright for Notes will be retained by the authors.
• Submitted Full Papers and Notes must not include names or other information that would identify the authors.
• Note that since the Full Paper and Notes submission review cycles will be sequential; it will be possible to revise, shorten, and resubmit elements of promising but non-selected Full Papers in time for reconsideration in the separate Notes review round. However, please note, the time between the full paper notification date and Notes deadline is fairly short.

For more information, see http://ictd2017.itu.edu.pk/ or email Richard Anderson at anderson@cs.washington.edu. For questions or concerns regarding security in Pakistan, please contact Carleen Maitland at cmaitland@ist.psu.edu .

General Conference Chair

Umar Saif, Information Technology University, Lahore

Program Committee Chairs

Richard Anderson, University of Washington
Carleen Maitland, Penn State University

Notes Chairs

ICTD Steering Committee

Francois Bar, University of Southern California

Michael Best, United Nations University / Georgia Institute of Technology

Ken Keniston, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Balaji Parthasarathy, International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore

Krithi Ramamritham, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay

AnnaLee Saxenian, University of California, Berkeley

Kentaro Toyama, University of Michigan

Ernest Wilson, University of Southern California