April 9, 2018 — Workshop proposal submission deadline.
April 30, 2018 — Workshop acceptance notification.
May 9, 2018 (extended to May 13 for abstracts, May 20 for final versions) — Full paper & short paper submission deadline.
June 19, 2018 — Notification of acceptance.
July 24, 2018 — Camera-ready version.
July 24, 2018 — Early-bird and cut-off registration.
September 10, 2018 — Late registration.
September 25, 2018 — Workshop day.
September 26-28, 2018 — Main conference dates.

All the deadlines are at 23:59:59 Hawaii Time.

  • April 9, 2018 Workshop proposal submission deadline
  • April 30, 2018 Workshop acceptance notification
  • May 9, 2018 (ext. to May 13 for abstracts, May 20 for final versions) Full paper & short paper submission deadline
  • June 19, 2018 Notification of acceptance
  • July 24, 2018 Camera-ready version
    Early-bird and cut-off registration
  • Sept. 10, 2018 Late registration
  • Sept. 25, 2018 Workshop day
  • Sept. 26–28, 2018 Main conference dates

About

Mission

We are delighted to welcome the 10th International Conference on Social Informatics (SocInfo 2018) to St.Petersburg, Russia, On September 25–28, 2018.

SocInfo is an interdisciplinary venue for researchers from Computer Science, Informatics, Social Sciences and Management Sciences to share ideas and opinions, and present original research work on studying the interplay between socially-centric platforms and social phenomena. The ultimate goal of Social Informatics is to create better understanding of socially-centric platforms not just as a technology, but also as a set of social phenomena. To that end, we are inviting interdisciplinary papers, on applying information technology in the study of social phenomena, on applying social concepts in the design of information systems, on applying methods from the social sciences in the study of social computing and information systems, on applying computational algorithms to facilitate the study of social systems and human social dynamics, and on designing information and communication technologies that consider social context.

Sponsors


Social Informatics Steering Committee

Adam Wierzbicki, PJIIT, Poland
Karl Aberer, EPFL, Switzerland
Katsumi Tanaka, Kyoto University, Japan
Anwitaman Datta, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Ee-Peng Lim, Singapore Management University, Singapore
Noshir Contractor, Northwestern University, US
Michael Macy, Cornell University, US
Hsinchun Chen, University of Arizona, US
Sue B. Moon, KAIST, Korea
Andreas Ernst, University of Kassel, Germany
Andreas Flache, University of Groningen, Netherlands
Dirk Helbing, ETH, Switzerland

Calls for participation

Call for papers

The International Conference on Social Informatics (SocInfo18) is an interdisciplinary venue that brings together researchers from the computational and social sciences interested in joint research of socio-technical phenomena. The goal of the conference is to provide a forum to help scholars from the two disciplines define common research objectives and explore methodologies. The organizers welcome a broad range of contributions, from those that apply methods from the social sciences to the study of socio-technical systems, to the application of computational methods to the study of complex social processes and the use of social concepts in the design of information systems.

SocInfo18 offers an opportunity for the dissemination of knowledge between the two communities by soliciting presentations of original research papers and experience-based case studies in computer science, sociology, psychology, political science, public health, media & communication studies, economics, linguistics, artificial intelligence, social network analysis, and other disciplines that can shed light on the open questions in the growing field of computational social science.

SocInfo18 will also offer workshops and keynote talks that will be tailored to enhance the collaboration between the two research cultures in an era when social interactions are ubiquitous and span offline, online and augmented reality worlds.

Research topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

  • New theories, methods and objectives in computational social science
  • Computational models of social phenomena, including behavior modeling
  • Dynamics of social collaborative systems and collective intelligence
  • Social network analysis and mining
  • Mining big social data
  • Web mining and its social interpretations
  • Quantifying offline phenomena through online data
  • Forecasting of social phenomena with digital traces
  • Social influence and social contagion
  • Security, privacy, trust, reputation, and incentive issues
  • Opinion mining and social media analytics
  • News production & consumption in the Internet era
  • Credibility of online content
  • Tracing and preventing of harmful content and risk events
  • Health informatics
  • Social media and health behaviors
  • Equity in social and information systems
  • Social applications of the semantic Web
  • Social psychology and personality in the era of new ICTs & Internet
  • Virtual reality for psychological research
  • Virtual communities
  • Game studies
  • Human-computer interaction
  • Urban informatics
  • Social implications of geoinformation systems
  • Socio-economic systems and applications
Information about Submission

We solicit submission of two types of contribution:

  • Full papers: up to 14 pages (excluding references and any appendix), to be presented orally;
  • Short papers: up to 8 pages (excluding references and any appendix), presented as posters;

Submissions will be reviewed through a double-blind review process. To ensure a thorough and fair review process, this year’s conference will apply strict review guidelines to provide even higher-quality feedback to authors. To further incentivize useful and detailed feedback to authors, contributions of best reviewers will be rewarded with special mentions.

As in previous years, accepted papers will appear in Springer’s Lecture Note Series in Computer Science. We will also allow accepted papers to be presented without publication in the conference proceedings, if the authors choose to do so. Some of the full paper submissions may be accepted as short papers after review by the Programme Committee. A small set of particularly high quality and important papers will be selected for journal publication.

Submission Procedures

Original manuscripts should be submitted in English in pdf format through EasyChair.

All the deadlines are at 23:59:59 Hawaii Time.

Because SocInfo will publish proceedings, manuscripts should be formatted according to Springer LNCS paper formatting guidelines.

Best Paper Award from Springer!

Springer sponsor SocInfo 2018 by providing an amount of €1,000 to be put behind a SocInfo 2018 Best Paper Award.

Call for workshops

The SocInfo’18 Committee invites proposals for the Workshops Day of the conference. All workshops will be held on Tuesday, September 25, 2018, at 123 Kanal Griboyedova Emb, St. Petersburg (which is not the venue of the main conference).

The preferred formats are group discussions and practical tutorials. A tutorial should provide either an in-depth look at an emerging technique or software package or a broad summary of an important direction in the field of social informatics, preferably with a practical training. A group discussion should provide an opportunity to informally discuss issues with a selected focus, especially conceptual, methodological or practical difficulties of social informatics, as opposed to presenting final results. Workshops should not be structured as mini-conferences dominated by long talks and short discussions. Instead, the organizers are encouraged to promote different types of activities including games and brainstorming sessions. All workshops should be interactive and involve between 15 and 40 members. Finally, the workshops should have the potential to attract the interest of researchers in computer science and social sciences, and possibly of developers and practitioners.

Proposal review

The workshop chairs will review each submission and select those with the highest scores on originality, interdisciplinarity, coherence with the conference aims, and ability to attract audience.

Important Dates
  • Workshop proposal submission deadline: April 9, 2018
  • Workshop acceptance notification: April 30, 2018

All the deadlines are at 23:59:59 Hawaii Time.

Submission E-mail: socinfo2018@gmail.com

Proposal content Proposals for workshops should be between 2 and 5 pages in length (10pt, single column, with reasonable margins), written in English, and should contain the following:
  • A concise title.
  • The names, affiliations and contact information of the organizers. A typical workshop should count no more than three co-chairs, preferably affiliated with different organizations.
  • Proposed duration of the workshop – half or full day (3-4 hours or 6-7 hours).
  • A statement of the workshop: objective/goals.
  • A statement detailing: Why is the workshop topic important? Why is the workshop timely? How is it relevant to social informatics?
  • A two-paragraph description of the workshop topic and themes.
  • If the workshop was conducted before, where and when was it conducted? Please give details on number of attendees and acceptance ratio (if applicable).
  • A description of the workshop format and list of proposed activities.
  • An indication of the maximum number of participants and a description of how workshop submissions will be selected: by the time of registration, by some predefined criteria or else.
  • A short bio of the workshop organizers, including a description of their qualifications relative to the topic area, and past experience in organizing/facilitating workshops or research meetings.
Workshop Chairs:
  • Luca Maria Ayello, Bell Labs, UK
  • Sergei Koltcov, HSE, Russia

Publications

SocInfo’18 offers two main opportunities for publication: a volume of conference proceedings in Springer’s Lecture Note Series in Computer Science (as in previous years), and the Journal of Web Science special issue on social informatics (NEW!). Authors are also free to choose a non-publication track, although this will not influence the review criteria.

Springer’s Lecture Note Series in Computer Science

Volume editors:

  • Dmitry Ignatov, Higher School of Economics
  • Steffen Staab, university of Koblenz-Landau
  • Olessia Koltsova, Higher School of Economics

Camera ready version submission deadline: July 24, 2018.

Those aiming at LNCS should follow Springer’s author formatting guidelines.

UPD September 21, 2018: conference proceedings are now available online:

Springer also offer the participants of the SocInfo 2018  temporary free online access to all SocInfo volumes previously:

Journal of Web Science

JoWS is a young, peer reviewed, open access scholarly journal with an outstanding editorial board.

Special issue on Social Informatics guest editors:

  • Steffen Staab, university of Koblenz-Landau
  • Olessia Koltsova, Higher School of Economics

Special issue will accept the papers that will have been either published in LNCS proceedings or presented orally as full papers at SocInfo’18. Authors of papers published in LNCS will have to add at least 30% of new material (data and/or analysis). All papers are expected to have been revised according to the conference reviewers’ comments, but all will go through the double-blind review process again.

  • Submission deadline: December 17, 2018
  • Anticipated date of acceptance after reviews: March 18, 2019
  • Anticipated publication date: April 2019

As JoWS is an online journal, papers may be published in two sets: those that do not need major revision – in April 2019, and those that do – later in 2019.

Page limit: 14 double column pages, 10-point type, single-spaced, or 30 single column pages, 12-point type, double-spaced. Follow author guidelines.

Contact: socinfo2018@gmail.com.

Keynote Speakers

Programme

Programme

You can add this calendar to your Google account to recieve notifications on programme updates and have this programme on mobile devices. Use this link to share the programme.

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Workshops

Analysis of Multiplex Social Networks with R

Multiplex networks are one of the most popular network analysis models that have been a common meeting point for computer scientists, physicists and sociologists thanks to their ability to provide richer, more qualitative information than simple graphs but still allow quantitative processing. The workshop will provide a practical introduction to multiplex network analysis using R. It will consist of very brief theoretical presentations of major concepts followed by practical tasks.

The main topics covered will be:

  • visualization;
  • actor measures (degree, neighborhood, ...);
  • actor/layer measures (layer relevance, ...);
  • layer comparison methods;
  • community detection (generalized Louvain, LART, clique percolation, ...);
  • generative models.

Matteo Magnani
Associate professor
InfoLab Department of Information Technology
Uppsala University

Luca Rossi
Associate professor
Digital Design Department
Data Science & Society Lab (Coordinator)
IT University of Copenhagen

Topic Modeling in Practice. Rules of Thumb for Mining Topics with TopicMiner Software

Topic modeling is one of the few algorithms capable to work with large textual data bringing together scholars from fields of social and computer sciences. However, practical applications of the algorithm are hindered by rarely discussed inherent limitations of topic models and the requirement of programming skills. In this workshop, we will address the specifics of using topic modeling in sociology, discuss mathematical limitations behind the method and introduce new TopicMiner and WebTopicMiner software. The proposed approach is designed to be inclusive of participants with no programming background bridging together communities from social and computer sciences.

The main workshop topics include:

  • review of topic models;
  • the stability problem of topic models;
  • the problem of choosing the number of topics;
  • regularization of topic models;
  • comparison of topic solutions;
  • topic modeling with TopicMiner and WebTopicMiner.

Sergei Koltcov
Associate professor
Deputy Head at Internet Studies Lab
Higher School of Economics, St. Petersburg

Big Data Analysis for Social Scientists

This course introduces participants to the collection and analysis of socially-generated big data using the R statistical software. The main emphasis is on applying social network analysis and quantitative text analysis to web data (especially social media). Data will be collected using the vosonSML R package (currently it collects YouTube video comment data, Facebook fan page data, and Twitter data). The course includes basic social network analysis in R/igraph (graph visualisation, core node- and network-level metrics, network clustering, constructing two-mode networks) and basic text analysis (building a corpus, descriptive analysis, wordclouds). The course will appeal to social scientists who want to become more computationally literate, and those from technical disciplines (e.g. computer science, information science) who would like to learn how social scientists are analysing digital trace data from the web.

The target audience for this course is research students, academics and researchers with a fairly strong technical background. It is preferable that students have had some exposure to social network analysis and quantitative text analysis. Experience with R or other programming languages is also desirable, but the course includes a brief R and RStudio refresher. It will be assumed that participants already have a recent version of R and RStudio installed on their laptops.

Robert Ackland
Associate professor, School of Sociology at the Australian National University
Head at Virtual Observatory for the Study of Online Networks Lab

Podium discussion “How access of researchers to privately collected data should be regulated?”

The starting point for this discussion is the recent scandal with Cambridge Analytica – a company that allegedly influenced the US presidential elections by manipulating Facebook users’ personal data. This data is said to have been leaked to Cambridge Analytica by Alexander Kogan, a researcher working at the core of the global academe – the university of Cambridge – and allegedly having ties with Russia. This breach has eventually resulted in closure of many Facebook data access opportunities for researchers worldwide. A panel of competent discussants, including representatives of both the academe and the data industry, will touch different aspects of the problem and possible solutions. The panelists will discuss whether it is possible to simultaneously protect individual privacy, provide enough data for public interest research, ensure opportunities for data related business and exclude opinion manipulation. Prior to the discussion, you can find more information on the scandal in the statements of Mark Zuckerberg, Alexander Kogan, Cambridge Analytica and the university of Cambridge.

Discussants:

Posters

You have to bring your poster printed out on A1 format. We will provide the equipment to hang up your poster.

Your poster should tell something about your current research and scientific interests. The main idea is for all summer school attendees to get to know each other both personally and in terms of scientific orientation.

Poster session will be held during two days. Posters should be formatted into A1 sheet (841×594 mm).

In general, posters combine textual and graphical representation of your work. The idea is to explain in easy-accessible way your results to the audience. During the poster session time you are expected to stay close to your poster to address questions and explain in a verbal way your ideas to other participants.

Organizers

Organizing Committee

Programme Committee

Senior PC members

  • Alexander Boukhanovsky
    ITMO University
  • Daniel Alexandrov
    National Research University Higher School of Economics
  • Olessia Koltsova
    National Research University Higher School of Economics
  • Steffen Staab
    Institute for Web Science and Technologies


  • Adam Jatowt
    Kyoto University
  • Agnes Horvat
    Northwestern University
  • Alex Hanna
    University of Toronto
  • Alexander Porshnev
    HSE
  • Alexander Panchenko
    University of Hamburg
  • Alice Robbin
    Indiana University Bloomington
  • André Grow
    Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
  • Andreas Koch
    University of Salzburg
  • Andreas Kaltenbrunner
    NTENT
  • Andrew Crooks
    George Mason University
  • Andrey Filchenkov
    ITMO University
  • Arkaitz Zubiaga
    The University of Warwick
  • Bruce Desmarais
    The Pennsylvania State University
  • Carlos Nunes Silva
    Universidade de Lisboa
  • Christophe Guéret
    Accenture
  • Claudio Castellano
    SMC, INFM-CNR
  • Colin Campbell
    Washington College
  • Dani Villatoro
    IIIA-csic
  • Daniela Paolotti
    ISI Foundation
  • David Corney
    Signal Media
  • David Laniado
    Eurecat - Technology centre of Catalonia
  • Deok-Sun Lee
    Inha University
  • Diego Fregolente Mendes de Oliveira
    Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research - Indiana University
  • Dmitry Ustalov
    University of Mannheim
  • Dominik Batorski
    University of Warsaw
  • Elena Yagunova
    St. Petersburg State University
  • Elisabeth Lex
    Graz University of Technology
  • Emanuele Massaro
  • F.A. Nielsen
  • Fabio Celli
    University of Trento
  • Floriana Gargiulo
    GEMASS - CNRS and University of Paris Sorbonne
  • Frank Schweitzer
    ETH Zurich
  • George Valkanas
    Detectica, Inc.
  • Georgios Lappas
    Technological Educational Institute (T.E.I.) of Western Macedonia, Kastoria Campus, Greece
  • Gerhard Fuchs
    University of Stuttgart
  • Giancarlo Ruffo
    Universita' di Torino
  • Gianluca Manzo
    CNRS
  • Gianluca Demartini
    The University of Queensland
  • Ginestra Bianconi
    Queen Mary University of London
  • Giovanni Quattrone
    University College London
  • Giovanni Petri
    ISI Foundation
  • Gregor Petrič
    Faculty of Social Sciences, Uni of Ljubljana, Slovenia
  • Hang-Hyun Jo
    Asia Pacific Center for Theoretical Physics
  • Hemant Purohit
    George Mason University
  • Hisashi Miyamori
    Kyoto Sangyo University
  • Igor Zakhlebin
    Northwestern University
  • Ingmar Weber
    Qatar Computing Research Institute
  • Jaimie Park
    Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
  • Jana Diesner
    University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  • Jason Nurse
    University of Oxford
  • Jennifer Golbeck
    University of Maryland
  • John Ternovski
  • Jose Moreno
    IRIT/UPS
  • Jose J. Ramasco
    IFISC (CSIC-UIB)
  • Joss Wright
    University of Oxford
  • Kazuhiro Kazama
    Wakayama University
  • Kazutoshi Sasahara
    Nagoya University
  • Keiichi Nakata
    University of Reading
  • Kevin S. Xu
    University of Toledo
  • Kim Holmberg
    University of Turku
  • Klaus G. Troitzsch
    University of Koblenz-Landau
  • Kwang-Il Goh
    Korea University
  • Laura Alessandretti
  • Leto Peel
    Universite catholique de Louvain
  • Livio Bioglio
    University of Turin
  • Luca Pappalardo
    Department of Computer Science (University of Pisa), KDDLab (ISTI-CNR)
  • Luca Maria Aiello
    Nokia Bell Labs
  • Lyle Ungar
    University of Pennsylvania
  • Manlio De Domenico
    Fondazione Bruno Kessler
  • Marco Bastos
    City, University of London
  • María Pereda
    Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
  • Mario Paolucci
    Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies
  • Mark Jelasity
    University of Szeged
  • Markus Strohmaier
    RWTH Aachen University & GESIS
  • Matjaz Perc
    University of Maribor
  • Matteo Magnani
    Uppsala University
  • Matteo Gagliolo
    Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB)
  • Matthias R. Brust
    University of Luxembourg
  • Michael Schaub
    Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Michael Mäs
    ETH Zurich
  • Michele Tizzoni
    ISI Foundation
  • Michele Coscia
    Harvard University
  • Mikhail Alexandrov
    Autonomous University of Barcelona
  • Mikko Kivela
    University of Oxford
  • Milena Tsvetkova
    University of Oxford
  • Mirco Musolesi
    University College London
  • Mirco Nanni
    KDD-Lab ISTI-CNR Pisa
  • Mostafa Salehi
    University of Tehran
  • Naoki Masuda
    University of Bristol
  • Nicola Perra
    University of Greenwich
  • Nina Cesare
    University of Washington
  • Onur Varol
    Northeastern University
  • Orion Penner
    École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne
  • Pablo Aragón
    Universitat Pompeu Fabra
  • Pablo Jensen
    ixxi
  • Pål Sundsøy
    Telenor ASA
  • Palakorn Achananuparp
    Singapore Management University
  • Pavel Braslavski
    Ural Federal University
  • Peter McMahan
    McGill University
  • Priya Kumar
    Social Media Lab, Ryerson University
  • Przemysław Kazienko
  • Renaud Lambiotte
    University of Oxford
  • Robert Ackland
    The Australian National University
  • Rosario Nunzio Mantegna
    Palermo University
  • Rossano Schifanella
    University of Turin
  • Rosta Farzan
    University of Pittsburgh
  • Salla-Maaria Laaksonen
    University of Helsinki
  • Sang Hoon Lee
    Korea Institute for Advanced Study
  • Sergei Koltsov
    LINIS HSE
  • Shinsuke Nakajima
    Kyoto Sangyo University
  • Sofia Dokuka
    National Research University Higher School of Economics
  • Stasa Milojevic
    Indiana University Bloomington
  • Stuart Anderson
    The University of Edinburgh
  • Sune Lehmann
    Technical University of Denmark
  • Svetlana Bodrunova
    St. Petersburg State University
  • Symeon Papadopoulos
    Information Technologies Institute
  • Tai-Quan Peng
    Michigan State University
  • Thanassis Tiropanis
    University of Southampton
  • Thomas Ågotnes
    University of Bergen
  • Tim Evans
    Imperial College London
  • Tsuyoshi Murata
    Tokyo Institute of Technology
  • Ulrik Brandes
    ETH Zurich
  • Vanessa Frias-Martinez
    University of Maryland
  • Victor M Eguiluz
    IFISC (CSIC-UIB)
  • Vladimir Barash
    Cornell University
  • Walter Lamendola
    University of Denver
  • Wenbo Wang
    Kno.e.sis Center, Wright State University
  • Xian Teng
    University of Pittsburgh
  • Yanina Ledovaya
    St. Petersburg State University
  • Yasuhito Asano
    Kyoto University
  • Yelena Mejova
    Qatar Computing Research Institute
  • Yu-Ru Lin
    University of Pittsburgh
  • Yuheng Hu
    University of Illinois at Chicago
  • Zoran Levnajic
    Faculty of Information Studies in Novo mesto


About HSE

Established in early 1990s by a team of reformist academics, Higher School of Economics (HSE) has now become the leading Russia’s university in the sphere of social sciences and humanities. It is also rapidly developing in mathematics and computer science. In 2017, it was ranked number 382 in QS global ranking and included into QS “Top 50 under 50” – a rating for young Universities. According to QS subject rankings, HSE University is among Top 100 in Economics & Econometrics, Top 150 in Accounting and Finance, Top 200 in Business and Management studies.

HSE St.Petersburg campus is particularly strong in computational social science and digital humanities. It offers an MA degree in big data analysis in business & society and a BA degree in sociology & social informatics. The campus has extensive experience in organizing middle-size international academic events, such as BRICS Global Business & Innovation Conference, Congress of Comparative Economics and Education & Global Cities.

Laboratory for Internet Studies (LINIS) at HSE focuses on interdisciplinary internet research with the extensive use of big data and computational methods. Established only five years ago, the lab boasts of multiple publications in top journals of the field, including Internet Research, Social Media and Society, International Journal of Communication, Journal of Information Science, Policy & Internet, American Behavioral Scientist and others. During these five years, LINIS has also hosted two international summer schools (Websci’17 and RUSSIR’15), organized two international conferences on social media and co-organized two more summer schools on network analysis.

Registration & Visa

Registration

Cut-off registration: July 24, 2018. This means that at least one paper author should register before July 24, 2018 for the paper to be published. You can register later (between July 24 and September 10, 2018) but without publication and with higher fee.

Early bird registration fees (before July 24, 2018):

 

Early bird registration fees
(until 24.07.2018)

Normal registration fee
(from 25.07.2018)

 

Student

Regular

Student / Regular

 

in dollars

in rubles

in dollars

in rubles

in dollars

in rubles

for 4 days

160

10080

300

18900

400

25200

for 3 days

135

8505

250

15750

315

19845

for 2 days

95

5985

190

11970

240

15120

for one day

65

4095

120

7560

150

9450

Fill Out Payment Request Form

Normal registration fee: $400 (between July 24 and September 10, 2018). No discounts or 1-day passes available at this stage.

All fees include the lunches and the welcome party, except the 1-day fee that includes the lunch only. Fees for social and cultural events will be announced later.

Papers eligible for student registration discount should have a student as the first author and be presented by this student in person at the conference. Applicants willing to be considered for student discount should choose “student paper” option during registration in EasyChair and submit a photocopy of any document confirming their student status (in English or in Russian) shortly after the paper submission via the conference E-mail. The notification of eligibility for student discount will be provided together with the notification of acceptance. Only applicants who have provided obviously invalid documents can be denied the discount. Papers whose authors have paid a reduced fee without providing any documents will be rejected.

Additionally, three best applicants from Russia will be given a 30% discount sponsored by HSE. This discount will be given to individuals holding Russian citizenship who are (a) full-time researchers or teachers at Russian universities or non-for-profit research organizations or (b) PhD students at Russian universities or research organizations. Applicants willing to be considered for this discount should choose “Russian paper” option during registration in EasyChair and submit a photocopy of any document confirming their citizenship and employment / PhD programme enrollment (in Russian) shortly after the paper submission via the conference E-mail. The notification of eligibility for this discount will be provided together with the notification of acceptance. Papers whose authors have paid a reduced fee without providing any documents will be rejected.

Payment Methods

By card online

This is the preferred method of payment. All online transactions are done in Russian Rubles (RUB, ₽) only.

The legislation of the Russian Federation and HSE University rules require that all online payments by both Russian and international participants should be made in the national currency – Russian Rubles (RUB, ₽). Registration fees in Russian Rubles have been signed off by members of Program Committee and calculated with the reference to the 3-month average U.S. Dollar exchange rate of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation.

All fees for the conference registration can be paid by card online clear of all bank charges. To complete your registration, please click.

By bank transfers

All fees for the conference registration can be paid by bank transfer clear of all transfer charges*. Please ensure that the bank transfer form contains the delegate’s full name and the Social Informatics 2018 as the title of the event. Grounds and procedure for bank transfers are described in the offer.

Transfer charges

When you make an international wire transfer you can choose who pays the transfer charges.

BEN, SHA, OUR are codes in a SWIFT instruction, at field "Details of Charges".

The OUR instruction means you pay all transfer charges. We receive all your payment. SHA (shared) means you only pay your bank's outgoing transfer charge. We receive your payment minus the correspondent (intermediary) bank charges. BEN (beneficiary) means you do not pay any charge. We receive your payment minus all transfer charges.

We require all international transfers to us to be made with the OUR instruction.

Beneficiary bank details for payments in USD
  • Address:  Souyuza Pechatnikov 16, Saint-Petersburg, RU, 190121
  • Beneficiary: HSE – Saint Petersburg
  • Beneficiary bank: SBERBANK (SEVERO-ZAPADNY HEAD OFFICE) ST.PETERSBURG, RUSSIA
  • SWIFT: SABRRU2P
  • Transit currency account (USD): 40503840155041000004
  • TIN 7714030726
  • CAT 783902001
  • BIN 1027739630401

If you require arrangements for bank transfer payments or you have a questions about EURO please send us a request at socinfo2018@gmail.com

Visa

In order to enter Russia most foreign nationals require a Russian Federation visa. It can take time for a visa to be issued and so it is important that the application process is begun as early as possible, but not earlier than 3 months prior an expected date of the visit. Visas are issued by the Embassies or Consulates of the Russian Federation. To find your nearest Russian Embassy or Consulate, please visit russianembassy.net.

Not all foreign nationals will require a visa to enter Russia. Get familiar with the list of countries for which there is no visa requirement.

Please be aware that in such cases where there is no requirement for a visa to enter the country, there may nevertheless be restrictions on the duration of your stay. You are advised to contact your nearest Russian Embassy or Consulate in order to ascertain the exact requirements for your particular situation.

We will be able to provide visa support to those who provide all necessary documents by July 31, 2018

Below are the key steps involved in the visa process along with some important information relating to your stay in Russia:

Step 1: Passport

Make sure that your Passport is valid for at least 6 months from the planned expiry date of the visa you intend to obtain.

Step 2: Visa Invitation Letter

If a letter of invitation is needed for the visa application, we can provide a scan of the invitation letter upon request. The visa invitation letter for most foreign nationals is issued by the Migration Service within 30 days after the application, so please make sure to take care about it in advance. The invitation letter for the EU-citizens (exept the UK and Ireland) are issued within 1 week after the application.

Letter of invitation can only cover the official dates of the conference ±1-2 days. Any travel requirements outside of the conference dates must be explained to the embassy in your visa application.

To get the invitation letter, please fiil the form. If there are any questions, feel free to write us: socinfo2018@gmail.com.

Please check at the Russian embassy if you are required to provide an original of the visa invitation letter. It is always better to ask the Russian consulate first whether they accept copies of invitations or only originals and to specify it when applying for an invitation to facilitate processing.

Step 3: Russian Visa

Apply for a Russian Visa at a nearest Russian Embassy or Consulate (find your nearest embassy or consulate on the website). You are supposed to apply for Humanitarian visa, a type "Research-Scienfitic Visa" unless other is mentioned by the Organizing Committee.

If you live in a country other than your country of origin, please note that (subject to your home country) you might be not allowed to apply for the visa in the country of your residence, or additional application requirements may apply (e.g. you might be asked to provide notary translation of your residence permit in the country of application). Please check with the Russian Embassy in the country of application.

Step 4: Coming to the event!

Venue and Accommodation

Getting to St. Petersburg

by train

St. Petersburg is the final destination of a web of intercity and suburban railways served by five different railway terminals (Baltiysky, Finlyandsky, Ladozhsky, Moskovsky, and Vitebsky). Each terminal is connected with a metro station. See train timetables.

by plane

St. Petersburg is served by the Pulkovo International Airport. From the Pulkovo Airport terminal the city bus 13 goes to the "Moskovskaya" metro station. The bus goes every 15-20 minutes from 5.40 a.m. till 0.30 a.m The trip takes 20-25 minutes. The price is about 35₽. The shuttle buses K-3, K-113, K-213 also go from the Pulkovo 2 terminal to the "Moskovskaya" metro station. The price is 45₽.

We recommend you NOT to accept the offers from taxi drivers in the arrival hall or outside the airport. These taxi are safe but unreasonably expensive. You can order a taxi from the following services that are on average twice as cheap as the above. Народное такси (Narodnoe Taxi): +7 (812) 401-11-11. Taxovichkoff: +7 (812) 333-00-00.

Workshop Venue

All workshops will be held at 123 Kanal Griboyedova Emb, St. Petersburg. This is a newly restored building in the heart of St.Petersburg, right in front of magnificent St. Nicolas Cathedral that stands at the confluence of two beautiful channels.

To get there, take metro to the Sadovaya (Садовая) or Spasskaya (Спасская) or Sennaya Ploshchad (Сенная площадь) Stations. Then ride a bus (49, 50 or 181), share taxi (7, 195, 212) or walk along Sadovaya St. till the bridge for 10-15 minutes. Cross the bridge and turn right.

Main Conference Venue

Conference will take place in the northern building of HSE – St.Petersburg at 3 Kantemirovskaya street. This is a newly restored building with all necessary facilities, such as quick wi-fi and large well-equipped conference halls. The building is situated in only three metro stops from the city center. To get there, view transportation information.

  • To get there, take metro to the Lesnaya (Лесная) Station. Walk along Kantemirovskaya St. towards the Neva river for 15-20 minutes; the building will be on your left.
  • You can also take trolleybus number 31. Walk along Kantemirovskaya St. towards the Neva river for a couple of minutes until you cross Lesnoy Prospect (a very large one). Find the trolleybus stop on the right side of Kantemirovskaya. Buy a ticket when you get in. Get off on the second stop and cross Kantemirovskaya to reach the venue.
  • Alternatively, catch share taxi (маршрутка) No 10 or 131. To do this, turn towards Neva river and make sure you are on the right (right = not left) side of Kantemirovskaya St. Raise your hand when you see a mini-bus with the respective number. Pay the driver when you get in. To exit, tell the driver the two magic words “KANTEMIROVSKAYA TRI” (Кантемировская три). You can say this while paying, thus showing you don’t know where it is. He will stop and signal you to get off when you reach the venue. Russian speakers can also explain that this is right before the bridge.
  • When you reach the building, go around if from the left and into the yard. Please, note that what is considered the ground floor in the UK or USA, is the 1st floor in Russia. So the 4th floor (your target) will be there where you would expect the 3rd floor to be. Remember it esp. when you use the elevator and the wall signs.

News

Septeber 21 Conference proceedings at Springer website

Dear colleagues,

The proceedings are now available online:

The free access is granted until end of October 2018 via the official SocInfo conference website.


Septeber 3 Podium discussion

Dear colleagues,

we are happy to announce podium discussion “How access of researchers to privately collected data should be regulated?”

You can find more here.


June 5 SocInfo received a grant from RFBR

We are happy to announce our partnership with Russian Foundation for Basic Research! RFBR supported SocInfo with a grant, which will be used to create better conference for computational social scientists.


July 11 Accepted papers

Dear colleagues,

we are happy to announce the list of works accepted to SocInfo 2018.

You can find it here.


June 5 SocInfo received a grant from RFBR

We are happy to announce our partnership with Russian Foundation for Basic Research! RFBR supported SocInfo with a grant, which will be used to create better conference for computational social scientists.


May 9 SocInfo deadline extended

Social Informatics paper submission deadline has been extended to May 20 24:00 Hawaii time. Since this is likely to shift notification of acceptance deadline, applicants are required to submit abstracts by May 13, so that paper bidding could start right after that and the notification delay could be minimized. Note that camera ready deadline will NOT be extended.


April 20 Workshops announcement

SocInfo organizing committee is happy to announce two workshops to be held on Tuesday, September 25, 2018:

Analysis of Multiplex Social Networks with R by Matteo Magnani,  InfoLab, Uppsala University and Luca Rossi, Data Science & Society Lab, IT University of Copenhagen.

Topic Modeling in Practice. Rules of Thumb for Mining Topics with TopicMiner Software. Sergei Koltcov, Laboratory for Internet Studies, Higher School of Economics.


March 24 Springer sponsor €1000 for the Best Paper Award

As a token of appreciation of the longstanding, successful cooperation Springer sponsor SocInfo 2018 by providing an amount of €1,000 (one thousand euros) as a Best Paper Award!