Call for Papers

SoGood 2020 – 5th Workshop on Data Science for Social Good
Affiliated with ECML-PKDD 2020, 14-18 September 2020, https://ecmlpkdd2020.net/

Workshop site: https://sites.google.com/view/ecmlpkddsogood2020/

This is the fifth edition of the workshop; the previous workshops were held jointly with ECML-PKDD 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019

The possibilities of Data Science for contributing to social, common, or public good are often not sufficiently perceived by the public at large. Data Science applications are already helping in serving people at the bottom of the economic pyramid, aiding people with special needs, helping international cooperation, and dealing with environmental problems, disasters, and climate change. In regular conferences and journals, papers on these topics are often scattered among sessions with names that hide their common nature (such as "Social networks", "Predictive models" or the catch-all term "Applications"). Additionally, such forums tend to have a strong bias for papers that are novel in the strictly technical sense (new algorithms, new kinds of data analysis, new technologies) rather than novel in terms of social impact of the application.

This workshop aims to attract papers presenting applications of Data Science for Social Good (which may, or may not require new methods), or applications that take into account social aspects of Data Science methods and techniques. There are numerous application domains, a non-exclusive list includes:

* Government transparency and IT against corruption
* Public safety and disaster relief
* Public policies in epidemic growth and related issues
* Access to food, water and utilities
* Efficiency and sustainability
* Data journalism
* Economic, social and personal development
* Transportation
* Energy
* Smart city services
* Education
* Social services, unemployment and homelessness
* Healthcare
* Ethical issues, fairness and accountability
* Trustability and interpretability
* Topics aligned with the UN development goals:
http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/

The major selection criteria will be the novelty of the application and its social impact.

We are also interested in applications that have built a successful business model and are able to sustain themselves economically. Most Social Good applications have been carried out by non-profit and charity organisations, conveying the idea that Social Good is a luxury that only societies with a surplus can afford. We would like to hear from successful projects, which may not be strictly "non-profit" but have Social Good as their main focus.

There will be an award for the best paper.

Paper submission:
Authors should submit a PDF version in Springer LNCS style using the workshop EasyChair site: https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=sogood2020. The maximum length of papers is 16 pages, consistent with the ECML PKDD conference submissions.

Submitting a paper to the workshop means that if the paper is accepted, at least one author will attend the workshop and present the paper. Papers not presented at the workshop will not be included in the proceedings.

In light of COVID-19, we will follow ECML PKDD’s policy for attendance and presentation (face-to-face, virtual or hybrid). ECML PKDD is considering contingency plans and will announce its final decision before the early registration deadline (second half of July).

Paper publication:
The proceedings of the workshop will be published either by Springer as a Lecture Notes volume or by CEUR in their workshop proceedings series (http://ceur-ws.org/). Selected workshop papers will be invited for extension and submission to a special journal issue.

Workshop format:
* Full-day workshop
* 1-2 keynote talks, speakers to be announced
* Oral presentation of accepted papers
* Panel discussion with the audience

Important Dates:
* Workshop paper submission deadline: June 11, 2020
* Workshop paper acceptance notification: July 2, 2020
* Workshop paper camera-ready deadline: July 16, 2020
* Workshop: September 14 or 18, 2020 (TBC)

Program Committee members (more to be added):
* Carlos Ferreira, ISEP, Portugal
* Marta Arias, UPC BarcelonaTech, Spain
* Albert Bifet, Telecom ParisTech, France
* José del Campo-Ávila, University of Malaga, Spain
* Hau Chan, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
* Itziar de Lecuona, University of Barcelona, Spain
* Yann-Ael Le Borgne, University Libre Bruxelles
* José del Campo, University of Málaga, Spain
* Jeremiah Deng, University of Otago, New Zealand
* Cèsar Ferri, Technical University of Valencia, Spain
* Geoffrey Holmes, University of Waikato, New Zealand
* Konstantin Kutzkov, Amalfi Analytics, Spain
* Josep-Lluís Larriba-Pey, UPC BarcelonaTech, Spain
* Rafael Morales-Bueno, University of Málaga, Spain
* Nuno Moniz, INESC TEC, Porto, Portugal
* Ana Nogueira, INESC TEC, Porto, Portugal
* Alexandra Olteanu, Microsoft Research, USA
* Panagiotis Papapetrou, Stockholm University, Sweden
* Maria Pedroto, INESC TEC, Porto, Portugal
* Sonia Teixeira, INESC TEC, Porto, Portugal
* Emma Tonkin, University of Bristol, UK
* Alicia Troncoso, University Pablo de Olavide, Spain
* Evgueni Smirnov, University of Maastricht, The Netherlands
* Kristina Yordanova, University of Rostock, Germany
* Martí Zamora, UPC BarcelonaTech, Spain


Organizers:
* Ricard Gavaldà (UPC BarcelonaTech, Spain), gavalda@cs.upc.edu
* Irena Koprinska (University of Sydney, Australia), irena.koprinska@sydney.edu.au
* João Gama (University of Porto, Portugal), jgama@fep.up.pt
* Rita Ribeiro (University of Porto, Portugal), rpribeiro@fc.up.pt