DiGRA 2007 Review Process Proposal

I have been busy writing this:


DiGRA 2007 Review Process Proposal version 0.01
5/28/2006

Overview
This document is produced to elaborate the review process proposed in the original DiGRA 2007 proposal. The review process proposed here generally follows the guideline outlined by "DiGRA Review Process: A guide for the review Process in DiGRA Conferences" (www.digra.org/digra_conference/reviewprocess). In particular, the review process proposed here aims to achieve the same goals as described in "DiGRA Review Process." There are, however, several differences in its way to achieve these goals. Those differences will be mentioned later.
The following review process is proposed to be applied to the category of full paper presentations (or pre-organized sessions of full paper presentations). The review process for other categories of presentations will be discussed elsewhere.
The review organization is proposed in consideration of the unique difficulty of an interdisciplinary conference like DiGRA 2007. In order to maintain high academic standards of DiGRA conferences, we need to tackle the following issues:
1. We need to recruit qualified reviewers.
2. We need to find a way to make a good match between a submitted paper and its reviewers.
This proposal attempts to solve these problems by giving a greater role to the Review Committee members, making their function similar to that of an editor of a journal. An author is expected to submit a paper to the Review Committee member whom the author can trust about his or her familiarity with the relevant literature and ability to assign appropriate reviewers.

Review Organization
Two committees will be involved in developing the conference program: The Program Committee and the Review Committee.
The Review Committee will evaluate papers and make recommendation using 1 to 5 scale (strong accept, weak accept, neutral, weak reject, strong reject).
The Review Committee Chair will be recommended by the International Advisory Board and appointed by the Local Organizing Committee.
The Review Committee Chair will recruit the Review Committee members in consultation with the International Advisory Board so that the Review Committee members as a whole can cover all the relevant fields in game studies. However, there can be more than one specialist for one thematic topic, or one Review Committee member can be an expert of more than one thematic topic. The Review Committee Chair will supervise the Review Committee members in their assignment of reviewers and their evaluation of papers.
The Review Committee members will recruit reviewers from their own network and from the list of volunteers and assign papers to appropriate reviewers. The Review Committee Chair and the International Advisory Board will assist locating appropriate reviewers.
The Program Committee is chaired by the Conference Chair and consists of the Review Committee Chair, a representative from the International Advisory Board, a representative from the Local Organizing Committee, and the President of DiGRA. The role of this Program Committee is to make the final decision about which papers to accept following the recommendation of the Review Committee, and compile the program.

Thematic Categories
Tentatively, themes include:
 Player-Focus: Sociology and economy of MMORPGs, sociological approaches to games, gender and gaming, player engagement, player co-production, cross-cultural issues, etc. Relevant disciplines include: sociology, anthropology, history, economics, and psychology.
 Content Focus: Theory and practice of game design, game storytelling, game graphics, etc. Relevant disciplines include: literature, film studies, and game design theory.
 Learning/Education Focus: Teaching and curriculum development in game programs, serious games, games at school, learning and games. Relevant disciplines include: education and psychology.
 Business Focus: Economics-based studies of game industry, business models, sociology of game production, copyright and legal issues, national policy of game production and training, independent/amateur designers, etc. Relevant disciplines include: business and management, economics, sociology, history, law, and political sciences.
 Interdisciplinary: Any studies to cross these themes or innovative attempts that do not fit in any other theme areas. May include game studies-related sessions or symposia.

Review Preparation
1. Guidelines
The general guideline to review a paper will be drafted by the Program Committee based on the version used for DiGRA 2005. Each Review Committee member, however, can modify the guideline to make it fit in the disciplinary convention.
A guideline for evaluating a session proposal will be drafted by the Program Committee.

2. Online review system
Currently, it is our plan to handle the entire reviewing process though a web-based online system.

3. Recruiting Process
The Review Committee Chair is the key in the entire review process. The Review Committee Chair must be a highly regarded scholar with a long career in game studies who has a long experience in reviewing papers and an extensive network of game studies scholars. The International Advisory Board will make the necessary recommendation about the selection of the Review Committee Chair. The Local Organizing Committee will negotiate with the candidates.
As stated above, the Program Committee will be chaired by the Conference Chair and consist of the Review Committee Chair, the President of DiGRA, a representative of the International Advisory Board, and a representative of the Local Organizing Committee.
To facilitate assignment of reviewers, a list of possible reviewers will be compiled by the Local Organizing Committee with the help of the International Advisory Board. The Local Organizing Committee will announce a call for reviewers. In addition, the Local Organizing Committee will recruit appropriate candidates for reviewers by contacting those who served as reviewers in previous DiGRA conferences and those who are recommended by the International Advisory Board.
Those who agreed to be on the list of potential reviewers will be requested to register their contact information and their specialties and interests through the online review system. The Review Committee members will contact them or not depending on what kind of papers are submitted. Reviewer candidates are free to decline to review assigned papers, but must do so immediately.

Review Process
a) Individual paper
1. Submission
Those who wish to present a paper should submit an electronic version of a full paper to the appropriate Review Committee member through the online review system by the deadline set by the Local Organizing Committee. The length of the paper should fit in the time allocated to one presentation (30 minute per paper), and the submitted paper should be as close as the final form of the paper to be presented to increase the chance to be accepted. Along with the text, it will be made possible to submit electronic forms of audio-visual materials such as PopwerPoint presentations.
It is primarily the responsibility of the authors to choose an appropriate Review Committee member for their paper and to identify an appropriate thematic focus (or foci). The Review Committee member, however, must decline to review the paper when there are possible conflicts of interests, as discussed in "DiGRA Review Process." When they were not able to find an appropriate Review Committee member, they should contact the Review Committee Chair.
2. Reviewer assignment
The Review Committee members will read the submitted papers and assign appropriate reviewers. Reviewers will be chosen from the list of reviewer candidates prepared by the Local Organizing Committee or from Review Committee member's personal network based on the content of the paper. In choosing reviewers, any conflict of interests must be avoided.
At least three reviewers should be assigned to each paper, and the Review Committee member assign additional reviewers when necessary.
3. Review
The actual review will be conducted in the double-blind method, namely, both authors and reviewers do not know each other's identity. The reviewers will write a review report along with the guideline defined by the Review Committee member.
When revisions will drastically improve the quality of a submitted paper, a reviewer can suggest revisions of the paper. The evaluation of the paper is still based on the original draft but possibilities of revisions should be noted on the review report and taken into consideration in the final decision to accept the paper or not.
The review committee chair will make the final evaluation of the papers based on the review reports from reviewers.
The review reports should be accessible to the authors, but the names of reviewers will be kept anonymous.

4. Program
The Program Committee will make the program based on the evaluation of Review Committee members.

b) Organized sessions
In the case of organized sessions, each paper of the session should follow the same process as individual papers. There should be a separate session proposal, which should also be evaluated in the same manner. When the session proposal is interdisciplinary, the proposal should be submitted to the Review Committee chair. The responsibility to evaluate the session is on the Review Committee member (or chair) who received the session proposal. The evaluation will be based on the review

Differences from the "DiGRA Review Process"
There are three significant differences:
1. The author takes the primary responsibility to choose an appropriate Review Committee member, whose role is similar to the editor in an academic journal. This prevents mismatch of the paper and reviewers because the author of the paper should know who is the best qualified scholar among the Review Committee members to evaluate the paper (otherwise, that author is not worthy of presenting at DiGRA). In the review process suggested in the "DiGRA Review Process," there are double chances of mismatches. First, a thematic chair might be not completely appropriate to review papers in that thematic genre. Because one thematic category can have a wide range of topics, the thematic chair might not cover all. Second, since there are always possible gaps between thematic categories set by DiGRA and actual topics of the papers, one paper might not completely be judged within one given thematic category.
2. One thematic category (or thematic focus in this document) is not necessarily represented by one thematic chair. Thematic foci are categories more for the convenience of organizing a program without allocating the same time slots to sessions that are likely to have same audience. As stated above, it is not always the case that one scholar can cover all the relevant topics within one thematic category (or focus). Or, in some cases, one scholar can command multiple topics over different thematic categories (or foci). In these cases, it is inappropriate to bind one scholar to one thematic topic.
3. The Review Committee and the Program Committee are separated, whereas in "DiGRA Review Process, there is no independent "Review Committee." The Review Committee should carry out evaluation of papers as thoroughly as possible. It should mobilize as many qualified scholars as possible in order to be prepared to evaluate adequately papers in any genre. The Review Committee Chair should recruit at least 8 to 10 scholars. The Program Committee needs to compile the final program as a team. The program of the conference needs to be coherent and consistent to the theme of the Conference ("Situated Play). Therefore, the size of the Committee should be as small as possible in order to facilitate communication and consensus building among the members. Since the role of the Review Committee and the Program Committee are so different, they need to be separated.

The DiGRA 2007 Dates

The dates of Tokyo Game Show in 2007 are set to September 21-23. We are now considering September 24 to 28 as the dates of DiGRA 2007.

Japan Times article on the DiGRA Japan inaugural meeting

Here.
Almost same article is here.
They are probably the first English-language news articles on DiGRA Japan.
Unfortunately, these articles not really accurate about DiGRA Japan. It says, for example:
"According to the group, the association will also try to develop visually impressive game software using the latest image processing technologies and promote academic-industrial collaboration by providing newly developed technologies to companies."
I really don't think that is what we are going to do.
Moreover, this articles does not mention DiGRA 2007.

DiGRA Japan Inaugural Meeting

I haven't been writing here for a while. This is partly because the skype meetings with Frans and Tanya have been canceled, but mostly because I have been too busy working for DiGRA Japan.
The inaugural meeting of DiGRA Japan took place on May 19. DiGRA Japan has already been declared to be established on April 28 but for various reasons we could not have a meeting on that day. The purpose of this inaugural meeting is to announce the establishment of this new association to the general public and recruit members.
The meeting was a great success. It attracted a lot of media attention. About 120 people attended the meeting (much better attendance than DiGRA itself!), all the major newspaper companies and a lot of game related news companies came to cover the meeting. The meeting went smoothly, the inaugural address of Prof. Baba, president of DiGRA Japan was very successful, and nearly 40 from the audience joined DiGRA Japan. On the next day, newspapers reported this meeting, some news websites had a fairly extensive coverage, and users of SNS sites and blogs began discussing DiGRA Japan.
All these indicate that this new association is something really wanted by society at large. This also means that we have huge responsibilities to make DiGRA Japan a success.
Along with the news of DiGRA Japan, the news of DiGRA 2007 was announced and circulated through the Japanese mass media. Such media attention is important for us organizers because soon we need to start raising funds to support DiGRA 2007. Already, an organization linked to the Tokyo Metropolitan government has offered some support (so at least you will get at least free maps and brochures of To

Some developments in DiGRA Japan (2)

As in previous entries, DiGRA Japan, the host organization of DiGRA 2007, has been established on April 28, and its website is up and running (although all in English). These days, we have been busy to prepare its first general assembly. This will be an important opportunity to announce DiGRA 2007 to potential Japanese participants. We have released information of the assembly to both general and game related media, and, in spite of the bad timing (the PS3 announcements and E3), we have been attracting fair amount of interests. At least two major game related news websites and one newspaper have reported on this event. Already more than eighty people have registered to attend the first assembly, and it is likely we have to stop registration because of the limited space (the room we prepared can only accommodate 120 people).

Board member benefits?

Althought I am an enthusiastic advocate of transparency and supporter of making anything "open-source," I intend to be discreet when personal information is concerned. So, I am not going to write down a list of candidates for the International Advisory Board.
In stead, I post an issue less (but not very much less) sensitive. What benefits should an International Advisory Board member should get? This needs to be made clear because we will be asking peoploe to become a member of the IAB. My answer (at this point, at least) is "virtually nothing."
True, when I was asked to be a member of the International Advisory Board of DiGRA 2005, an idea that I might at least get a waiver for the conference registration fee was not absent in my head. I didn't get it, of course, and I don't think that was necessarily bad. The members of the International Advisory Board were (and will be) mostly (myself being an exception) senior scholars and in a good position to get funding from their university. The only visible benefit I got at DiGRA 2005 was that I was invited to the VIP party. Of course, invisible benefits were far more important than some free drinks. I felt honored and delighted to work for the international community of game studies scholars. Of course, we might get enough funding to make up for registration fees of several people. But from the perspective of the conference organizers, it is not wise to make such financial commitment early on.
So, with this precedent in mind, our policy will be that members of the IAB will not be waived registration fees and will not get any financial support from the conference. Probably, we can do a VIP party at least. Also, we can certainly afford to make the color of their badges different (VIP badges?) or even provide a fast lane for their registration.
Same for reviewers. Reviewers will do more work than some of IAB members, but they will not get anything for their work. Success of an academic community can only be possible because of unappreciated hardwork of anomymous reviewers, and that is also the case with DiGRA 2007.

DiGRA Japan website

DiGRA Japan website has been updated. This looks much better, but still lacks English pages.

Some scheduling things

The second circular will include the dates of the conference and details of the review process. Since we want to announce the fixed dates as soon as possible, and it is expected that we will know the dates of TGS 2007 in early June, we will send out the second circular in early June. This means by then, we need to finalize details of the review process of DiGRA 2007, including what to do about work-in-progress sessions, mentoring sessions, lightening sessions, symposia, etc. Thsese determine the content and quality of the conference to a considerable extent, we should consult with scholars from around the world about this issue. This means, we need to set up an initial form of the International Advisory Board for DiGRA 2007 very soon.

Some developments in DiGRA Japan

The first general assembly of DiGRA Japan is planned to take place on May 19. The website of DiGRA Japan is partially published, but it is still under development.

Some ideas for students/newcomers at DiGRA 2007

Beth Aileen Dillon from Simon Fraser University proposes an interesting idea. According to Beth, at the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts, there is a "mentor program," in which newcomers were assigned to scholars who have attended the conference in the past and have a session to meet up with them. The veterans of the conference help the newcomers about the conference and meeting people at the conference, making the newcomers feel supported. Moreover, in some cases, such mentorship relation continues even after the conference over long distance communication.
My first thought was that there were two separate issues:
1. Introduction or guidance for those who are new to the DiGRA conference. Many scholars who have started to be in game studies are not junior scholars. Many of them come from different disciplines. It might be good to have a guidance or orientation session early in the program of the conference for those who are new to DiGRA or to the field.
2. A session for students to meet possible mentors. Many students who work on games are not always lucky to have a perfect adviser at their home institute. The DiGRA conference might be able to facilitate students to meet first rate scholars close to their research topic. Mentoring round table sessions like the ones in the last conference will probably do (but I was not involved in any of those sessions, so I do really do not know).

One additional thought: An orientation session of a large group might be useful too, but, to give a personal touch, we might want to organize small group meetings, in which only a small number of newcomers should be assigned to one mentor. A problem, however, will be whether we can get a sufficient number of volunteers for mentors.

I am thinking of one other thing for students. At a meeting like the Society for Social Studies of Science annual meeting, there is a "student party." This is an occasion for junior scholars to know each other than to get support. I am wondering if such an event is desirable.

DiGRA Japan website

Here is an English draft of some of the pages

DiGRA Japan: Call for Participation

Today, Japan has a huge population of digital game players and has an extremely competitive game industry. Applications of digital games like serious games promise tremendous potentials. As games grow influential, effects of games on society have become serious issues.

In this situation, it is urgent to take games seriously and make scholarly investigations of them.

Outside Japan, games have been studied from early on. Already a considerable number of books and articles on games have been published. MIT, CMU, and many other prestigious universities in the world have launched research and training courses on games.

In particular, as an international organization for game studies, DiGRA (Digital Games Research Association) has been established and attracted participation of scholars from around the world, providing a locus for active research and exchange of scholarly work.

In Japan, however, despite her powerful game industry, there is comparatively little academic research on games and very limited collaboration between industry and academia. In game studies, Japan is still far behind of Europe and North America and is in isolation from the international game studies community.

We, therefore, are determined to establish Digital Games Research Association Japan (DiGRA Japan) as the central forum of academic research on games in Japan. As the Japan chapter of Digital Games Research Association, DiGRA Japan’s objective is to promote advancement and dissemination of game studies and game technologies. It will serve as a hub of communication among its members as well as collaboration with related academic and industrial organizations. In cooperation with DiGRA, DiGRA Japan will facilitate exchange of scholarly achievements with abroad and aim to contribute to healthy developments in game-related scholarship, culture, and industry.

As part of its activities, DiGRA Japan will publish an academic journal, host lectures and symposia, and facilitate communication among members through newsletters and a website.

Moreover, in 2007, DiGRA Japan will host in Tokyo DiGRA 2007, DiGRA’s third international conference after Utrecht and Vancouver. This is the first full-blown international conference of game studies in Japan, and top scholars from around the world will gather at this conference.

DiGRA Japan is a voluntary association for those who are in game studies or in game industry. Our intent is to make this association a place where members respect mutual independency and each other’s creativity, and can carry out innovative research and education.

We appreciate active participation of those who agree with the purport of this statement in establishment and activities of DiGRA Japan.

April 2006,
Akira Baba
Kenji Ito
Kyoshi Shin

About DiGRA Japan (Digital Games Research Association Japan)

DiGRA Japan is an academic association whose goal is to promote advancement and dissemination of studies on digital games in Japan.

In Japan and abroad, there are rising interests in industrial, economic, cultural, and other aspects of digital games. Now is the time when serious scholarly studies of digital games are urgently needed.

Quickly responding to such social demands, scholars in North America and Europe have started serious engagement with game studies. Researchers from various disciplines have begun actively publishing various books and articles.

In concert with such trends, an international game studies organization called Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) has been organized. Many scholars from around the world actively participate in DiGRA.

In Japan, however, academic studies of digital games are still in embryo. Much remains to be desired regarding communication among researchers, collaboration between industry and academia, and training of game studies scholars.

We, therefore, have established Digital Games Research Association Japan as the focal point of scholarly research on digital games in Japan.

As the Japan chapter of Digital Games Research Association, DiGRA Japan aims to promote advancement and dissemination of game studies.


In cooperation with DiGRA, DiGRA Japan will facilitate exchange of scholarly achievements with abroad and aim to contribute to healthy developments in game-related scholarship, culture, and industry.

About DiGRA 2007

DiGRA (Digital Games Research Association) have been organizing conferences to facilitate international and interdisciplinary exchange in game studies. In 2003, Utrecht University in the Netherlands hosted the first DiGRA conference with the theme of “Level Up,” and in 2005, Simon Fraser University in Canada Hosted the second conference, whose theme was “Changing Views: Worlds in Play.”

In September 2007, the DiGRA conference will comes to Tokyo. DiGRA Japan is the hosting organization of this conference.

This first international conference on digital games in Japan, a country which is the world’s superpower in games and game industry, will trigger new developments of game studies in Japan.

We hope many will participate in this epoch-making events.

More details will be posted on this webpage as they are decided.