Note: We're pleased to collaborate with the Data for Peace Conference, hosted by the New York University Center on International Cooperation. The theme of the conference is 'Leveraging Data to Foster Lasting Peace' and it takes place on 16-20 October 2023 in New York on a hybrid basis. It is still possible to register for the Conference: we encourage interested parties to do so and we also encourage conference participants to submit to this Data & Policy Special Collection. We have extended the deadline to submit the Special Collection to 24 February 2024.

Jump to:

• Introduction
• Policy significance
• Key themes
• Timetable
• Submission process
• Why submit to Data & Policy?
• Guest Editors

Introduction

Data & Policy - a peer-reviewed open access journal published by Cambridge University Press (cambridge.org/dap) in association with the Data for Policy Conference - is calling for contributions to a special collection of papers on 'Data for Peace: how novel data sources and technology can enhance peace?'

This collection aims to investigate the ways in which new data sources and technology can support enhancing peace by connecting local and global practices that strive towards social and political peace through the responsible use of frontier technologies. Moreover, we seek to examine how data collection, analysis, and use of data and technology can be designed and implemented in an ethical manner in order to align and combine a holistic vision of peace with respect for human rights, including civil and political rights. Finally, we seek to understand what legal and regulatory tools are necessary to ensure the ethical and responsible use of data and technology for peace.

The papers will provide a comprehensive and multidisciplinary perspective on the use of data and technology for building peace, and offer insights and recommendations for policymakers, practitioners, and researchers working in this field.

Policy significance of this collection

The emerging field has notable policy significance because it offers a new approach to addressing some of the most challenging and persistent issues facing the world today. Computer-aided, algorithmic, and data-driven approaches to peace and peacebuilding can help to identify and target the root causes of conflict, potential for compromise in peace agreements, and can also improve the evaluation and monitoring of peacebuilding activities.

Key themes

• Novel and Non-Traditional Data Sources for Peacebuilding and Peace
• Conceptualization of Positive Peace Data
• Data Collaboratives for Peace: How to support peacebuilding by exchanging data across sectors?
• Computational methods to measure peace, international relations, and relations between local actors
• Predictive analytics for Peace
• Peace Agreements as Data: using technology, analytics, and visualizations to make sense of peace agreements quantitatively and qualitatively to maximize human potential to understand how compromise is reached
• Investing for Peace: Using technology, data, and algorithms to create transparent instruments to support investing in peace; conceptualizations of tokenization of peace
• Business for Peace: Novel data sources and methods to understand and reimagine the trade-peace relationship
• Towards Ethical Design and Implementation of Data-Driven Peace Technology
• Data asymmetries in the context of peacebuilding
• ’Low-tech’ vs ‘High-Tech’ Approaches in Data-Driven Peacebuilding
• Data for migration: tracking data flows, aiding migrants with data
• Tracking and assessing narratives for peace
• Monitoring human rights violations at times of conflict using data and technology
• Ambiguous or ambivalent uses of data and technology for peace, dual-use problematic
• Ethical and human rights-respecting collection, analysis and use of data and technology for peace
• Global governance approaches to regulate the use of data and technology for peace
• Searching for agreement on minimum ethical, legal and regulatory standards for the trustworthy use of data and technology for peace

Timetable

Authors are welcome to submit manuscripts as soon as they are ready, with a final deadline of October 2, 2023 February 24, 2024. Articles will be published as soon as possible after acceptance, in the interest of allowing authors to disseminate their work without unnecessary delay, and added to a curated page for the collection of articles. An editorial reflecting on their insights will be published later in 2024.

Submission process

Authors should submit articles through the Data & Policy ScholarOne site, using the ‘Data for Peace Technology' special collection option when prompted in the submission forum.

Before submission, authors should familarise themselves with the Instructions for Authors. Please feel free to use the LaTeX or Word templates. Note also that we have a template in Overleaf, a cloud-based, which has collaborative features and enables authors to submit directly into the Data & Policy system without having to re-upload files.

Note that Data & Policy publishes the following types of articles, which authors will be prompted to select from on submission:

• Research articles that use rigorous methods that demonstrate how data science can inform or impact policy by, for example, improving situation analysis, predictions, public service design, and/or the legitimacy and/or effectiveness of policy making. Published research articles are typically reviewed by three peer reviewers: two assessing the academic or methodological rigour of the paper; and one providing an interdisciplinary or policy-specific perspective.
• Commentaries are shorter articles that discuss and/or problematize an issue relevant to the Data & Policy scope. Commentaries are typically reviewed by two peer reviewers.
• Translational papers are contributions that show how data science principles, techniques and technologies are being used in practice in organisational settings to improve policy outcomes. They may present original findings but are less embedded in the scholarly literature as research articles. They are typically reviewed by two peer reviewers, who assess the rigour and policy significance of the paper.
• Data papers that provide a structured description of an openly available dataset with the aim of encouraging its re-use for further research.

You can read more on the Instructions for Authors here.

Data & Policy strongly encourages authors to make replication data and code available in an open repository, where this is possible (see the research transparency policy). All authors must provide a Data Availability Statement in their article that explains where the replication material resides, if it is available, and if not, the reason why it cannot be made accessible. Authors who link to replication materials will be awarded Open Data and/or Open Materials badges that display on the published article.

Why submit to Data & Policy?

✔ A venue developed for and expanding the community working at the data science for governance interface, established by the Data for Policy Conference.
✔ Welcomes research, translational articles, commentaries and data papers, plus the Data & Policy blog for more immediate reflections.
✔ Well-cited (2022 Impact Factor: 2.6) and indexed in Web of Science, Scopus and Directory of Open Access Journals.
✔ Open Access with support for authors who do not have access to funding to pay publishing charges.
✔ Promotes open sharing of data and code through Open Science Badges.

Guest Editors

• Innar Liiv (School of Information Technology, Tallinn University of Technology)
• Stefaan Verhulst (The GovLab, New York University)
• Evelyne Tauchnitz (Institute of Social Ethics ISE, University of Lucerne)
• Michele Giovanardi (School of Transnational Governance, European University Institute)
• Kalypso Nicolaïdis (School of Transnational Governance, European University Institute)
• Martin Wählisch (United Nations Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (UN DPPA))