Title: OBJECTIVES AND SCOPE OF THE FIDIS JOURNAL

Objectives and scope of the FIDIS journal

The aim of the proposed journal is to publish academically robust, peer-reviewed papers, research reports, critical reviews and opinions on the social, technological, political, psychological, philosophical and legal issues associated with identity in the Information Society.  The journal is intended to provide an interdisciplinary forum for theorists and researchers around the world to share their ideas and findings regarding the problems and prospects of identity in the context of the Information Society.  

The scope of the journal will encompass theory, applications, and implementations of identity and Identity Management Systems in the Information Society.  Information Systems will provide the overarching context, with identity acting as meta-concept and main focus addressed through various themes, rather than merely disciplinary perspectives.  Legal, sociological, political and technological perspectives will be accommodated in order that a comprehensive understanding of identity in the Information Society can be achieved.  Key themes include, but are not limited to, privacy, pseudonymity, anonymity, security, trust, multiple identities, interoperability of identities, identity and mobility, profiling, de-identification and identity theft.

A defining characteristic of the proposed journal relates to its multidisciplinary scope, for identity in the Information Society can and should be considered according to many different perspectives.  For example, Psychology and Sociology have addressed the concept of identity as the construction of the self for the individual, and the development of a set of shared values in a group; Organization Studies associates identity with forms of identification and the definition of the right to access resources; lawyers and legal philosophers have addressed the issue of identity in connection with responsibility, privacy, constitutional issues and the rule of law, ethics and morality; the technical perspective primarily addresses the questions of authentication, identity representation, identity protection, ownership and mobility, but can also address issues of commercial adoption of technologies and resulting and societal change.  

It is important to note that these perspectives are not mutually exclusive, since each perspective can shed an interesting and complementary light on the same problematic and should not, therefore, be treated separately.  For instance, the problem of managing access to restricted resources can be addressed in many different ways: computer scientists can propose authentication mechanisms, such as biometrics; sociologists and psychologists can define profiles of user’s behaviours (and help to identify suspect behaviours); organization experts can contribute to the definition of roles in the organization and to the definition of level of access to resources that enhance the protection of confidential information; finally, lawyers, by defining the rights of users and the sanctions associated with unauthorized behaviour, can help to enforce adequate access to restricted resources.  

The proposed journal seeks to overcome the present fragmentation of identity research by providing a multidisciplinary and multinational outlet, comprising different national research experiences with heterogeneous foci, and integrating expertise around a common set of themes.  The aim is to consolidate and foster multidisciplinary approaches and, hence, more comprehensive research in this area.  

Major areas the journal will cover include, but are not limited to, identification and authentication, identity management, liability, security and privacy, their legal aspects and social implications.  The journal will also concentrate on their complex interactions, a difficult and important task requiring the integration of inter-disciplinary expertise.  More specifically, the journal will seek to publish high quality research including, but not limited to, articles in the following areas:

• The concept of identity and its uses in the context of the Information Society;  the semantics of identity in the Information Society, the different concepts, functions and operations associated with identity in the Information Society (e.g.  identification, privacy, roles and behaviours, reputation, mobility, personalisation, authentication, credentials and proof).

• The implementation and manifestations of identity in different application domains (e.g.  business, work, education, government, citizen related activities, commerce).

• The concepts of physical, digital, virtual, partial and cyber identity; how they are used, how they might be used and abused, the nature of the impact that they will have in shaping the e-Society as well as its supporting technologies, and how they ought to be defined in order to respect the fundamental rights of the citizen. 

• The management of identity by the citizen, particularly through Identity Management Systems which will both allow Identity to be used as a means of navigation in the Information Society, and open and facilitate access to online services. 

• Analyses of different Identity Management Systems, their current relations and the resulting effects on mobility in the Information Society. 

• Interoperability of Identity Management Systems, and how it may expand or limit the benefits to citizens, businesses or governments. 

• The multiplicity of identities and Identity Management Systems as they are used in different cultures as well as in different areas of life and work. 

• The requirements, definitions, conceptions and implications of specific security, trust and privacy technologies such as Privacy Enhancing Technologies, Biometrics and Cryptography. 

• Liability and responsibility in the virtual world, and the role that Identity could play in defining responsibility in technological, economic, legal and societal facets of the e-Society. 

• The critical challenges that Cybercrime may pose for the Information Society, including the management of acceptable levels of risk in the context of Identity (theft, abuse, misuse).  New notions of legal entities and the regulatory framework as well as supporting technology that will be required as a consequence.

• The tension between security and privacy - analyses of the opportunities for adapting precautionary principles to information and communication technologies which may be deployed when there is uncertainty on the application of specific technologies and their socio-economic impacts. 

• The social, cultural and psychological impact of emerging identity technologies, particularly in relation to concepts of self and how the self relates to others. 

• Gender and identity in the information society, for example gender issues relating to the impact of profiling on identity. 

Because identity in the Information Society is an emerging phenomenon and academic research in this field is just beginning, the scope of the proposed journal should be broadly defined to allow inclusion, not exclusion, of relevant themes and related debates.  Moreover, an inclusive approach will be adopted when considering different units of analysis applied in research articles. For example, identity of persons in different roles (e.g. citizen; costumer; individual) in different places (home; work; mobile) and in different modes (offline; online; mixed modes) are equally relevant.  Likewise, the journal will encourage contributions that explore identity in different contexts, ranging from the individual through to the organisational, the national and international.  

What is left outside the scope of the journal is any discussion of identity in which the Information Society is not considered.  For example, a psychological discussion of identity as in the case of the journal ‘Identity’ (http://www.ssc.uwo.ca/sociology/identity/ - The Journal of the Society for Research on Identity Formation) will not fit within the scope of the proposed journal, although a paper on psychological aspects of identity when associated with ICTs or the Information Society generally would be within the journal’s remit.  Similarly, social and organisational discussions of identity irrespective of the role played by ICTs shall remain beyond the boundaries of the journal.  Discussions on the European Identity per se will not be relevant; however discussions on how the digitisation of identity may influence a citizen’s perception of himself and what social group he feels part of would be relevant.  Finally, research articles that adopt a purely technical/engineering approach would more appropriately be published in disciplinary-specific outlets, unless they can be shown to be accessible by and relevant to a wider audience.  The multidisciplinary nature of the proposed journal requires that research articles are both accessible and relevant to a broad community of interest comprised of researchers from a wide range of disciplines.