IEEE Internet Computing provides journal-quality evaluation and review of emerging and maturing Internet technologies and applications. The magazine targets the technical and scientific Internet user communities as well as designers and developers of Internet-based applications and enabling technologies. IC publishes refereed articles on the latest developments and key trends in Internet technologies and applications.

A crossroads between academic researchers and software professionals, the magazine presents novel content from academic and industry experts on a wide range of topics, including applications, architectures, information management, middleware, policies, security, and standards.

In addition to peer-reviewed articles, IC features industry reports, surveys, tutorials, columns, and news.

Special Issue on Sociotechnical Perspectives on AI Ethics and Accountability
Submission Date: 2021-04-21

The recent resurgence of artificial intelligence (AI) and its expanding applications have led to increased interest in the challenges of ethics and accountability, along with associated concerns such as fairness, liability, and verification.

Much of the recent work on AI ethics and allied concerns takes an atomistic, single-agent perspective, such as the decision-making involved in the trolley problems, or the statistical aspects of machine-learning algorithms, such as optimizing a metric for the benefit of the decision-maker.

In contrast, this special issue will focus on system-level perspectives on AI ethics and accountability, which consider how AI is embedded in technology while respecting the needs of society. Specific settings include a human or organization using an AI algorithm to arrive at decisions that affect others, as well as AI agents assisting humans in how they interact with each other and with existing social institutions. Research on statistical and decision-making aspects of AI ethics is welcome as long as it approaches the problem from a system perspective.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Sociotechnical systems with multiple stakeholders from a computational perspective
- Models of institutions and norms
- Conceptions of human values (such as privacy, fairness, and safety)
- Ethics and accountability in organizations and business processes
- Trust and trustworthiness in groups, including organizations and loosely structured communities
- User interactions with AI agents in decision-making (such as loan application processing) and cyber-physical control (such as autonomous vehicles and manufacturing)
- Methods and tools for supporting ethics and accountability, including requirements modeling, software engineering, and information system design
- Evaluations of computational approaches for ethics and accountability, including datasets for evaluation
- Applications and empirical studies in specific domains (such as transportation or healthcare)

Special Issue on Quantum and Post-Moore’s Law Computing
Submission Date: 2021-07-01

The past 40 years witnessed a golden age of computing power improvement predicted by Gordon Moore and colloquially referred to as Moore’s Law. Yet, as we reach the limit of Moore’s Law, new computational tools and systems must be developed. Current exemplars include, but are not limited to, quantum computing.

As a new computing paradigm, quantum computing has promised unprecedented computational ability to tackle classically intractable problems, ranging from encryption and cybersecurity systems, to the simulation of quantum systems, to combinatorial optimization and machine learning. Quantum hardware also progressed considerably in the past few years. Several multi-qubit quantum devices, utilizing a variety of underlying technologies, have been devised. These include both publicly available and private systems with over 50 qubits. However, movement toward the ultimate goal of a fault-tolerant universal quantum computer will require innovation and refinement from both software and hardware research and engineering in order to harness these Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) devices.

This special issue seeks papers in all areas related to quantum and post-Moore’s Law computing, including application, programming language, compiler optimization, hardware architecture design, and simulation. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

    Simulation of quantum algorithms and systems
    Design of quantum architectures and quantum circuits
    Quantum programming languages and compiler optimization
    Verification, debugging, and testing of quantum computing systems
    Development of both theoretical and practical approaches to fault tolerance and error mitigation
    Other post-Moore’s Law computing technologies, such as biological computation and neuromorphic computing

Important Dates

Paper submissions due: 1 July 2021
First-round review due: 13 August 2021
Revision due: 10 October 2021
Final decision notification: 19 November 2021
Camera-ready submission due: 30 November 2021
Publication: January/February 2022

Submission Guidelines

All submissions must be original manuscripts of fewer than 5,000 words. All manuscripts are subject to peer review on both technical merit and relevance to IEEE Internet Computing’s international readership–primarily practicing engineers and academics who are looking for material that introduces new technology and broadens familiarity with current topics. We do not accept white papers, and papers that are primarily theoretical or mathematical must clearly relate the mathematical content to a real-life or engineering application. Please read the author instructions here. To submit a manuscript, create or access an account on ScholarOne.

Guest Editors

Contact the guest editors at ic1-2022@computer.org.

    John Gunnels, Amazon Web Services (AWS)
    Yufei Ding, University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB)

Special Issue on the Effects of Social Media on Real-World Events
Submission Date: 2021-09-30

Social media has quickly become not just ubiquitous, but also integral to modern society. A large portion of social media’s quick ascent was due to its modeling of real-world relationships, meaning the offline world informed the development and adoption of the online world. Recently, however, it has become apparent that this effect is not a one-way street. For example, the spread of mis- and dis-information, the spread of conspiracy theories, and the rise of extremism can all be attributed, in part, to social media.

Most previous research has studied the real world and social media in isolation. However, these worlds are interconnected via complex and diverse channels, hence each world can have a substantial impact and influence on the other. For instance, hateful rhetoric and ideology disseminated via public social media posts can encourage physical meetings that can quickly transform rhetoric into violent actions.

In this special issue, we focus on the emerging effects that social media can have on the real world. Research that explores the exogenic effects of social media from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives is particularly welcome. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

    The effects of social media-driven mis- and dis-information with respect to real-world actions
    The role of social media in pro-social, real-world movements (for example, Black Lives Matter)
    Hate speech and harassment
    The transition from online to real-world extremism
    Methods to mitigate real-world harm
    Online radicalization and real-world outcomes
    Online user behavior during important crises in the real world
    Behavioral biases on social media and in the real world
    Activity on gaming-related platforms and real-world effects
    Online moderation and real-world effects

Important Dates

Paper submissions due: 30 September 2021
First-round review due: 22 November 2021
Revision due: 23 December 2021
Final decision notification: 31 January 2022
Camera-ready submission due: 10 February 2022
Publication: March/April 2022

Submission Guidelines

All submissions must be original manuscripts of fewer than 5,000 words. All manuscripts are subject to peer review on both technical merit and relevance to IEEE Internet Computing’s international readership–primarily practicing engineers and academics who are looking for material that introduces new technology and broadens familiarity with current topics. We do not accept white papers, and papers that are primarily theoretical or mathematical must clearly relate the mathematical content to a real-life or engineering application. Please read the author instructions. To submit a manuscript, create or access an account on  ScholarOne.

Guest Editors

Contact the guest editors at ic2-2022@computer.org.

    Jeremy Blackburn, Binghamton University, USA
    Savvas Zannettou, Max Planck Institute for Informatics, Germany