---------------------------------------------------------------
Call for Papers for a Theme Issue of Virtual Reality - 2nd Call
--------------------------------------------------------------


"Validating cyber-interventions for training, wellbeing and sustainability"

We define cyberinterventions as the attempt at modifying people’s actions, meanings and habits with a protocol that is primarily supported by a digital environment, with the final goal of increasing wellness of a consentient user and to serve values shared by the society at large. Typical domains of ‘cyber-interventions’ are, for instance, applications designed to increase consumers’ awareness of the environmental consequences of each single consumption act; cognitive-behavioral therapeutic interventions carried out with virtual environments; virtual simulations aimed at training users in the proper reaction to emergency situations; serious games showing the long-term effect of risky behaviors for educational purposes. The environments used for all these interventions range from immersive virtual worlds, to complex driving simulators, to mobile applications.

As is the case with any intervention tool and protocol, the mediated environment for cyberintervention must be validated to prove that it is able to generate the proper user experience instrumental to the goal of the intervention and that the protocol is effective.

We invite scholars to contribute to a theme issue on validation in cyberinterventions of any kind and in any domain. Examples of topics for submissions to this theme issue are:

* Specific methods and techniques to validate cyberintervention and/or cyberintervention environments
* Issues raised while validating cyberintervention and related solutions
* Differences and similarities between cyberinterventions and regular, face to face interventions in terms of validation
* Review/studies on relevant user experience dimensions for specific application fields
* Quality standards, requirements and guidelines to frame cyberintervention
* Relation between user experience validation and cyberintervention effectiveness
* Ethical validation of cyberinterventions


The theme issue will appear in the Springer journal Virtual Reality. Submissions will be peer reviewed in accordance with the journal’s normal process. Submission of a manuscript implies: that the work described has not been published before; that it is not under consideration for publication anywhere else; that its publication has been approved by all co-authors, if any, as well as by the responsible authorities – tacitly or explicitly – at the institute where the work has been carried out. The publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.


Guest editors
---------------------------

Anna Spagnolli, University of Padova, Italy

Cheryl Campanella Bracken, Cleveland State University, USA

Important Dates
-------------------------

Submission of paper: 22nd of March 2013
Notification of acceptance to authors: 14th of June 2013
Revised papers: 27th of September 2013

To discuss a possible contribution, please contact the theme issue editors at anna.spagnolli@unipd.it and c.bracken@csuohio.edu.


Submission modality
---------------------------

Papers should be submitted at: http://www.editorialmanager.com/vire/ under the category of “Cyberinterventions”.

About Virtual reality
--------------------------_
Virtual Reality (http://www.springeronline.com/journal/10055) covers a wide range of topics, to fully capture the multidisciplinary nature of the field. From business and commerce to telecommunications, entertainment and gaming to medicine, Virtual Reality covers a wide range of specific application areas, featuring clear, well-written, and accessible articles that will appeal to a multidisciplinary audience.
Virtual Reality is abstracted and indexed by Science Citation Index Expanded (SciSearch), Journal Citation Reports/Science Edition, INSPEC, Google Scholar, EBSCO, Academic OneFile, ACM Computing Reviews, ACM Digital Library, Computer Abstracts International Database, Computer Science Index, Current Abstracts, Current Contents/Engineering, Computing and Technology, DBLP, EI-Compendex, Gale, io-port.net, OCLC, PASCAL, Summon by Serial Solutions

Link to call for papers
------------------------------
http://www.springer.com/cda/content/document/cda_downloaddocument/Cyberinterventions+Final+CFP.pdf?SGWID=0-0-45-1350720-p1127228