The Participatory Communication Research (PCR) Section is pleased to announce that it has finalized its reviewing process for the annual conference of International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) to be held from 20th to 24th June, 2018 in Eugene, Oregon USA. In response to its open call for proposals exploring the theory and practice of participatory communication, the PCR section received 72 proposals for presentations during IAMCR 2017, in the form of individual paper proposals (71) and one joint panel proposal. The PCR section has selected in total 64 proposals that have now been invited to be present their work during the conference. The 64 selected proposals consist out of 63 individual papers and 1 joint panel proposal. The joint panel incorporates 5 papers, which brings the total number of accepted papers to 68.
The PCR section used a blind triple peer reviewing process to evaluate the proposals – where each proposal was reviewed thrice – once by one of our section officials and the second and third reviews by independent external reviewers. While finding a match between reviewer expertise and the proposal content is always a difficult process, we were ably supported by 33 academic experts leading the field of participatory media and communication, who were our external reviewers during the process. The proposals were evaluated using a combined quantitative and qualitative method on the following criteria – 1/The proposed paper's use of or contribution to theory, 2/ The quality of the proposed research methods, 3/The quality of writing, 4/ The quality and extensiveness of the literature review, 5/ The relevance of the proposal to the work of the section and 6/ The originality and significance of the research.
Based on their evaluation, the reviewers suggested a decision for acceptance, refusal or reservations of the paper for the conference. The external and internal reviews of each proposal were then discussed by the PCR section working group to arrive at a final decision (accept or decline). The review process was swiftly conducted by the reviewers and the final decisions to all the authors were communicated on 10th March 2018.