Call for papers: “Recent Advancements, Developments and Applications of Personal Network Analysis”

Call for papers: “Recent Advancements, Developments and Applications of Personal Network Analysis” special issue of International Review of Social Research, volume 6, issue 2, October 2016

Guest editors: Marian-Gabriel Hâncean (University of Bucharest, Romania), José Luis Molina (Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain) and Miranda Jessica Lubbers (Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain). 

We invite scholars to submit original papers (irrespective of their corresponding research stage; i.e. early stage, ongoing or completed) that are focused on either a fully personal network design, or on a design that combines personal network analysis with other approaches (mixed research methods). 

In spite of the below mentioned topic sequence, we encourage authors from every discipline and field, to submit both theoretically and methodologically oriented papers, as long as they employ a personal network analysis approach. 
Generally, we expect to receive manuscripts focused on: 

- The antecedents of personal networks (e.g. individual strategies for building personal networks, homophily, reciprocity, balance, transitivity etc.); 
- The impact of personal networks on individual / collective behavior (e.g. decision-making, acculturation, entry into the labor markets, scientific productivity and impact, migration and social mobility); 
- The combination of research strategies as to enable the investigation of the structure, composition and the immanent processes of personal networks; 
- Cross-sectional or longitudinal personal network analysis; 
- The analysis of personal networks’ structural characteristics (bridging, brokerage, density) in relation to their dynamics; 
- The contribution of visualizations to personal network analysis (e.g. the impact of visualization variables in the research process, the analysis of displays, the aggregation of collection of personal networks in clustered graphs etc.); 
- The challenges and benefits of mixing methods related to personal network research; 
- The critical analysis of methods for the collection of personal networks methodology (name generators, position generators, computer assisted versus personal data collection etc); 
- The methodology for standardizing and comparing personal networks. 

The editors kindly request authors to send papers of 4,000 – 8,000 words together with an abstract of no more than 200 words, until the 1st of April 2016 to the following addresses: irsr@sas.unibuc.ro or gabriel.hancean@sas.unibuc.ro. 

Prior to submission, please check author guidelines at http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/irsr