Editorial

Dear i-com readers,

many of you will probably be surprised to see the familiar i-com journal in a completely new format. Over the past thirteen years, i-com has developed into the major German-speaking publication in human-computer interaction, interactive media and related areas, successfully serving the local research community as well as industrial practitioners. But our community as well as the scientific publishing market have evolved over the years and are now quite different from what they were in 2002 when we started the i-com journal. The national HCI conference is now the largest in Europe and the number of researchers working and publishing in an international context has significantly increased. Several authors approached us saying that they would appreciate a higher international visibility of the journal, in particular regarding publication language, to increase the journal’s attractiveness as an outlet for their work. A further factor is that our long-term publisher Oldenbourg has recently become part of the de Gruyter publishing house which offers a number of new possibilities to address audiences beyond the national context.

To reflect these developments, the editors and de Gruyter Oldenbourg, in coordination with the MCI Technical Committee of the GI, have therefore decided to take a number of steps for internationalizing the journal. First of all, the name has been changed: the journal name is now “i-com – Journal of Interactive Media”. We dropped the attribute “cooperative” for the sake of brevity assuming that cooperative and social aspects are nowadays implicitly addressed when talking about digital media. A second change refers to the layout of the journal. We have adopted the de Gruyter standard layout for scientific journals which is more in line with other international scientific print products and which also the economically more viable option.

A third important change refers to the publication language. The scientific, peer-reviewed section of i-com will be in English, thus increasing the reach and visibility of both freely contributed articles and papers accepted for special issues. We believe this to be an important step for increasing the impact of work reported in i-com at an international level. In terms of content, we plan to continue our well-established model of combining papers with a special thematic focus with freely submitted papers on other topics that are within the scope of the journal.

The Usability Professionals Forum will continue to be a vital part of i-com. Practitioners reporting their work in this section are free to write in German and are encouraged to use the Forum in its well-established form as a communication means with a focus on the German-speaking community. Of course, contributions in English will be acceptable as well. Also, other material such as reports or organizational information relating to GI committee work can be written in German. The editors are confident that by following this bi-lingual approach we can serve two important goals of our journal: to create a high-quality scientific publication that is recognized at an international level, and to maintain and strengthen its function as a lively communication platform for the German-speaking community. Furthermore, we also hope to make i-com more attractive for prospective authors from other countries.

This first international issue of i-com is dedicated to the topic of recommender systems. The special issue section presents five articles that explore this lively research area from a user-centred perspective. The scientific section is completed with an article by Alexander Kiy, Hendrik Geßner, Franka Grünewald und Ulrike Lucke on a university app framework. This article is an extended version of a contribution to DeLFI 2014 that won the best paper award.

Finally, I would like to welcome Sarah Diefenbach in the team of i-com co-editors. For many years now, she has done an extraordinary job together with Marc Hassenzahl in managing and compiling the Usability Professionals Forum. Her continued support in this new role for the UPA Forum is also a strong sign that i-com still embraces its original goal of providing value to the academic researcher and the industrial practitioner. I hope you will enjoy the new i-com – Journal of Interactive Media and will appreciate it both as a reader and a contributor.

Jürgen Ziegler

Editor-in-Chief