Call for papers for a CIJ special issue on 'Co-creation'
In the scientific spirit of CERN, this call for papers focuses on: innovation through co-creation. Across science, industry, culture and civil society, urgent and complex problems increasingly demand approaches that move beyond disciplinary silos, top-down management, or one-size-fits-all solutions. Co-creation offers a way of working that brings together diverse perspectives, distributes agency, and produces outcomes that are richer, more equitable and potentially more sustainable.
Yet the language of co-creation is too often applied loosely, without the careful study and experimental rigour required to advance it as a field. Practices labelled as co-creation may conceal asymmetries of power, overlook questions of authorship and ownership, or reproduce inequities rather than challenge them. At the same time, new technologies such as artificial intelligence, novel infrastructures, and collaborative platforms raise questions about what it means to create together in the twenty-first century.
This special issue sets out to consolidate and extend knowledge of co-creation as a site of innovation. We invite contributions that test methodologies, interrogate political and ethical assumptions around co-creation, develop instruments for evaluation, and present situated cases across domains. We encourage bold, experimental and disruptive approaches that foreground collaboration not simply as a context for innovation but as the engine of it.
In keeping with the CIJ Manifesto, we aim to provide a safe harbour for work that is interdisciplinary, experimental and integrative. Submissions are welcome from scholars and practitioners alike, with the shared goal of advancing understanding of how innovation through co-creation can be more just, impactful and fit for the challenges of the future.
Possible themes and subsections
- Co-creation across domains: interdisciplinary research perspectives; industry–academia collaboration.
- Co-creation as creative process: improvisation, ensemble work, and the role of creativity in experimental practice.
- Politics of co-creation: feminist and decolonial approaches; power, value capture and labour.
- Co-creation methodologies: co-design, participatory research, living labs, hackathons, speculative design.
- Ethics and governance: consent, benefit sharing, attribution, data standards, and provenance.
- Co-creation with AI: human–AI division of labour, agency, authorship, bias, dataset curation, evaluation.
- Spaces and infrastructures: boundary objects, prototypes, datasets, tools, and collaborative environments.
- Education and capacity-building: curricula, pedagogies, mentorship, training of convenors and facilitators.
- Public sector and policy: citizen assemblies, mission-oriented programmes, and regulatory sandboxes.
- Inclusion and accessibility: disability, language, indigenous knowledge, design justice.
- Digital platforms: online co-creation, experimental commons-based peer production, crowdsourcing dynamics.
- Sectoral applications: health, climate, energy, manufacturing, food, education, and cultural heritage.
- Meaning and identity: trust, role negotiation, conflict, and sense-making in co-creative teams.
About the Journal of Experimental Innovation (CIJ)
The CERN IdeaSquare Journal of Experimental Innovation (CIJ) aims to communicate thought-provoking, contemporary, and latest findings in experimentation-driven innovation research. CIJ is an interdisciplinary, open online journal that publishes empirical and theoretical research to push the boundaries of various topics around in-situ experimental innovation.
CIJ encourages research that is between and even beyond disciplinary lines and welcomes research advancing innovation process methodologies, tools, educational approaches, knowledge exchange, management, and policy. CIJ intends to be intellectually challenging in the name of true scientific curiosity and to cultivate evidence-based, novel insights to advance understanding of how new knowledge and basic research turn into use for society through innovation.