Now here's an interesting challenge. The editorial board of the Journal of Social Structure has announced the first annual symposium on network visualisation. The theme is "Visualisation in the Service of Understanding". The board is challenging network researchers and practitioners to produce a single figure and caption that tells a compelling scientific story in a way that tables or text alone could not. I'm always trying to do this and call the resultant visualizations SOILS . A SOIL is a senior officer interest light, which goes on when they are attracted to a diagram, graph, map or picture. The SOILS Syndrome is a propensity to privilege these visualisations over other forms of knowledge, often at the expense of proper understanding, but I digress.

The editorial board are seeking a single figure (movie, interactive image, etc.) with a caption. The caption should be no more than 350 words and the viewer must be able to understand what is going on from the image and caption alone. They allow another 350 words or so to describe the challenges and techniques to create the visualisation.

Interestingly the image, caption and description will be subject to a peer-review process that addresses fit ("Is the work appropriate for JoSS?"), competency ("Does the work reflect solid science?"), and technical merit ("How well does the work do at its stated goal")? They anticipate a friendly review process, in the hopes of producing a symposium representing a wide array of work styles. The review materials will be used to help shape the editorial introduction to the symposium.

If you are interested in the challenge the deadline for submission is the 1st of October. The review process will be complete in time for Sunbelt, which is the major network analysis conference in 2010. I understand all submissions will feature in poster presentation at the conference, and will be published in the online in the journal.

Regards Graham