IASSIST 2014 Call for Papers

ALIGNING DATA AND RESEARCH INFRASTRUCTURE IASSIST 2014 Annual Conference Call for Paper and Session Proposals

This year’s conference theme touches upon the international and interdisciplinary requirements of aligning data and research infrastructure. The 2013 OECD Global Science Forum report on New Data for Understanding the Human Condition identifies key challenges for international data collaboration that beg for new solutions. Among these challenges is the mounting pressure for new forms of social science data. In today’s abundance of personal data, new methods are being sought to combine traditional social science data (administrative, survey, and census data) with new forms of personal data (social networking, biomarkers or transaction data) or with data from other domains. Similarly, the need for open data, archiving, and long-term curation infrastructures has been identified for research data in the natural, physical, and life sciences. Funders in all areas are pushing to enable the replication and/or reuse of research data. What alignments are needed between data and research infrastructure to enable these possibilities?{width=“256” height=“201”}

The international research community is in the midst of building a global data ecosystem that consists of a mixture of domain data repositories, data archives, data libraries, and data services and that seeks ways to facilitate data discovery, integration, access, and preservation. Evidence of this transformation is found in the recently established ICSU World Data System and in the Research Data Alliance. Like IASSIST, these organisations are contributing to the development of a global data ecosystem. Alignment or unification of strategies must take place at many levels to achieve this. How do we proceed? What advancements are needed in research data management, research infrastructure, and the development of new expertise?

Conference Tracks

We welcome submissions on the theme outlined above and encourage conference participants to propose papers and sessions that will be of interest to a diverse audience. To facilitate the organisation and scheduling of sessions, three distinct tracks have been established. If you are unsure which track your submission belongs or you feel that it applies to more than one track, submit your proposal and if accepted, the Programme Committee will find an appropriate fit.

Track 1: Research Data Management

• New data types and their management
• Challenges in exchanging research data across disciplines
• Using social science data with data from other domains
• Data linkage in the creation of new social science data
• Data management within the global research data ecosystem
• Data archives and repositories in the global data ecosystem
• Best practices in the global data ecosystem
• Metadata enabling the interoperability of research data
• Application of DDI, SDMX, other metadata schema, taxonomies or ontologies in research data management
• Data management policies and workflow systems
• Data attribution and citation systems

Track 2: Professional Development

• Training challenges given the growing number of professional positions within the global data ecosystem, which includes data curators, data scientists, data librarians, data archivists, etc.
• Teaching end-users to work with research data
• Data and statistical literacy
• Data collection development in libraries and other institutions
• Explorations of data across subject areas and geographic regions
• Copyright clearance, privacy and confidential data
• Working with ethics review boards and research service offices
• Interdisciplinarity – promoting the cross-use of data
• Training researchers about research data management planning
• Liaison librarians’ roles in research data

Track 3: Data Developers and Tools

• New infrastructure requirements in the global data ecosystem
• Infrastructure supporting Data Without Borders
• Tools to develop and support new social science data
• Crowdsourcing applications in producing new social science data
• Data dives or hackathons
• API development supporting research data management
• Open data web services
• Applications of research data visualisation in the social sciences
• Preservation tools for research data
• Tools for data mining
• Data technology platforms: cloud computing and open stack storage

Conference Formats

The Programme Committee welcomes submissions employing any of the following formats:

Individual proposal

This format consists of a 15 to 20 minute talk that is typically accompanied with a written paper. If your individual proposal is accepted, you will be grouped into an appropriate session with similarly themed presentations.

Session proposal

Session proposals consist of an identified set of presenters and their topics. Such proposals can suggest a variety of formats, e.g. a set of three to four presentations, a discussion panel, a discussion with the audience, etc. If accepted, the person who proposed the session becomes the session organiser and is responsible for securing speakers/participants and a chair/moderator (if not standing in that role him/herself).

Pecha Kucha proposal

A proposal for this programme event consists of a presentation of 20 slides shown for 20 seconds each, with heavy emphasis on visual content. Presentations in this event are timed and speakers are restricted to seven minutes.

Poster or demonstrations proposal

Proposals in this category should identify the message being conveyed in a poster or the nature of the demonstration being made.

Round table discussion proposal

Round table discussions typically take place during lunch and have limited seating. Please indicate how you plan to share the output of your round table discussion with all of IASSIST.

Session formats are not limited to the ideas above and session organisers are welcome to suggest other formats.

All submissions should include the proposed title and an abstract no longer than 200 words (note: longer abstracts will be returned to be shortened before being considered). Please note that all presenters are required to register and pay the registration fee for the conference. Registration for individual days will be available.

Please use this online submission form to submit your proposal. If you are unsure which track your submission fits or if you feel it belongs in more than one track, the Program Committee will find an appropriate place.

We also welcome workshop proposals around the same themes. Successful proposals will blend lecture and active learning techniques. The conference planning committee will provide the necessary classroom space and computing supplies for workshops. For previous examples of IASSIST workshops, please see the descriptions of 2011 workshops and 2013 workshops. Typically workshops are half-day with 2-hour and 3-hour options.

• Deadline for submission: December 9, 2013 (2013.12.09)
• Notification of acceptance: February 7, 2014 (2014.02.07).

• Questions about sessions/paper submissions may be sent to the Programme Chairs
• Questions about workshop submission may be sent to the Workshop Coordinator, Lynda Kellam; see also the call for workshops.

Program Chairs

• Johan Fihn
• Jen Green
• Chuck Humphrey