Call for Proposals

Call for Proposals – Open Repositories 2021

The 16th International Conference on Open Repositories, OR2021, will be held online from 7-10 June 2021 across multiple time zones. Registration is free. The organisers are pleased to invite you to contribute to the program. The conference theme is: 

Open for all

How well do repositories support knowledge in the service of society? How well do they enable local knowledge sharing and support not only academic use, but also use in education and practice? 

 

Invitation to participate
OR2021 will provide an opportunity to explore and reflect on the ways repositories enable openness for all. We hope that this discussion will give the participants new insights and inspiration, which will help them to play a key role in developing, supporting and sharing an open agenda and open tools for research and scholarship.

We particularly welcome proposals on the overall “Open for All” theme, but also on other administrative, organisational or practical topics related to digital repositories. We are interested in the following sub-themes:

  1. New connections, global conversations
  • Pandemic response: how repositories responded to the pandemic, repositories as central tools in the pandemic response and other repository transformations
  • Distributed collaborations
  • Sustaining community-based infrastructure 
  • Infrastructure supporting work from home: coping with challenges for repository staff, challenges in collecting institutional statistics and other remote work challenges
  • Local systems vs repository as a service
  • Securing long-term funding for open infrastructures
  1. Equity and democratization of knowledge
  • Accessibility of repositories and their content
  • Equity and democratization of knowledge
  • Inclusion of marginalized and underrepresented voices
  • Local knowledge sharing
  • Moving beyond traditional academic content and services, supporting educators and practitioners
  • Supporting knowledge in the service of society, encouraging non-academic use
  • Enabling access to governmental publications/data 
  • Addressing language barriers 
  1. Beyond the repository
  • Integration with other open knowledge resources (e.g. Wikimedia and Wikidata)
  • Next Generation Repositories, Pubfair
  • Convergence and integration with other types of systems (e.g. current research information systems, digital asset management systems, publishing and e-learning platforms, ORCID)
  • Interoperability vs integration
  • New models for scholarly sharing
  • Data mining, artificial intelligence and machine learning
  1. Policies, licensing and copyright laws
  • Impact of GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), POPIA (Protection of Personal Information Act), the EU Copyright Directive and copyright laws
  • Publisher policies, embargoes and rights retention
  • Licenses and re-use of content
  • Compliance and impact of funder policies (e.g. Plan S) on repositories, Rights Retention Strategy
  1. Discovery, use and impact
  • Data/metadata visualization
  • Open access discovery, research data discovery
  • Tools for researchers and practitioners, interfaces for machines
  • Measuring impact particularly outside of the academic context.
  • Supporting use by practitioners. 
  1. Supporting open scholarship and cultural heritage
  • Providing access to different types of materials (e.g. research data, scholarly articles, preprints and overlay journals, open access monographs, theses and dissertations, educational resources, archival and cultural heritage materials, audiovisual materials, software, interactive publications and emerging formats)
  • Repositories as digital humanities and open science platforms

Submission Process

The Program Committee has provided templates to use for submissions (see below for links). Please use the submission template, and then submit through ConfTool where you will be asked to provide additional information (such as primary contact and the conference subtheme your submission best fits).

Accepted proposals will be made available through the conference’s website. Later, the presentations and associated materials will be made available in the Zenodo Open Repositories community; you will be contacted to upload your set of slides or poster. In June, presentations will be a mix of pre-recorded and live sessions to accommodate for time zones and varied internet connections. We look forward to the vibrant conversations and learning opportunities of the conference.

After the completion of the conference, we may solicit full papers from a selection of presentations in order to be published in the OR2021 proceedings (open access, no article processing charge) in cooperation with a scholarly publisher. If you are proposing a presentation or panel, please consider whether it would benefit from publication as a journal article.

Submission Categories

Presentations

We invite presentations on topics relating to the theme “Open for All” and on Open repository topics, more generally. Presentations will be 15 minutes plus time for questions and discussion.

Presentation proposals should be 2-3 pages.

Panels

Panels are made up of two or more panelists presenting on work or issues where multiple perspectives and experiences are useful or necessary. Successful submissions in past years have typically described work relevant to a wide audience and applicable beyond a single software system. All panels are expected to include diversity in viewpoints, personal background, and gender of the panelists. Panels can be 30 or 60 minutes long. 

Panel proposals should be 2-3 pages.

24×7 Presentations

24×7 presentations are 7 minute presentations comprising no more than 24 slides. Successful 24×7 presentations are fast paced and have a clear focus on one idea. 24×7 presentations about failures and lessons learnt are highly encouraged.

Presentations will be grouped into blocks based on conference themes, with each block followed by a moderated question and answer session involving the audience and all block presenters.

Proposals for 24×7 presentations should be one page.

Posters

Posters should showcase current or ongoing work that is not yet ready for a full presentation. Instructions for preparing the posters will be distributed to authors of accepted poster proposals prior to the conference. Poster presenters will be expected to give a one-minute teaser at a Minute Madness session.

Proposals for posters should be one page.

Developer Track

The Developer Track provides a focus for showcasing technical work and exchanging ideas. Presentations should be 10 minutes and can be informal. Successful developer track presentations include live demonstrations, tours of code repositories, examples of cool features, and unique viewpoints. Pre-recorded talks are encouraged to facilitate functioning demos and have more time for a live conversation about the implementation. 

Proposals for the developer track should be one page. 

Workshops and Tutorials

Workshops and tutorials generally cover practical issues around repositories and related technologies, tools, and processes. Successful workshops include clear learning outcomes, involve active learning, and are realistic in terms of the number of attendees that can actively participate in the workshop.

Workshops and tutorials can be 60 minutes, 90 minutes, or 3 hours.

Proposals for workshops should be no longer than 2 pages.

Templates

The OR2021 proposal templates help you prepare an effective submission. Please select the submission type below to download the templates. Templates are available in Microsoft Word and Open Doc format. Rich text templates are available in the All templates zip file. Submission in PDF format is preferred.

Submission System

The submission system is now open – https://www.conftool.net/or2021  

Review Process

All submissions will be peer reviewed and evaluated according to the criteria outlined in the call for proposals, including quality of content, significance, originality, and thematic fit. The program committee makes the final decisions on inclusion in the conference. If you would like to volunteer to be a reviewer, please contact the program committee below.

Also, please note that the program committee may accept a submission with the requirement that it move to another format (a presentation to a poster, for example). In such cases, submitters will have the opportunity to make a decision on whether to accept or decline such a move.

OR2020 Resubmissions for 2021

We invite resubmissions for proposals accepted for OR2020 that were not presented at our virtual event in June. If your proposal fits this criteria, please answer “yes” to the question “Is this a resubmission of an accepted 2020 proposal?” during the submission.

Code of Conduct

The OR2021 Code of Conduct is available at https://or2021.openrepositories.org/open-repositories-code-of-conduct. We expect submitters to hold to the Code of Conduct in their proposals, presentations, and conduct at the conference.

Key Dates

  • 25 January 2021: Deadline for submissions (now extended to 08 Feb) 
  • 08 February 2021: Extended deadline for submissions
  • 31 March 2021: Submitters notified of acceptance of full presentation, 24×7, workshop, poster and developer track proposals
  • Early April 2021: Registration opens, will be free
  • 7-10 June 2021: OR2021 conference

Program Co-Chairs

  • Liz Krznarich, DataCite
  • Iryna Kuchma, EIFL
  • Leila Sterman, Montana State University

Contact: or21-program-chairs@googlegroups.com

Website and Social Media

Website: https://or2021.openrepositories.org

Twitter: https://twitter.com/OpenRepos

Hashtag: #openrepos2021

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ORConference

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