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

Celebrating its 40th anniversary, the International Association for Social Science Information Services and Technology (IASSIST) is issuing a call for paper and session proposals for its annual conference, which will be held in Toronto, Canada on June 3-6, 2014.

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 to 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, such as administrative, survey, and census data, with new forms of personal data, including social networking, biomarkers or transaction data, or with data from other domains. Similar challenges have been identified in the scientific data realm and the need for open data, archiving, and long term curation infrastructures to allow replication and/or reuse are challenges posed by funders in all areas. What alignments are needed between data and research infrastructure to enable these possibilities?

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 organizations 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?

We welcome submissions on the topics described above and encourage conference participants to propose papers and sessions that will be an interest to a diverse audience. To facilitate the formation and scheduling of sessions, three tracks are being offered:

1. Managing research data
2. Providing data services, and
3. Developing data infrastructure tools.

Online submission forms, further explanation of the tracks, and guidelines for conference and workshop content *will soon be* available on this website. 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 workshopsand 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 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
• Questions about workshop submission may be sent to the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.; there will be a separate call for workshops shortly.

Program Chairs

• Johan Fihn
• Jen Green
• Chuck Humphrey