The Science & Technology and Social Sciences Libraries Sections invite the submission of abstracts for papers to be presented at the upcoming World Library & Information Congress in Dublin, August 15-21. You can find all the pertinent information below or listed on the congress’ website. Please join us and share your knowledge and experience with library professionals from around the world!

 

Theme: “Open Science: Roles for Libraries to Promote Collaboration, Access and Advance Public Understanding”

Background:  The Science & Technology Libraries Section and the Social Sciences Libraries Section invite proposals for papers to be presented at the IFLA World Library and Information Congress in Dublin, Ireland, August 15-21, 2020. 

Open Science is the extension and sharing of scientific knowledge.  With origins in the publishing of the first scholarly journals and now several centuries later the open movements demonstrate how sharing access, research methods and scientific data by fostering collaboration has become important tenets of open science.  Using computation Open Science is committed to addressing improved scenarios of reproducibility in research results.  Leveraging these goals contributes to creating public goods needed to advance thinking, innovation and entrepreneurship in all scientific outputs and STEM fields.  There are frameworks, tool kits, codes, theory, manifestos and other resources that explain and introduce how Open Science is rapidly maturing.

Libraries are neutral entities in academic institutions, local communities, civic and federal governments, commerce and industry and serve their users to the extent that they can with their collections, resources, staff and skills.  By promoting best practices in scholarly publishing, data literacy and the role of repositories in open access content, this program will highlight the methods and procedures that are key in establishing such functions for Open Science. Open Science extends the reach of conducting science with open tools and then producing the research outputs in the scientific or medical literature so authors can share the publications widely and freely at the time of release.  This broad scope of open science includes the range of actions and initiatives covered by open science projects within a national, institutional or disciplinary agenda.

This session will promote how open science is treated in a variety of libraries and the partnerships between libraries, publishers, professional societies, funders, philanthropists, innovators and other stakeholders.  A multiplicity of approaches relate to Open Science. How they will continue to evolve is what we hope submissions will focus on.  We invite and seek creative services, technologies, products and services that demonstrate how libraries and librarians are part of this new ecosystem of open science that examines key areas of access, collaboration, scale, participation, reproducibility, data management & stewardship.  Introducing some new open products such as open lab notebooks, open educational resources, open source codes, open peer review, open exhibits, and other best practices to promote open science are just examples of tools those committed to open science now consider fundamental to their work.

Important Dates & Deadlines

15 March 2020 – Deadline for submission of detailed abstract/proposal of no longer than 400 worlds containing: contact information for first author, all authors & institutional affiliations, language in which presentation will be delivered, confirmation of understanding that presenter is responsible for conference registration and all expenses associated with attendance and that they can meet all future deadlines. 

Please submit all abstracts/proposals in MS Word to: Julia Gelfand (jgelfand@uci.edu) Receipt of all submissions will be confirmed.

1 April 2020 – Notification to authors about status of submission. 

1 June 2020 – Submission of full text of paper

20 July 2020 – Submission of accompanying powerpoint slides for presentation

Please note:

  • At least one of the paper’s authors must be present to deliver a summary of the paper during the program in Dublin.  Abstracts to be submitted only with the understanding that the expenses of attending the conference will be the responsibility of the author(s)/presenter(s) of accepted papers.
  • All papers presented at the WLIC 2020 will be made available online via the IFLA Library under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.
  • All papers must be unpublished and not previously presented. 
  • Authors must disclose whether they are submitting this proposal to another WLIC 2020 session.
  • Authors of accepted papers must complete the IFLA Authors’ Permission Form.
  • All expenses, including registration for the conference, travel, accommodations, etc., are the responsibility of the authors/presenters.  No financial support is provided by IFLA, but a special invitation letter can be issued to author(s)/presenter(s) of accepted papers.  List of opportunities for support is available on the Apply for Grants & Awards webpage.