Call for Contributions

General Theme

Open Access, Open Science, Open Education, Open Data, Open Culture… we are in the “Open Era” and to really OPEN knowledge is the big challenge for Digital Libraries and other information infrastructures of the XXI century.

The International Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries (TPDL) is a well-established scientific and technical forum on the broad topic of digital libraries, bringing together researchers, developers, content providers and users in digital libraries and digital content management. The 22nd TPDL will take place in Porto, Portugal on September 10-13, 2018. The conference will be jointly organized by INESC TEC and the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto.

The general theme of TPDL 2018 is “Digital Libraries for Open Knowledge”. 2017-2018 are considered “Year of Open” and 2018 is “the TPDL of Open”. TPDL 2018 wants to gather all the communities engaged to make the knowledge more and more open, using the available technologies, standards and infrastructures, but reflecting about the new challenges, policies and other issues to make it happen.

TPDL 2018 provides the community in computer and information science the opportunity to reflect, discuss and contribute to the complex issues of making knowledge open, not only to users but also to re-users, among different information infrastructures and digital assets.

In the World of Open:

  • traditional digital libraries apply Linked Open Data technologies to make digital cultural heritage reusable;
  • research infrastructures aim at sharing, managing and curating research data, making them FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable);
  • governments and public administrations are devoted to open the public sector information implementing interoperable information services for citizens and the public at large;
  • the web, itself, is intended to be the Web of Data and the Web of Trust.

All these different scenarios share common open standards, open licensing and open publishing mechanisms that need to be discussed and agreed to create a new digital ecosystem in a data-driven society that is still the Information Society that ignited the “digital library” as a concept.

Topics

So, the list of topics includes, but it is not restricted to, applications and challenges in:

  • Information Retrieval
  • Digital Libraries for Digital Humanities
  • Research Data Management
  • Data Repositories and Archives
  • Standards and Interoperability
  • Digital Preservation and Curation
  • Data and Information Lifecycle (creation, store, share and reuse)
  • Linked Data and Open Data
  • Scholarly Communication
  • Cultural Heritage
  • Data and Metadata Quality
  • Digital Service Infrastructures (eg. Europeana)
  • Research Infrastructures (EOSC, DARIAH, CESSDA, ELIXIR, EUDAT, etc.)
  • User Participation (crowdsourced data, user involvement in cultural heritage, citizen science)
  • Legal Issues on Open Knowledge (e.g. intellectual property, licensing, privacy)
  • Extreme or emerging new challenges and opportunities: big data, Very Large Digital Libraries; blockchain (data provenance, authorship, digital property, etc.)

Submissions

TPDL 2018 looks for original research and practical work around these or related topics, to be presented and discussed at the conference. Proposals for the following categories are welcome:

  • Full papers (12 pages, LNCS format)
  • Short papers (6 pages, LNCS format)
  • Posters and Demos (4 pages, LNCS format)
  • Panels (1 page, short informal description)
  • Tutorials and Hands-on sessions (1 page, short informal description)
  • Workshops (1-3 pages, informal description)

Accepted papers have an allocated time in the conference program, posters have a 1-minute madness plus a presentation board and demos have a stand to be presented during the Posters and Demos specific slot in TPDL2018. A Best Paper award is designated by the Program Committee, and the  Best Poster is voted by the conference participants.

The proceedings will be published by Springer-Verlag in Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS, ISSN 0302-9743). Submissions must follow the LNCS guidelines.

All paper, poster and demo submissions are written in English and submitted as a PDF file in LNCS format via the conference’s submission page: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=tpdl2018

According to the registration regulation for TPDL2018, inclusion of papers in the proceedings is conditional upon registration of at least one author per paper.

Submissions of proposals for workshops, panels, tutorials and hands-on sessions are directed to the conference contact: tpdl2018@googlegroups.com

Workshop organisers are provided with logistic support by the conference organisation, and are expected to independently manage all aspects of the workshop program, including calls, invitations and any special requirements.

A selection of the accepted papers will be invited for publication in a special issue of a journal. Authors of these papers are invited to submit an extended version (at least 30% new material) of the papers, providing more depth and detail on their technical approaches and results. These new submissions undergo a separate review process, according to the requirements of the journal.

Deadlines for submission

Deadlines are AoE (Anywhere on Earth)

  • Workshop proposal: March 18 March 25
  • Notification of workshop decision: March 23 March 30
  • Papers submission: April 8 April 15
  • Posters and Demos submission: April 8 April 15
  • Tutorial or Hands-on proposal: May 20
  • Notification of decision for Papers, Posters and Demos: June 1
  • Camera-ready: June 22

Detailed information can be found in the Important Dates page.

Made with in Porto @ FEUP InfoLab / INESC TEC