Call for Papers: A DC-SAM Workshop: Research and Best Practices in Linking Scientific Metadata. Due June 12

Call for Papers: A DC-SAM Workshop: Research and Best Practices in Linking Scientific Metadata

September 29, 2011, Berlin, Germany

To be held as part of the Theory and Practice in Digital Libraries (TPDL) Conference (September 25-29, 2011, Berlin, Germany)

Call for Work-in-Progress Papers

Describing scientific research data can be challenging due to their complexity and diversity. Standards for describing scientific datasets include not only entities responsible for data collection, processing, and distribution, but also information for data users to assess the relevancy to their data needs, quality of datasets, as well as technicalities regarding data file manipulation. Although scientific metadata schemes address a range of needs for data identification, quality assessment, verifiability, and dissemination, they do not fully address the challenges related to metadata generation and islands of information exist within and across scientific metadata records. One step towards addressing these challenges and problems is to have information scientists and domain scientists collaborate to evolve existing solutions in web-friendly ways. This one-day workshop will feature invited speakers from science and information science in the morning sessions and selected work-in-progress reports and interactive discussion in the afternoon.

The DC-SAM (DCMI Science and Metadata Community) workshop will include three parts: a morning session consists of invited speakers from both science and information science, a working lunch with focus group discussion, and an afternoon session for work-in-progress reports. This call is soliciting submissions of work-in-progress reports for the afternoon session. We are especially interested in, but not limited to, the following topics:

* Identification systems and standards for scientific metadata
* Scientific metadata architecture and models in Semantic Web
* Interoperable taxonomies and vocabularies in [biology, astronomy, etc.]
* Metadata linking mechanisms and technologies and their applications in scientific metadata
* Organizational and technical challenges in linking scientific metadata

The outcomes of this workshop are expected to be a collection of research papers/reports and a research agenda in this increasingly important area, which will be made available on DC-SAM community website.

Researchers are invited to submit reports for their projects relevant to the theme of this workshop, which are either work in progress or completed. The work-in-progress papers should be no more than six (6) pages, single spaced, (approximately 3,000 words including abstract and references). The submission should include the following components:

* Title of the paper
* Author(s) and affiliations
* Email addresses of authors
* Project website
* Abstract
* Tags or keywords
* Body of paper
* References cited

The papers will be reviewed by the workshop program committee and selected based on originality, coherence, clarity, and appropriateness for the workshop. Each selected paper will be given a 15-minute slot for oral presentation.

Important dates:

* Deadline for submitting papers: June 12, 2011, midnight (your local time)
* Notification of acceptance: June 30, 2011
* Final version of accepted papers: August 15, 2011

Please submit your paper to dc.sam.workshop@gmail.com. All inquiries and questions can be sent to the same email address. A copy of this call can be found on the workshop website http://eslib.ischool.syr.edu/SAM/. Information about the workshop will be updated as it becomes available.

Workshop co-organizers:

Jian Qin, Syracuse University, USA

Jane Greenberg, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA

Norman Gray, University of Glasgow, UK