USETDA 2022: 12th Annual Conference of the United States Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Association Crowne Plaza Hotel Cleveland, OH, United States, September 21-23, 2022

Call for Proposals

The US Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Association (USETDA) will hold their 12th annual conference, “USETDA 2022” from September 21 – 23, 2022 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Cleveland, Ohio and also as a virtual hybrid event. We invite graduate school, library, information technology and industry professionals to submit proposals for presentations, panel sessions, workshops, and posters.

Deadline: Proposal abstracts should be submitted on or before April 29, 2022 to be considered for the conference program. Presentations and papers should be submitted on or before September 20, 2022 for inclusion in the conference proceedings.

Audience: USETDA 2022 provides excellent educational opportunities for professionals from graduate schools, libraries, academic computing and others who work with electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs), institutional repositories, graduate students, and scholarly communications. Our goal is to offer relevant, practice-oriented content that supports ETD productivity improvement and ETD professionals.  This includes the advancement in ETD operations, the encouragement of the formation of regional ETD associations and networking communities, as well as providing useful and innovative resources, standards, and technology for the development and support of ETD programs. Proposals are welcome from libraries, graduate schools, information technology professionals, graduate students, and faculty as well as library and information systems / services representatives. 

Theme: The conference theme “Making Connections – Scholarly Communication in the Digital Age” will focus on the impact and implications of connecting scholars and research from across the country and around the world. We will examine the present use and availability of ETDs and related initiatives. We will also explore new and emerging ETD practices, needs, and influences that impact administrative, graduate school, and library professionals.

Presentation proposals should reflect one or more of the following three categories: Research Practices, Streamlining ETD Processing, and the Impact of ETDs. Presenters are encouraged to use the examples under the subtopics as inspiration, but are not limited to these ideas and can expand upon them or generate new ones based on the subtopic themes.

I. Research Practices

1. Nontraditional ETDs and scholars - Best practices for handling non-pdf dissertations/theses (comic books; works with Online components; etc.)
2. Graduate student and/or ETD professional panel (discussion of the student experiences in the ETD process including alternative formats, ease/difficulty with formatting requirements, communication gaps, etc.)
3. The evolving definition of a doctorate and the future of dissertations in the metaverse
4. Current and future trends in scholarly communication - how to engage your academic community
5. Copyright, fair use and creative commons: perspectives from graduate school and library professionals on data sharing - researchers sharing their data within their research groups and with other researchers (e.g., figshare.com), appropriate inclusion of previously published works
6. Collaborative efforts by students such as co-authorship and handling of metadata, rights, etc.
7. Engaging students with the ETD process - panel discussion on best practices for outreach and instruction on format and intellectual property information before the crisis point of need
8. Research compliance: best practices on guiding students through the IRB compliance office requirements including discussion on human subjects and HIPPA.
9. Professionalization of the role of the ETD reviewer - Discussion on developing certifications to elevate the status of a reviewer by defining the important functions that the reviewer serves with a focus on student-centered services and other administrative tasks in the graduate school and libraries
10. ETD professional community engagement: how the USETDA and ETD professionals can help each other by building community relationships and sharing experiences, resources and information

II. Streamlining ETD Processing

1. Collaborative initiatives and best practices between graduate schools and libraries
2. Best practices discussion - formatting review, issues, benchmarks, communications with advisors and committees
3. Starting from scratch - how to build an ETD program infrastructure
4. Institutional Repository / ETD systems, developments and innovations
5. Processing and archiving multimedia ETDs
6. Data curation, management and long-term preservation - campus policies and programs
7. Cataloging ETDs - metadata best practices and innovations
8. Institutional repository harvesting options (ProQuest, etc.)
9. User group meetings (i.e. ProQuest ETD Administrator, Vireo, CGS, MAGS, ETD formatting, community engagement, regional representatives, etc.)
10. Formatting software/technologies and support (LaTeX, Word, Adobe, OverLeaf, etc.)

III. The Impact of ETDs

1. Case studies of graduate work completed in novel, digital formats, e.g., museum exhibit, sound recording, website, 3D modeling, mapping
2. Enriching the ETD record (best practices on including video, data, metadata, etc.)
3. Accessibility with ETDs and IRs: ADA compliance panel presentation or workshop. This could include IT or library technical experts on digital accessibility, including practical workflows and walkthroughs of how to check and make documents accessible, PDF subtypes. What are the standards? How do we communicate them to students? How do we train students to incorporate them into an ETD?
4. How ETD reviewers and IR managers can better support historically marginalized communities at their schools through open scholarship
5. Author rights - exploring diversity/equity/inclusion issues as it relates to the world of ETDs, not just through IRs
6. How ETD experiences at HBCUs and small campus settings can improve campus research visibility
7. Connecting research and researchers through ORCID or other persistent digital identifiers
8. Promoting ETDs/research through Three Minute Thesis, social media, and similar initiatives
9. Analytics, metrics and ETDs: Collecting and using statistics about ETD usage (e.g., from your IR, Altmetric, Impactstory, PlumX, etc.); the benefits of promoting ETDs to the institution, academic program, student
10. Promoting open access and engaging graduate students and faculty in self-promotion

The USETDA welcomes the following types of submissions:

Poster sessions - peer reviewed

Posters introduce late-breaking results, work in progress, or research that is best communicated in an interactive or graphical format. Poster presentations are 10 minutes in length. Two types of posters are encouraged:

●       research posters presenting new and promising work or preliminary results of ongoing projects

●       "best practices" posters presenting the practical implementations of an organization's practices or innovations

The content of the poster should clearly point out how the research or best practice contributes to innovative thought or design within the field, and how it addresses key challenges, as well as the potential impact on the participant's organization and/or practices in the field.

Joint submissions from students, librarians, graduate school administrators and other professionals demonstrating different perspectives on a single issue are particularly encouraged. Posters are expected to foster discussion in a personal and less formal setting. Poster presenters should submit an abstract of 350 words or less for consideration.

Single-session presentations and panels - peer reviewed

Single session presentations and panels are invited on topics that focus on the themes of the conference. You may choose between an extended format (50 minute) and a brief format (20 minute) presentation option.

For single-session presentations, please submit a proposal of up to 350 words, providing a summary of the presentation topic and the qualifications of the speaker.

Panels must have a cohesive theme and promote lively interaction between panelists and audience members. Please submit a panel proposal up to 350 words, providing an overview of the issues to be discussed by the panel and brief bios of each of the panelists. Proposals should only list panelists who have agreed to participate and shall indicate the qualifications and contribution that each panelist will offer.

Conference workshops and tutorials - peer reviewed

Conference workshops and tutorials are invited on important topics that focus on the themes of the conference that need to be addressed in-depth. Workshops should provide participants with opportunities to engage with study materials, the presenter(s) and workshop participants through discussions in order to broaden and deepen understanding in a particular area. Workshops range in length from 2 to 3 hours.

Please submit a proposal of up to 350 words, providing a summary of the workshop topic and the qualifications of the speaker.

Resources

• USETDA Conference Presentation Selection Rubric
• Poster Session Resource Page (download doc)

Proposal Submission

Presentations are invited on themes in line with the call for proposals, including emerging issues, trends and opinions on controversial issues, analyses of tools and techniques, and contrasting viewpoints in complementary professional areas. By submitting your documents to this conference, authors agree to creative commons attribution licensing.

For the conference proceedings we welcome papers and/or PowerPoint presentations (pdf). For paper submission guidelines we refer you to the ALA Author Guidelines at https://alaeditions.org/resources-for-authors/. We do not impose word or page limits, however, a practical guide for papers would be 10-15 pages in length. We also encourage authors to submit PowerPoint presentation files as a supplement to the paper or just the PowerPoint file if authors are not interested in submitting a detailed paper about their presentation.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact John Hagen at info@usetda.org.

Once you have prepared your proposal according to the above instructions, please visit  https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=usetda2022. You will be prompted to login to EasyChair. If you don't have an account, click "Create an Account" to begin.

Note: although the submission form will provide a link to upload your presentation file, you can disregard it at the present time. You  will be able to login at a later date (up through September 20th) to upload your presentation file(s).