If you haven’t yet registered for our NISO Plus 2024 conference in Baltimore (February 13–14), now is the time! Our fifth anniversary Plus conference is just two weeks away.
Hosted in person for the first time since 2020, the NISO Plus Conference will feature expert panel discussions developed by a planning committee of information professionals from around the world. Our program also includes inspiring keynotes from industry leaders, including Thomas Padilla’s opening address on “States of Open AI” and the annual Miles Conrad lecture, to be delivered this year by Ed Pentz. As always, the conference will emphasize discussion and interactivity in addition to presentations, with the goal of identifying challenges and opportunities for collaboration in the information community.
Sessions at the NISO Plus conference in Baltimore will be organized into three tracks:
The metadata track covers the latest developments in this important area critical to the flow of information. Topics include equity in metadata, author identity and name changes in metadata, and new and emerging uses. And of course, it wouldn’t be a NISO Plus meeting without a session on persistent identifiers! This year we’ll explore the role of PIDs in assessing research.
As the call for greater transparency and accessibility in scholarly communications continues, a number of sessions consider what the transition to “open” means for librarians and content and service providers. The open scholarship track examines this topic across disciplines, including the humanities and social sciences. It also includes sessions on open access books (and the infrastructure required to support them), open data, bibliodiversity, and the tools and tech supporting open research.
The third track, on artificial intelligence, incorporates ideas developed by attendees of October’s NISO Plus Forum and addresses some of the most pressing issues around new and emerging technologies falling under the category of “AI”: the ethical implications of using AI, the role of AI and machine learning in discovery and search, concerns around intellectual property, and educating authors and users about AI.
A pre-conference, “Introduction to AI and Machine Learning in Scholarly Communications,” will also be held on Monday, February 12, just prior to the main meeting. Attendees of this extended 101-style session led by Andromeda Yelton will come away with a thorough understanding of how machine learning systems work, what they are capable of, the services and systems used in scholarly communications, and the risks involved in those uses.
A final “wild card” track will feature updates on NISO standards, lightning presentations, and time reserved for important issues that arise between now and the conference.
And remember, we’re celebrating the fifth anniversary of the NISO Plus conference! Attendees are invited to join us on February 18 at 6:00 pm in the Constellation Room at the Skyline Center (on the 21st floor of Baltimore’s World Trade Center, the city’s tallest building) to enjoy beautiful views of the inner harbor and good times with friends old and new. For more information on sessions and speakers, check out our conference program, and register now to join us in Baltimore!
(Thank you to our generous NISO Plus Baltimore sponsors: Silverchair, the Open Science Framework, Wiley, figshare (our repository host), Cadmore Media, the American Chemical Society, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), ASTM International, Bowker, EBSCO, Atla, CHORUS, Clarivate, Edaptive Technologies, Modern Language Association, Open Athens, Project MUSE, SPIE, Stony Brook University Libraries, UC Berkeley Library, Crossref, and the journal Information Services and Use.)
