Theme: Mapping the progress of digital scholarship and curation in Africa: measuring Africas readiness and progress

Africa is on the path of embracing new technologies, in government, academia and business. There is also significant investment in the laying of terrestrial and extra-terrestrial networks in the African data market. All this attests to the fact that Africa is making some progress towards world class digital scholarship and curation. During the 4th African Conference for digital scholarship and curation it was highlighted that technology plays a fundamental role in enabling data curation, scholarship and collaborations in building repositories of data and knowledge. However, there has been little effort to determine the hotspots of such progress on the African continent. This conference therefore is an attempt to map and showcase the progress of digital scholarship and curation initiatives and to measure the readiness of the African continent to embrace the next generation of digital researchers.

Authors are invited to submit abstracts for papers linked to the main theme and subthemes of the conference. All abstracts will be peer reviewed and selected papers will be published in a high impact international refereed journal.

Abstracts and proposals for papers, posters and workshops should be submitted before 30th November 2011. Only documents in electronic format will be considered. Please submit to: ssekitto@easlis.mak.ac.ug

Sub-Themes

Open Access Initiatives and Legal Policies

Open Scholarship Initiatives in Africa
Development of Institutional Repositories in Africa
Legislation and open data
Ethical issues and personal data
Tensions between maintaining quality and openness

Preservation and Digitization for Education and Learning

Capturing and preservation of Indigenous Knowledge
Digitization of Archeological gems in Africa
Strategic Institutional alignments for the next generation of data preservation and curation
UNESCO: Memory of World programmes in Africa
Education and training of the next generation of African

Curators: Opportunities and Challenges

eLearning collectionsInformation seeking behaviours in the digitized world
The impact of digitization in schools in Africa
Collaboration initiatives
Mobile learning

Mobile Learning in the Digital Media Era

Connectivity and its role in learning
Mobile devices and their applications
Mobile services
Mobile users and their needs

Working with research data

Data quality
Data citation
Open vs sensitive or private data
Using open data: examples of enablers, barriers and success stories
Developing new metrics for open data
Linked data, open data, closed data and provenance
Scale issues in the management of sensitive data
Using open data: examples of enablers, barriers and success stories
Curation of mixed data collections,
Gathering evidence for benefits of data sharing for African scholars
Building capacity for the effective management, sharing and reuse of open data

Infrastructure

Connectivity in Africa: Mapping the impact of regional sea cables and terrestrial backbone fibers
Technical and organisational solutions for data security

Conference activities

Paper presentations
Poster presentations
Exhibitions
Workshops

Paper/ Abstracts

Paper length: Maximum number of words inclusive of references: 10 pages
Abstract length: Maximum number of words 500 words
Citation format: Harvard referencing
Format of the paper: Introduction (providing context of digital scholarship/curation), research problem, methodology, findings and discussion, implications, conclusions, and recommendations
Case Studies: Case studies, success stories but also lessons learnt are encouraged in the papers

Key deadlines

Submission of abstracts by prospective paper presenters: 30th November 2011
Selection and acceptance of abstracts: 15 December 2011
Deadline for full paper submission by presenters: 30th January 2012
Review of papers completed: 30th March 2012
Draft programme released: early February 2012
Presentation files submitted: 1st May 2012
Submission for posters: 30th January 2012
Submission for workshops: 30th January 2012

Target audience

Scientists and researchers
Research managers
Educationists
Information scientists, librarians and other information professionals
ICT infrastructure service providers and managers and telecommunication services
System administrators and engineers
System developers
Information Technology Managers
Graduate students
Spatial and other data analysis
E-space analysts
Technology stewards
Archivists, records managers, curators
Policy makers- in tertiary education, science and technology centers
Young professionals who need gain exposure in the new work environment, and
Seasoned professionals wanting to remain relevant

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Complete list of events

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