Call for Proposals

The program committee for the Expert Finder Systems International Forum 2025 is excited to announce we are now accepting proposals for presentations at our upcoming conference, which will be held September 16–18 at The Aviator event venue in Cleveland, OH.

Extended Deadline: May 5, 2025, 11:59 PM EDT
Begin proposal.

About

Research information management systems (RIMS) support the transparent aggregation, curation, and utilization of data about institutional research activities. Also known as research networking systems, expert finders systems, and CRIS systems, these systems offer expertise discovery, decision support, metadata reuse, and research analytics in support of institutional and regional goals. They also include or integrate with faculty information systems (FIS) that support annual review and promotion workflows.

After three successful conferences in 2019, 2021, and 2023, EFS returns in 2025. We invite people from across the scholarly communication, research information management, research administration, faculty advancement, and faculty success communities to share their experience and expertise. Users of all systems—open source, homegrown, and commercial—are encouraged to attend.

Theme & Goals

The theme of this year’s EFS Forum is Charting the Research Information Universe. We particularly welcome proposals aligned to the overall theme, but also on other administrative, organizational, or practical topics related to research information management.

Specific topics might include:

  • Collaborating across your institution to implement or administer one or more platforms
  • Forming partnerships with entities outside your company or institution, such as partnerships between universities, businesses, and government
  • Facilitating interdisciplinary expertise discovery and team building
  • Implementing persistent identifiers to support research discovery
  • Implementing institutional data governance policies and practices
  • Unifying research information and data sources across the institution
  • Enabling deeper insight through improved research analytics
  • Managing labor, planning, and responsibility for system administration
  • Making the system work for all stakeholders
  • Demonstrating the impact/ROI of your system

Who Is Invited to Present

This conference welcomes individuals working in a variety of roles, including research strategy and insights, faculty affairs, libraries, IT and systems administration, research, and product provision (vendors), whether you work in higher ed, non-profit, government, industry, or a funding organization. There are many platforms, use cases, and stakeholders, and this event is for all.

Our goal is to expose participants to a variety of practices and practitioners, so they leave the event with an improved understanding of the research information universe we are all working in. Together.

Requirements

EFS Forum presenters will be required to:

  • Register for and attend the conference in Cleveland
  • Share presentation slides before the conference and allow video recording of their presentation for open access sharing in the EFS-RIMS Repository

Available Session Formats

  1. Presentation: The presentation format allows presenters to share relevant practices, research, or collaborations. Content may include case studies, best practice sharing, the presentation of new techniques and tools, or even offer a provocative view on a topic of interest. Presentations will be allotted 20-30 minutes each, at the discretion of the program committee.
  2. Panel: Panel sessions offer 2-4 presenters the opportunity to share diverse perspectives, fresh approaches, and practical information around a central topic. Panel presentations will be allotted 45-60 minutes, at the discretion of the program committee.
  3. Lightning Talks: Lightning talks offer a fast-paced opportunity to share insights, projects, or challenges. Presenters will have 5 minutes and up to 5 slides to tell their story—whether highlighting an innovation, a lesson learned, or a provocative idea.

Submissions require a presentation title, 300-word abstract, and the names and affiliations of presenters.

Note that all presentations must take place in person.

Selection Criteria

The EFS Program Committee will evaluate proposals for their relevance to the community and the conference theme. We particularly seek to develop a program that represents diverse viewpoints, stakeholders, systems, and use cases.

Deadline: May 5

Begin proposal.

The new submission deadline is May 5, 2025, at 11:59 pm EDT (UTC-4). Following review by the program committee, submitters will be notified about their proposal.

Questions? Please contact Olivia MacIsaac at omacisaa@iu.edu.