Data Curation Conference 2027
Call for Proposals!
Submission Deadline:
- September 30, 2026
Conference Date:
- January 14, 2027
Don’t ghost your data or it will haunt you
A cross-disciplinary conference about research data curation, (re)usability and AI
Good data outlives the project it was born in. Bad data haunts it. Somewhere between those two fates sits the daily, unglamorous, surprisingly hard work of data curation—and that is what this conference is about.
High-quality data is the cornerstone of open and trustworthy research, yet keeping it valuable, durable, and usable is never a one-and-done task. The moment we try to store or publish data; the tricky questions arrive:
- Is the documentation good enough for someone else—or future you—to actually reuse it?
- Is this format going to be readable in ten years? Is the metadata complete?
- Where does AI genuinely help in automating and enriching curation, and where does it quietly complicate things?
- And how can sensitive data be curated to enable safe sharing and future reuse?
Every day, more datasets slip quietly into the shadows of forgotten drives and undocumented folders—and with funders and journals demanding FAIR, curated, shareable data, the skeletons in our digital closets are getting harder to ignore.
With this conference, the Research Data Management Network of the University of Basel aims to provide a space for researchers and data specialists at the university to share experiences, tools, and hard-won lessons—covering the technical solutions as well as the human, organizational, and ethical dimensions of managing and publishing research data in a fast-changing world. The conference is conceived as a platform for open exchange and a chance to learn from one another to improve data quality, everyday research practice and its results.
Join us on January 14, 2027!
Call for Proposals
Registration
We look forward to curating a great day together!
Conference Date: January 14, 2027
Registration Opens: September 1, 2026
Location: University of Basel
Call for Porposals:
- Submission Deadline: September 30, 2026
- Notification of Acceptance: November 15, 2026
09:00–09:30 Coffee Reception
09:30–10:30 Welcome and Introductory Keynote
10:30–12:00 Open Forum: Use Cases & Best Practices
12:00–13:00 Lunch Break
13:00–13:30 Interview with Guest Speaker and Q&A
13:30–14:30 Presentation & Workshop Session with discussion groups Part I
14:30–15:00 Coffee break
15:00–16:00 Presentation & Workshop Session with discussion groups Part II
16:00–17:00 Roundup Discussion of Workshop Sessions and Conference
Detailed program coming soon
Conference registration will open in September
Costs
Conference registration is free of charge
Share with us your experiences and practices for organizing, versioning, documenting, and enriching your research data with metadata—and making it more FAIR—as you prepare to publish them. Tell us about the (AI) tools and techniques you use for this, what has proven useful, and where you’ve encountered challenges. Off-the-cuff topics and outside-the-box thinking are welcome.
→ Download the full Call for Proposals for further details
Submission Formats
Whatever shape your contribution takes, there's a slot for it:
Lightning talk (3min)
A short, punchy use-case from your own work. High energy, low slide-count. Perfect for sharing and discussing one idea that worked (or didn’t).
Classical presentation (10min)
A more traditional, in-depth talk for those who want to walk the audience through a topic at greater length
Workshop session (30–50min)
A hands-on, interactive slot to introduce your questions, concerns, preferred tools, or best practices and think them through together with the room.
This is important: we are not asking for finished, polished solutions. Half-solved problems, productive dead-ends, nagging concerns, and “here’s what’s keeping me up at night” contributions are not just welcome—they are often the most useful thing in the room. Bring your questions and difficulties. Someone else has probably wrestled with them too.
How to Submit
Send us a short abstract with a title (max. 350 words) outlining the topic(s) of your lightning talk, presentation, or workshop. Please specify your discipline, your use-case and the data curation aspect(s) you intend to focus on. We will notify you of the acceptance of your submission by November 15.
Submission to researchdata@clutterunibas.ch with the subject line “Submission DCC”.
Deadline for submissions: September 30, 2026
The conference is organized by the Research Data Management Network of the University of Basel, whose goal is to provide the university’s researchers with the best possible research data management (RDM) support by bringing together data stewards, infrastructure providers, and service providers in a university-wide network. The event marks the conclusion of a two-year project phase on research data workflows and research data curation.
Language
The conference language will be English.
Open Access Policy
By submitting a proposal, you agree that your presentation will be made online available on Zenodo under an open license. The expected licenses are Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0 or CC BY-SA 4.0).
Code of Conduct
We are committed to a respectful and inclusive environment. The University of Basel’s Code of Conduct applies.
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