Summary

The 18th International Digital Curation Conference (IDCC24) took place in Edinburgh from the 19th to the 21st of February 2024. The conference theme this year was Trust through Transparency. 

Returning for the first time in person since 2020, this was the first hybrid iteration of the IDCC. 

• Programme statistics  
• Attendee Statistics 
• Whova 
• Workshop Day 
• Social Events 
• Artefactual Systems Inc – Conference sponsor

Over 80 contributions from all over the world made up our programme, whose main theme this year was Trust Through Transparency. The programme delivered a variety of talks categorised under several pathways including Managing DMPs and Data Stewards, Curation Processes, Sharing and Discarding and Trust and Transparency: Standards and Sustainability, along with many more.

Pictured left to right, Kevin Ashley (Director, DCC), Katarina Buntic (Research Data Steward, UCL), Pinja Immonen (Junior Coordinator, CSC - IT Center for Science), Brian Matthews (Group Leader, UKRI) 

Below are the winners of the best submissions awards of this year’s IDCC: 

Best Paper  

Adapting FAIR evolution to photon and neutron facilities - Brian Matthews, Simon Lambert & Abigail McBirnie - slides 

Best Poster Winner  

Päivi Rauste, Siiri Fuchs, and Pinja Immonen, Challenges in Research Documentation: Enhancing Transparency and Reproducibility - https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.10728406

Highly Commended Poster  

Martin Donnelly, Mahmoud Abdelrazek, and Katarina Buntic, Building the Data Stewardship Profession at UCL - https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.10832357

Programme Contributions: 

• Papers: 25 
• Lightning Talks: 31  
• Posters: 38

Slides and posters can be accessed via the IDCC24 Zenodo page.

We are proud to be part of an international community with a tradition of welcoming colleagues from across the world. This was reflected in our attendees as we welcomed 207 attendees (76%) in person and 69 online (24%) from over 30 countries across 5 continents. The most represented country was unsurprisingly the UK, with European countries making up 75% of the attendees. 19% of participants attended from North America (33 from USA) and 6% from Asia (11 attendees coming from Japan).  

Top 10 countries represented: 

• UK – 74
• USA – 33
• Germany – 19
• Japan – 11
• Finland – 9
• Netherlands – 8
• Sweden – 7
• Austria – 6
• Belgium – 5
• Canada – 5

• First time and returning attendees 

As well as welcoming IDCC alumni we were delighted to see so many new faces in this year’s conference. 58% of attendants in person and 71% of attendants online joined us for the first time at IDCC24 changing the trend of past conferences. 

Organisational background  

Historically most participants attending IDCC come from a University/Higher education sector. This was the case this year as well with 70% of the attendees representing this sector. Our other participants represented a range of other sectors including: 

• 15% Research organisations 
• 12% Government/public sector 
• 4% Library 
• 1% Independent consultants/researchers

First deployed to support IDCC22, the Whova event platform allowed our team to deliver a hybrid iteration of IDCC for the first time. Interestingly the viewing statistics below indicate that in person attendees also benefitted from the virtual streaming with 35% of livestreams watched by in person attendees.

Engagement

There were various forms of engagement – community board messages, ice breakers, photo sharing, profile views, direct messages and sessions chats.  

Furthermore, more than 80% of engagement on community posts and in-app messages were done by in-person rather than remote attendees.  

Virtual sessions – for virtual attendees only 

As a result of feedback received from attendees at IDCC22, this year we provided opportunities for online attendees to network. A speed networking and online meet-virtual sessions were organised: 

• Speed networking was attended by 12% of online attendees while 35% of attendees engaged in virtual meetups

• Meet-ups gave online attendants the opportunity to hold discussions regarding posters, papers and lightning talks. Additional meet-ups were organised by the participants themselves; topics included: Frictionless Data Community, RISE Interest Group and SORTEE

Recordings  

For conference attendees, the Whova platform is still live with access to all conference recordings available to stream on the platform. Recordings will be made available to all via YouTube in May 2024. 

Overview

On Monday, 19 February there were 6 workshops organised as part of IDCC24 which were attended by 150 in-person attendees across the following topics: 

• Workshop 1 - Elevating data management planning: Interoperability of RDM services through machine-actionability 
• Workshop 2 - Guidelines on transparent exposure of repository information: informing decisions of trustworthiness 
• Workshop 3 - Defining the criteria for assessing PID Policies and Services 
• Workshop 4 - Developing research data sharing policy and practice in the UK 
• Workshop 5 - PIDS in practice: working with PIDS in an institutional environment 
• Workshop 6 - FAIR-by-Design: introducing Skills4EOSC and FAIR-IMPACT resources and support 

We would like to extend our thanks to all the workshop organisers and attendees for their time on the first day of the conference. More information on the workshops can be found on the Workshop subpage.

Drinks Reception

Ahead of the main conference start, we hosted a pre-conference drinks reception held on the evening of Monday 19 February 2024 at The Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The successful opening saw 170 participants join us in the stunning venue. 

Conference Dinner

The Conference Dinner was held at the Playfair Library at the end of the first main conference day. Alongside the beautiful setting, 112 attendees were welcomed by a bagpiper and a clarsach player, who provided background music during the main course.  

Thank you to our Silver Sponsors Artefactual Systems Inc. 

Throughout the conference the team have been working hard, meeting many of you and having some really interesting conversations.  

To learn more about Artefactual Systems Inc, visit their website. 

Conference Photographs 

During the conference, our colleagues from the University of Edinburgh captured great images across the three days. All these pictures have been uploaded to our Flickr page.