[MEI-L] Final CfP: Music Encoding Conference 2022, Dalhousie University (Hybrid), 19-22 May 2022

[David Morrison Weigl]

[With apologies for cross-posting. Please distribute widely!]

NEWS:
* Paper deadline EXTENDED to December 23rd, 2021. 
* Abstract deadline (with title and author list) REMAINS December 10th
but updates are possible until December 23rd!
* Student travel bursaries available-see 'Additional Information' below

***********************************************************************

This is the final call for papers, posters, panels, and workshops for
the Music Encoding Conference
2022. 

The Music Encoding Conference is the annual meeting of the Music
Encoding Initiative (MEI) community and all who are interested in the
digital representation of music. This cross-disciplinary venue is
open to and brings together members from various encoding, analysis,
and music research communities, including musicologists, theorists,
librarians, technologists, music scholars, teachers, and students, and
provides an opportunity for learning and engaging with and from each
other.

The MEC 2022 will take place Thursday 19th – Sunday 22nd May, 2022, at
Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, Canada. While we sincerely hope to
welcome as many attendees in person as possible, this year’s Conference
will again run in hybrid mode, allowing remote attendance where travel
plans are affected by the ongoing pandemic.

Please note that submission types and guidelines have been adapted this
year in response to community feedback. 

Background
----------------
Music encoding is a critical component for fields and areas of study
including computational or digital musicology, digital editions,
symbolic music information retrieval, digital libraries, digital
pedagogy, or the wider music industry. 

The Music Encoding Conference has emerged as the foremost international
forum where researchers and practitioners from across these varied
fields can meet and explore new developments in music encoding and its
use. The Conference celebrates a multidisciplinary program, combining
the latest advances from established music encodings, novel technical
proposals and encoding extensions, and the presentation or evaluation
of new practical applications of music encoding (e.g. in academic
study, libraries, editions, pedagogy).

Pre-conference workshops provide an opportunity to quickly engage with
best practice in the community. Newcomers are encouraged to submit to
the main program with articulations of the potential for music encoding
in their work, highlighting strengths and weaknesses of existing
approaches within this context.

Following the formal program, an unconference session fosters
collaboration in the community through the meeting of Interest Groups,
and self-selected discussions on hot topics that emerge during the
conference. For these meetings, there are various spaces generously
provided by the hosting institution on May 22nd. Please be in touch
with conference organizers if you need to reserve these spaces. For
meetings on other days during or immediately after the conference,
availability can be checked upon request.

The program welcomes contributions from all those working on, or with,
any music encoding. In addition, the Conference serves as a focus event
for the Music Encoding Initiative community, with its annual community
meeting scheduled the day following the main program. We in particular
seek to broaden the scope of musical repertories considered, and to
provide a welcoming, inclusive community for all who are interested in
this work.

Topics
---------

The conference welcomes contributions from all those who are developing
or applying music encodings in their work and research. Topics include,
but are not limited to:

    * data structures for music encoding
    * music encoding standardisation
    * music encoding interoperability / universality
    * methodologies for encoding, music editing, description and
analysis
    * computational analysis of encoded music
    * rendering of symbolic music data in audio and graphical forms
    * conceptual encoding of relationships between multimodal music
forms (e.g. symbolic music data, encoded text, facsimile images, audio)
    * capture, interchange, and re-purposing of musical data and
metadata
    * ontologies, authority files, and linked data in music encoding
and description
    * (symbolic) music information retrieval using music encoding
    * evaluation of music encodings
    * best practice in approaches to music encoding

and the use or application of music encodings in:

    * music theory and analysis
    * digital musicology and, more broadly, digital humanities
    * digital editions
    * music digital libraries
    * bibliographies and bibliographic studies
    * catalogues and collection management
    * composition
    * performance
    * teaching and learning
    * search and browsing
    * multimedia music presentation, exploration, and exhibition
    * machine learning approaches

Submissions
-----------------

In response to feedback received from the community on last year’s
submission process, this year’s MEC will be accepting submissions in
the following forms for presentation in the main conference programme
(page counts include figures and tables, but exclude references):

* Paper submissions of between 4 and 10 pages,
* Poster submissions of up to 4 pages.

MEC ‘22 also welcomes submissions of proposals for panel sessions and
workshops. Submissions to each category will be reviewed according to
specific expectations outlined in “Submission Guidelines” below.
Finally, we will welcome submissions of late-breaking reports of up to
2 pages during a later submission period closer to the conference dates
(see “Important Dates” below). 

Authors of paper submissions will be invited to present their work in a
plenary setting if accepted. Authors of poster submissions will be
given the opportunity to briefly present in a plenary setting
(“lightning talk”) in addition to a poster session if accepted. Authors
of late-breaking reports will be invited to present during a dedicated
poster session outside of the main conference programme. 

All submissions to the main conference programme (papers, posters, and
panel sessions) will undergo blind review by multiple members of the
program committee before acceptance. Late-breaking reports
will be lightly reviewed for relevance to the conference (see “Topics”
above) and accepted in limited numbers based on the order in which
submissions are received. Authors of workshop submissions will be
contacted by the PC to coordinate workshop planning in consultation
with the local organizers and contributors.

Please note the deadlines for the submission process outlined under
“Important Dates” below.

Submission Guidelines
------------------------------

All submissions should be formatted in A4 size with 2.5cm margins, font
size 12, single space, justified, in a sans-serif typeface (e.g.
Calibri), using APA-style citations and references,
according to this template:
https://tinyurl.com/mec2022-submission-template. Please take care to
remove all identifying information from the submitted PDF before the
upload - submissions should be anonymised for blind review.

Submission types (page counts include figures and tables, but exclude
references):

* Paper submissions (4–10 pages) are expected to present overviews or
detail specific aspects of ongoing or completed projects, present
detailed case-studies or elaborated perspectives on best practices in
the field, or provide other reports on topics relevant to the
conference (see “Topics” above). The length requirement for submissions
is intentionally broad this year, to allow authors flexibility in their
reporting. Note that reporting is expected to be complete and self-
contained in its argumentation. 

* Poster submissions (up to 4 pages) are expected to report on early-
stage work, or to present experimental ideas for community feedback. 

The following types are welcome to be abstract submissions:

* Panel discussions (3–5 pages). Submissions should describe the topic
and nature of the discussion, along with the main theses and objectives
of the proposed contributions; panel discussions are not expected to be
a set of papers which could otherwise be submitted as individual
papers).

* Half- or full-day pre-conference workshops (up to 3 pages). Proposals
should include possible conveners, a description of the workshop’s
objective and proposed duration, as well as its logistical and
technical requirements).

* Late-breaking reports (up to 2 pages). 

The PC will coordinate the duration of proposed panels and workshops in
consultation with the local organizers and contributors.

Important Dates (Timezone: AoE / Anywhere on Earth)
---------------------------------------------------

10 December: Initial registration via our ConfTool website:
www.conftool.net/music-encoding2022 with metadata of contributors
including name(s) of author(s), affiliation(s) and email address(es),
type and title of the submission, and a short one-paragraph abstract.

23 December (extended from 17 Dec.): Upload of anonymized submissions
(see submission guidelines above) for review to ConfTool. Please be
aware that ConfTool only accepts PDF submissions. Please remove all
identifying information from the submitted PDF before the upload.

11 February: Notification of acceptance and invitation to authors of
accepted submissions to contribute to the MEC proceedings. A formatted
template pre-configured with your metadata will be provided on or about
the day after notification.

13 March: Presenter registration deadline (papers, posters, workshops,
panels). At least one author per accepted submission must register and
confirm in-person or online participation. 

3 April: Upload of accepted submissions in conference-ready version
using the provided template. This version will be made available to
registered conference attendees prior to the conference. 

3 April–19 April: Submissions of late-breaking reports. A limited
number of submissions will be accepted in order received. Further
details to be announced.

19–22 May: Conference.

5 June: Final upload of camera-ready papers for publication in the
proceedings. Camera-ready versions are welcome to incorporate light
modifications in response to feedback obtained during the conference.
The MEC proceedings will be published under an open access license and
with an individual DOI number for all papers.

Additional information
-----------------------------
While we look forward to welcoming as many of you as possible in person
at Dalhousie University, we are preparing for MEC ‘22 within the
context of ongoing uncertainty due to the Covid-19 pandemic. To
allow the community to best accommodate to this situation, we are
organising this year’s conference with the following commitments in
mind:

* The conference will allow remote participation as in the previous
years (MEC ‘20 and ‘21). Decisions on the precise implementation of
this year’s hybrid format will be announced in due course
and communicated widely (conference web page, mailing list, MEI Slack,
Twitter) in the months leading up to the event.

* We commit to the announced dates for MEC ‘22 (19th-22nd May). There
will be no rescheduling of the conference to fit projected changes in
the pandemic situation this year.

Additional details regarding registration, accommodation, etc. will be
announced on the conference web page
(https://music-encoding.org/conference/2022/).

We especially encourage students and other first time attendees to make
a submission to the Music Encoding Conference. We can now confirm the
availability of ten student bursaries of €500 / $800 CAD to support
national and international travel for student presenters, and are
seeking further ways to support their attendance. 

In case of questions, feel free to contact: conference2022 at music-
encoding.org.

Programme Committee
-------------------------------
Daniel Bangert, Digital Repository of Ireland, Royal Irish Academy
Benjamin Bohl, Department of Musicology, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt
Susanne Cox, Beethoven-Haus Bonn
Timothy Duguid, School of Humanities, University of Glasgow
Norbert Dubowy, Digital Mozart Edition, Salzburg Mozarteum Foundation
Maristella Feustle,  University of North Texas Libraries Music Library
Estelle Joubert, Dalhousie University
Anna Kijas, Lilly Music Library, Tufts University
David Lewis, University of Oxford | Goldsmiths University of London
Sageev Oore, Dalhousie University | Vector Institute for Artificial
Intelligence
Anna Plaksin, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz | Birmingham City
University
Juliette Regimbal, McGill University
Kristina Richts-Matthaei, Paderborn University
David M. Weigl (Committee Chair), University of Music and Performing
Arts Vienna

Local Organizing Committee
--------------------------------------
Jennifer Bain (Committee Chair), Dalhousie University
Estelle Joubert, Dalhousie University
Sageev Oore, Dalhousie University | Vector Institute for Artificial
Intelligence
Morgan Paul, Dalhousie University