USETDA 2026: 16th Annual Conference of the United States Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Association Renaissance Hotel Toledo, OH, United States, September 23-25, 2026

Call for Proposals

About

The USETDA and the University of Toledo are co-hosting USETDA 2026, the 16^th national US conference on ETDs, to be held at the Renaissance Hotel in Toledo, Ohio and as an online hybrid event September 25-26, 2026. This conference is co-organized by the USETDA (United States Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Association) and the University of Toledo College of Graduate Studies.

Topic categories include:

• The impact of ETDs
• Streamlining ETD processing
• Research practices

Audience

• The USETDA 2026 Conference provides excellent educational opportunities for professionals from graduate schools, libraries, academic computing and others who work with electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs), institutional repositories, graduate students, and scholarly communications.
• Our goal is to offer relevant, practice-oriented content that supports ETD productivity improvement and ETD professionals. This includes the advancement in ETD operations, the encouragement of the formation of regional ETD associations and networking communities, as well as providing useful and innovative resources, standards, and technology for the development and support of ETD programs.
• Proposals are welcome from libraries, graduate schools, disability and student services, offices of diversity, equity and inclusion, information technology professionals, graduate students, and faculty as well as library and information systems / services representatives.

Scope

• Through our call for proposals, we are seeking individual and plenary panel presentations, flash talks, user group meetings, poster presentations and workshops/tutorials in which participants can join live in interactive discussions online.
• We welcome your experiences as well as how to provide new capacities to re-envision the future to provide global outreach, best practices and policies.
• All USETDA 2026 papers, posters and slide presentations will be published as proceedings on the USETDA document archive.
• Selected papers will be invited to participate in a Special Issues of the Journal of Electronic Theses and Dissertations “J-ETD“. At least one author of each accepted paper is required to be registered for, and present the work at the conference.

Important Dates

• Call for proposals
  • Announcement: March 20, 2026
  • Abstract submission deadline: May 15, 2026
• Presenter acceptance notifications: June 1, 2026
• Presentation/Paper proceedings deadline: October 2, 2026
• Registration: June 1 – September 16, 2026
• Conference Dates: September 23-25, 2026

Deadlines

• Proposal abstracts should be submitted on or before May 15, 2026 to be considered for the conference program.
• Presentations, papers, posters and video recordings should be submitted on or before October 2, 2026 for inclusion in the conference proceedings.

Theme

• The conference theme, Navigating the Winds of Change, will delve into academic processes and technologies as they impact various aspects of the creation and dissemination of scholarly works. Amidst constraints and challenges in areas such as access, accommodation, representation, fairness, inclusivity and rapid technological change, how can we establish direction and order? Furthermore, how can we best manage the forces of change to achieve the desired outcomes for our faculty and students? We will also explore new and emerging ETD practices, needs, and influences that impact administrative, graduate school, and library professionals. Some areas for possible investigation include:
  • Demonstrating ways in which scholarly communications can be more effectively disseminated to explore global connections
  • Identifying strategies and best practices as we educate stakeholders on new technologies including artificial intelligence applications and adapt our processes
  • Access and accessibility considerations including embargoes, open access, ease of access, and discoverability of ETDs in repositories
  • Understanding and responding to the changing needs of students, graduate schools and libraries in a quickly evolving landscape
  • Advocating for access to the tools and support that students, graduate school and library professionals, and information technology personnel need to complete the thesis and digital publishing process
  • User group meeting forums (i.e. ProQuest ETD Administrator, Vireo, CGS, MAGS, ETD formatting, community engagement, regional representatives, etc.)

Proposals should reflect one or more of the following three categories: the Impact of ETDs, Streamlining ETD Processing and Research Practices. Presenters are encouraged to use the examples under the subtopics as inspiration, but are not limited to these ideas and can expand upon them or generate new ones based on the subtopic themes. Please see the list below for topic ideas. 

Topics

I. The Impact of ETDs

1. Best metadata practices (and/or metadata updates) for ETDs especially in a global environment including multilingual metadata and translations
2. Promoting student and faculty engagement with ETD systems
3. Current trends in the world of ETDs (format, content, distribution, access, disciplines, etc.).
4. Measuring the research impact of ETDs: metrics such as usage analytics and citation impact factor
5. Usage analytics and citation impact of ETDs
6. Visualizing research trends from ETD repositories
7. Mentorship programs for new ETDs, administrators and early-career researchers
8. Sustainability and funding models for long-term repository maintenance
9. Best practices in document accessibility
10. AI-impact on ETD discovery

II. Streamlining ETD Processing

1. AI in ETD reviewing - guidance for reviewers
2. Integrating AI tools in ETD workflows (metadata generation, plagiarism detection, abstract summarization)
3. Expanding our scope beyond the library/graduate school to include accessibility staff, faculty, students, for example, sharing LaTeX templates. We invite "homegrown" talent to participate in conferences to share their contributions.
4. Methods of collaboration from successful ETD initiatives
5. Workshops and tutorials led by representatives from Microsoft and LaTeX platforms to engage with us about how ETD authors use their products and how we can get more functionality out of those products
6. Advocating for our profession - Additional exploration on the professionalization of an ETD practitioner: what does that mean?
7. Addressing AI use in reviewing - Are we facilitating our own obsolescence?
8. Reviewing and vetting free resources and tools for ETD reviewers or student researchers
9. Non-traditional ETDs - how to handle and archive multiple formats
10. Beyond the PDF: A workshop on managing complex digital objects

III. Research Practices

1. AI in ETD composition - guidance for students
2. Research integrity in AI platforms
3. Institutional policies for AI-generated content in ETDs
4. Best practices in handling the inclusion of published articles in ETDs
5. Models to support representation, fairness, and inclusivity in graduate research
6. Challenges for students doing work on controversial or suppressed topics like environmental, minority or gender studies
7. Best practices in education/training of students
8. Best practices operating within a decentralized system
9. Strategies in initiating and getting buy-in on any changes
10. The "Living ETD" - strategies for versioning and updating dynamic dissertations

Types of proposal submissions

Poster sessions - peer reviewed

Posters introduce late-breaking results, work in progress, or research that is best communicated in an interactive or graphical format. Poster presentations are 10 minutes in length. Two types of posters are encouraged:

• Research posters presenting new and promising work or preliminary results of ongoing projects
• "Best practices" posters presenting the practical implementations of an organization's practices or innovations

The content of the poster should clearly point out how the research or best practice contributes to innovative thought or design within the field, and how it addresses key challenges, as well as the potential impact on the participant's organization and/or practices in the field.

Joint submissions from students, librarians, graduate school administrators and other professionals demonstrating different perspectives on a single issue are particularly encouraged. Posters are expected to foster discussion in a personal and less formal setting. Poster presenters should submit an abstract of 350 words or less for consideration. For additional guidance, download our poster session Resource Page (.doc file).

Individual presentations and panel discussions - peer reviewed

Single session presentations and panels are 50 minutes long and are invited on topics that focus on the themes of the conference. 

For single-session presentations, please submit a proposal of up to 350 words, providing a summary of the presentation topic and the qualifications of the speaker.

Panels must have a cohesive theme and promote lively interaction between panelists and audience members. Please submit a panel proposal up to 350 words, providing an overview of the issues to be discussed by the panel and brief bios of each of the panelists. Proposals should only list panelists who have agreed to participate and shall indicate the qualifications and contribution that each panelist will offer.

For optional full-length papers, please submit an abstract of up to 250 words. Additional information about full-length papers is available in our proposal submission guidelines listed below.

Flash Talks - peer reviewed

Flash talks present information about best practices, innovative strategies, processes, tools, events, etc. in 5 minutes and may include up to two slides. Flash talks are a great way to share best practices as well as strategies or tools that enhance and support your students and your processes. For example, you may share a new tool or resource that you’ve discovered, discuss a new way of reaching out to students, give a tip that has made your job easier.

For flash talks, please submit a proposal of up to 150 words, providing a summary of the presentation topic and the qualifications of the speaker.

Workshops and tutorials - peer reviewed

Conference workshops and tutorials are invited on important topics that focus on the themes of the conference that need to be addressed in-depth. Suggested topics include workshops that are practical in nature and focused on best practices for GenAI guidance, access and/or accessibility development, implementation and guidance, Additionally we are seeking to offer an “ETDs for Beginners” primer workshop for rookies and as a refresher for veterans in the field. Workshops should provide participants with opportunities to engage with study materials, the presenter(s) and workshop participants through discussions in order to broaden and deepen understanding in a particular area. Workshops may range in length from 1.5 to 2 hours.

Please submit a proposal of up to 350 words, providing a summary of the workshop topic and the qualifications of the speaker.

Resources

• Selection Rubric (Reviewer guidelines)
• Code of Conduct
• Sponsorship Guidance

Submission Guidelines

Presentations are invited on themes in line with the call for proposals, including emerging issues, trends and opinions on controversial issues, analyses of tools and techniques, and contrasting viewpoints in complementary professional areas. By submitting your documents to this conference, the authors agree to Creative Commons attribution licensing. If AI applications are used to create your proposal, you must be sure to check source references. We will decline to review proposals that contain false or incorrect source reference.

• Full-Length papers, if desired, should include a structured abstract of no more than 250 words and text of no more than 5,000 words (approximately 10 pages single spaced). Full-Length Papers undergo a double-blind peer review process. Full papers should report on mature work, or efforts that have reached an important milestone.
• Selected papers will be invited to participate in a Special Issue of the Journal of Electronic Theses and Dissertations (J-ETD). All full papers must be original and not simultaneously submitted to another journal or conference. Please follow the conventions of an APA 7th Edition Professional Paper (omit all author information, which will be included in the cover letter submitted as a separate file).The manuscript must be submitted as a Microsoft Word file or a Rich Text Format (RTF) file. For additional information, visit https://scholarworks.uaeu.ac.ae/j-etd/author_guidelines.html.

For the conference proceedings, we also encourage authors to submit PowerPoint presentation files as a supplement to the paper if applicable, or solely PowerPoint files if authors are not interested in submitting a detailed paper about their presentation. PowerPoint files may be accompanied by supplementary files if applicable. All proceedings files should be submitted in pdf format.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us by email at: info@usetda.org.

Once you have prepared your proposal according to the above instructions, please visit https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=usetda2026 to submit it for review.