Call for Submissions

Call for submissions

RSECon25 will be accepting a wide variety of formats to contribute to our programme. This year we want to work our two themes into as many of the talks, interactive sessions and posters as possible. Abstracts will be reviewed with this in mind so make sure you include how the topic relates. The deadline for submissions is 23:59 BST on 25 April 2025.

This year we encourage niche technical submissions though to general topics; we can cater talks to audiences from 5 to 500, and interactive content up to 100. We welcome small intensive workshops or deep dive talks, to broad general interest talks and community Birds of a Feather (BoF) sessions. If you have something interesting to say, come and say it.

Our themes we would like you to consider are:

  • RSE and Research Excellence – How does the work of an RSE enable excellence in research, either through provision of technical expertise or adherence to solid coding practice. Our work is at the foundation of modern research. Let’s show what that means.
  • RSE as Digital Research Infrastructure (DRI) – DRI is everywhere most commonly thought of as a supercomputer in a datacenter, or a data storage facility. DRI is far beyond this, go and see what UKRI has to say. Pay particular attention to Human DRI, we want to raise the profile of how essential RSEs are to the Human DRI effort. Come and champion our role in this pillar of modern research.

For more information please see our Vision Statement.

Ways to contribute

If you have been to RSECon before you will be familiar with our formats but do read the following refresher of the formats for 2025 and see the links for a deeper dive into the format particulars and how to submit.

Detailed information about writing a submission and submissions links can be found here:

Presenter led: Call for talks and walkthroughs

Interactive Sessions: Call for workshops, hackathons and BoF

Posters: Call for posters

Talks and walkthroughs

Come and share your knowledge and experience with our community and be ready to answer questions from in the room and online.

On the theme of RSE and Research Excellence:

These sessions are intended to provide a platform for RSEs to showcase their contribution to research excellence. We want to hear from all levels and career stages. You don’t need to be the national leader in a topic but show how your application of the tool demonstrates the best of RSE when applied to a topic to enable research excellence.

On the theme of RSE contribution to DRI:

UKRI include ‘people: the users, and the experts who develop and maintain these powerful resources’ in their building blocks of their DRI. The users and more importantly experts include RSEs, we are in many ways responsible for the development of scientific software. We encourage any and all talks that spotlight the various ways that RSE contribute to the DRI landscape. 

Take a look at some questions we can ask ourselves to frame our work in these themes and give you a starting point for developing your submission.

Interactive sessions, workshops, hackathons and Birds of a Feather

Interactive sessions are a key part of RSECon. People should expect to develop skills, pick up new skills, and collaborate with members of their communities. Workshops should reflect this year’s themes, upskilling RSEs with new technical skills to contribute to their ongoing development or better contribute to DRI; a community theme that reflects how your community contributes to Research Excellence or Digital Research Infrastructure and thinking about how and where you can influence the DRI landscape; or a hackathon aimed at working collaboratively on something that enables research excellence or is DRI.

Skills workshops:

  • How does the skill you are offering contribute to the development of RSEs?
  • What expertise or insight do you have that you want to share via the workshop?
  • How will you communicate the expected starting level for workshop participation?
  • How will you communicate the expected outcome for the participants?

Community Workshops:

  • How is your community contributing to DRI?
  • What can you do to communicate your DRI role to the UK research landscape?

Posters

RSECon25 will have posters and a poster reception. A poster submission is unique as it allows the audience to digest the information at their own pace. You can present detailed technical information or striking graphics and let our attendees get to know your work. At the reception you will have the opportunity to talk to people about your poster and answer questions in an informal setting. As in previous years there will be a poster competition but this year we are updating the categories, see the specific poster page for more information.

Other formats

If you have a suggestion for another format that isn’t listed here then please get in touch using the following form well in advance of the submission deadline. We will ask you to justify why you want to use another format and what you think it will bring to the conference. If we agree and it can be worked into the program logistically then we will add it to the abstracts to review. We will particularly welcome non-standard formats if you can show how they will help highlight our themes.

Click here for the non-standard submission request form.

Finally

We have given many examples of how we interpret our themes but we are open to being surprised by your takes on these topics. If you want to talk your submissions over or ask any questions please reach out on Slack (to Pip Grylls) or by Email and we will be happy to offer any guidance we can.

As always your submissions will be reviewed by the community, you may be asked to modify your submission type depending on reviewer feedback or length depending on the number of submissions we get. We are not filling X% of sessions as talks or Y% must be on this theme, so simply submit your best contributions. We will look for the highest quality and select an engaging mix to make this the best conference yet.