In 2026, TPDL specifically reaches out to academic researchers and practitioners in digital libraries in the light of new technological advances. Currently, the speed of technological developments in knowledge extraction, management, and dissemination is breathtaking and offers a vast variety of possible research directions. It will be central to the field that new results showcase innovative, yet also usable, reliable, and sustainable approaches. TPDL therefore particularly encourages submissions pointing to real world applications and reflecting on their methods’ individual benefits, challenges, and limitations.

Topics

Topics in 2026 include but are not limited to, theories, models, standards, tools, and applications on the following themes:

Information Management

— FAIR Data and Software

— Data Lifecycle Management (Create, Store, Share, Reuse)

— Research Objects: FAIR Digital Objects (FDO), RO-Crate

— Reproducibility

— Digital Preservation and Curation

— Data Integration and Harmonization, Metadata Standards

— Data Provenance and Documentation

— Linked Data and Open Data Platforms

— Data Stewardship and Governance

Monitoring and Assessment of Science

— Science of Science Studies

— Scientometrics and Bibliometrics

— Scholarly Communication Knowledge Graphs

— Data Citation and Credit Distribution

Knowledge Creation and Dissemination

— AI and Machine Learning Applications in Digital Libraries

— Knowledge Organization: Knowledge Graphs, Ontologies, Thesauri

— Nanopublications

— Entity Extraction and Semantic Linking

Digital Libraries as Enablers of Science across Disciplines

— Design and Evaluation of User Interfaces

— User Experience and Participation in Digital Libraries

— Information Visualization and Analytics

— Interaction Design for Diverse User Groups

— Digital Libraries in Humanities, Social Sciences, Technical and Engineering Sciences, Natural Sciences, Life Sciences

— Digital Cultural Heritage

Societal Issues in Digital Libraries

— Bias in metadata or knowledge organization systems

— Bias in information access mechanisms

— Trustworthiness of digital information

— Business models for Open Access

— Indigenous Data, Governance, and Sovereignty

Information Retrieval

— Advanced Search Algorithms and Techniques

– Data Search and Discovery

— Semantic Search and Indexing

– Recommender Systems

— Computational Linguistics

— User-Centric Information Retrieval Design

— Information Retrieval System Evaluation

— Multimodal and Multilingual Information Access

— Information Behavior and Interaction 

Document Analysis and Recognition

— Physical and Logical Layout Analysis

— Historical Document Analysis

— Document Semantics Extraction

— Natural Language Processing for Document Analysis