In response to feedback from the information community, the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) is planning two NISO Plus events in 2024, one in person and the other online. This strategy will afford attendees a valuable opportunity to interact in an on-site meeting in 2024 while also ensuring that the organization can continue to build on the success of previous Plus conferences, which have been hosted virtually since 2021.
The NISO Plus conference was first held in Baltimore, Maryland, in February 2020, just prior to the shift to virtual meetings that occurred throughout the community in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, the conference has been held virtually and has grown in popularity, drawing over 600 attendees from over 28 countries in 2023. In recent months, however, the demand for a different modality has grown. In response, the fifth-anniversary NISO Plus Baltimore conference will take place in person on February 13–14, 2024, at the Hyatt Regency Inner Harbor in Baltimore. Organized by a volunteer committee representing libraries, publishers, vendors, and more from around the world, the program will focus on the themes of metadata, AI, and open access. The meeting format will emphasize conversation over presentation and offer opportunities throughout for participants to network, collaborate, and explore solutions to challenges currently facing scholarly communications.
NISO will also continue to host an annual virtual conference. NISO Plus Global/Online will be held over two days in September 2024, with a program built on proposals solicited from the community. In addition to offering a more inclusive, accessible option for those who cannot attend in person, the virtual conference will continue to build on the growth in international engagement enabled by the shift from in-person to online meetings. As in prior years, the meeting will feature time slots accommodating attendees and speakers from outside North America, and keynotes from experts based in the Americas, EMEA, and APAC are anticipated. “We’ve learned a lot from our virtual conference experiences and will retain the features that made recent NISO Plus events a success,” said Jason Griffey, NISO Director of Strategic Initiatives. “We invite members of our community to celebrate NISO Plus’s fifth anniversary with us in whatever way best works for them—in person, virtually, or both.”
Both conferences will continue in the tradition of NISO Plus and remain community- and outcome-driven. They will bring stakeholders in scholarly communications together to explore new ways to ensure the free and open exchange of information, with a focus on generating ideas that lead to projects and ultimately solutions.
Registration for NISO Plus Baltimore will open in October. For more information about this announcement, please contact nisohq@niso.org.
About NISO
Based in Baltimore, MD, NISO’s mission is to build knowledge, foster discussion, and advance authoritative standards development through collaboration among the cultural, scholarly, scientific, and professional communities. To fulfill this mission, NISO engages with libraries, publishers, information aggregators, and other organizations that support learning, research, and scholarship through the creation, organization, management, and curation of knowledge. NISO works with intersecting communities of interest and across the entire lifecycle of information standards. NISO is a nonprofit association accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). For more information, visit the NISO website (https://niso.org) or contact us at nisohq@niso.org.
