CfP 12th International Conference on Digital Libraries for Musicology (Sogang University, Seoul, South Korea, 26.11.25), Deadline: 9.5.25

In association with the International Society for Music Information Retrieval (ISMIR) Conference.

Deadline for paper submission: 9 May 2025

The Digital Libraries for Musicology (DLfM) conference is the premiere venue for scholars engaging with digital libraries in the domain of music and musicology. It provides a forum for musicians, musicologists, librarians, and technologists to share findings and expertise.

Please note that DLfM’s review process for submissions to proceedings operates on full and short papers, not on abstracts. See ‘Submissions’ below for further details on format.

Location, Collaboration

Following up the successful conferences held in 2020 and 2023 as satellite events of the ISMIR conference, the 2025 conference Digital Libraries for Musicology is associated with the 26th conference of the International Society for Music Information Retrieval (ISMIR).

Similarly to ISMIR, DLfM is organized in a hybrid format, accepting both in-person and online participation. However, in-person attendance is highly encouraged and recommended. To support this, the organizing team is committed to assisting presenters who wish to attend in person, providing help with visa arrangements and other logistical needs.

ISMIR is taking place immediately prior to DLfM, Sept 21-25, and will be held in Daejeon. The connection from Daejeon to Sogang University (Seoul) can be accomplished by high-speed train in approximately 60-70 minutes. Guidance on transportation will be made available on the conference website.

Call for Posters

DLfM welcomes contributions related to any aspect of digital libraries and musicology, including topics related to musical archiving and retrieval, cataloguing and classification, musical databases, special collections, music encodings and representations, computational musicology, or music information retrieval (MIR).

Given DLfM’s return this year as a satellite event of the ISMIR conference, we welcome papers that apply MIR technologies to “music documents” with a focus on cultural heritage preservation. Scores and music documents have been digitized by libraries and archives worldwide for preservation and access. At this DLfM congress, we aim to stimulate discussions around the use of MIR technologies and their implications for cultural heritage preservation. The organizing committee strongly encourages papers and posters that address this theme, however, we welcome all papers addressing all traditional topics that fall under the scope of DLfM. Specific examples of topics traditionally covered at DLfM can be found below.

Previous years' DLfM proceedings have been published in the ACM Digital Library through ACM ICPS. Arrangements for the DLfM 2025 are being discussed with ACM and will be confirmed in the 2nd Call for Papers.

In addition to the regular paper and poster submissions, this year we have a new challenge submission track focused on "space for music libraries", the details of which are provided below.

IMPORTANT DATES
All deadlines are at 23:59 AoE.

• Paper (full paper and short paper) submission deadline: May 9th, 2025

• Notification of paper acceptance: June 27, 2025

• Poster submission deadline: July 12th, 2025

• Space for Music Libraries Challenge submission deadline: July 12th, 2025

• Camera-ready submission deadline (full and short papers)*: July 16th, 2025

• Conference registration deadline: September 19th, 2025

• Conference: September 26th, 2025, Seoul, South Korea

* At least one author must be registered by the camera-ready submission deadline in order for accepted submissions to be included in the conference programme.

We envision a registration fee of no more than 100€ per participant and we will lower this estimate as circumstances allow.

SUBMISSIONS
Paper submissions

• Paper length: We invite full papers (up to 8 pages excluding references) or short papers (up to 4 pages excluding references).

• Submissions: Work is submitted to DLfM via EasyChair (https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=dlfm2025).

• Format: Submissions must be in English, formatted according to the appropriate ACM template for two-column papers (see template below), in PDF format, and A4 size. Authors will need to follow ACM's instructions for formatting carefully. Assistance will be provided from the proceedings chair.

• Templates: Authors must use either the LaTeX template (https://portalparts.acm.org/hippo/latex_templates/acmart-primary.zip, use the 'sigconf', 'authordraft', and 'anonymous' settings for initial submission), the LaTeX + Overleaf template (https://www.overleaf.com/latex/templates/association-for-computing-machinery-acm-sig-proceedings-template/bmvfhcdnxfty, use the 'sigconf', 'authordraft', and 'anonymous' settings for initial submission), or the MS Word template (https://www.acm.org/binaries/content/assets/publications/word_style/interim-template-style/interim-layout.docx). Historically, LaTeX versions have been easier to process into camera-ready versions. Therefore, we encourage all authors to use the LaTeX (or LaTeX + Overleaf) template if possible.

•  Note: The settings of the LaTeX template guarantee a two-column paper ('sigconf') with the lines numbered ('authordraft') and an anonymous submission ('anonymous').

• Page limits for submitted papers apply to all text, excluding the bibliography (i.e., references can be included on pages over the specified limits).

Poster submissions

• Submission: The initial poster submission consists of an abstract which outlines both the scholarly content and broad details of the proposed layout in 500 words, or fewer. This is to be sent to dlfm2025[at]easychair[dot]org.

• Information on printed poster formats will be provided on acceptance of the poster abstract. All accepted posters will also be required to submit a digital copy before the conference date to be shared publicly on the conference web page.
   

  Further information can be found here.