Locate is new, and so is Research@Locate – the academic research stream making Locate the Australasian meeting point of industry, government and academia, in one of the fastest growing areas of IT: spatial information.
Research@Locate has been designed to provide an Australasian research conference with a transparent, full-paper peer review process, with carefully selected presentations and papers, and with its own annual, open-access proceedings. It aims to become the premier academic event in the Australasian region.
Already, in only its first year, Research@Locate received 42 submissions. After a thorough peer-review process, 16 of these papers were selected for the conference proceedings. This result corresponds to an acceptance rate of 38%, which is better than some long-established conferences have.
This means that Research@Locate is on the right track, and meeting a demand of critical mass in this region. In addition to the 16 accepted papers, four papers were receiving sufficient reviewer support to be invited for presentation only. The reviews will also count in the competition for the best paper at the conference.
Research@Locate’14 was supported by an international Program Committee. Submissions also came from the wider region. Having both provides an essential condition when striving for excellence, for vibrant discussions at the event, and for proceedings of impact.
Hence the groundwork is laid, but what can we expect from Research@Locate’14? The presentations this year are organised around four themes: sourcing and access, accuracy, processing and analysis, and algorithms. A few review papers are included as well. The accepted papers will appear in the CEUR Workshop Proceedings Series, a free open-access publication service of Sun SITE Central Europe. In addition, the authors of the selected papers will be invited to submit extended versions to a special issue of the Journal of Spatial Science.
Research@Locate is organised by the Australasian Spatial Information Education and Research Association (ASIERA). ASIERA represents a significant part of the academic segment of the spatial information industry in Australasia, with a workforce of several hundred people in fundamental and applied research and innovation, with a responsibility for educating and training future generations of spatial professionals.
Locate14 will run from 7-9 April 2014 at the National Convention Centre, in Canberra.
This guest post was written by Stephan Winter, chair Research@Locate 2014, and Chris Rizos, co-chair, Research@Locate 2014.
