6th Conference on Scientific Archives

Call for papers
The Conference Call for Papers has been extended to 10th July

The call for papers for the 6th Conference on Scientific Archives is now open. The Conference will be held in Fundação Casa de Rui Barbosa (Rio de Janeiro) and the main theme is "Access to Information law: the impacts and limits concerning the archives of Science and Technology".

Abstracts should be submitted to the Academic Committee in Portuguese or English (for overseas delegates). A strict policy of author anonymity shall be adhered to ensuring that the Committee will only consider each proposal by its own merit. We seek individual or panel proposals (no more than 2 authors), the aim being to encourage discussion and debate throughout each session. Any proposal with more than 2 authors will not be considered. Proposals should be analytical and relate to one of themes of the event.

Theme 1 – Legislation and access to the archives of science and technology
The Law Act 12.527, November 18th, 2011, resumes an old archival discussion: access to documents. Tradition relates unrestricted access to the secondary value of the document and its preservation in an archival institution. The new Brazilian legislation regulates the access to information already provided by the Federal Constitution of 1988; it modifies Act No 8.159, January 8th, 1991, known as the Archives Act, and revokes Act No 11.111, May 5th, 2005, about document confidentiality. The new Act determines that the citizen has the right to have access to documents (non-classified) in the producing organization itself; what are the procedures for access to information; new deadlines for document classification; among other provisions. Public institutions of teaching and research must comply with the legislation and as such need to organize themselves in a short space of time. The nature of archives created as a result of the activities of teaching and research evoke a set of questions that in themselves constitute a complication considering that in the majority of cases archival management and document creation are not part of those institutions’ agenda. It is in this context that we need to ask ourselves what requests society makes on these institutions regarding archives of such a specific nature.

Theme 2 - Limits on access to documents of scientific research
Scientific and technological researches are characterized by being mainly carried out in private, without access to persons other than those in the team itself. This is due to a number of factors, such as control of patents or publication of unpublished works or theses. There are also situations where data that cannot be disclosed during collection, because the disclosure of raw unanalyzed data might prejudice the ongoing research. The information needs to be processed before being divulged. There are cases where public laboratories are employed by public or private companies for the development of a product, thus creating a confidentiality agreement. An information access law guarantees the citizen’s access to documents while at the same time it is still necessary to preserve some confidentiality in specific cases for pre-determined periods. It is in this ambivalence between the right of access and the right to confidentiality that is the timing of research and confidentiality enters into dialogue.

References to projects or case studies either in development or recently concluded will be encouraged if they describe how the project will contribute to the further development of archival theory and practice.

The abstract should be between 200-300 words, not counting the title (in bold) and the keywords. The abstract should be produced in a pre-2007 MS WORD version, Times New Roman, 12, normal, justified, with spacing of 1.5. The author (s) should present a brief bibliography of 10 items and 4 keywords and must identify the theme his or her abstract is related to just above the title. Include a brief CV of the author(s), maximum 150 words and the registration form.
English and Portuguese translation will be provided during the Conference.

Please submit the abstract and the Registration form by July 10th to the: encontroarquivocientifico@gmail.com

The results will be publish on the website of the Museu de Astronomia e Ciências Afins by July 30th, 2013.

The organizers invite overseas colleagues to submit proposals for the Call for Papers of the Conference.