The paper lays out the necessary components of a research paper in a way that seems to be highly aligned with how many people practice NIME research:

I think that if more people work in this way, it could advance our understanding of how to create and interpret knowledge in our field. A renewed focus on extensibility would help NIME research build on itself over time rather than being a repository of siloed projects. In regards to evaluation, right now, there is also a heavy focus on pilot user studies that attempt to prove the usability or some other aspect of a project in a quantitative way; these studies, having at most dozens of users, are usually not rigorous enough to prove anything beyond a question of a doubt unless follow-up research is performed (and it is often not). In many cases, this kind of evaluation is not well-aligned with the work: the pursuit of much of NIME research is not to build something with a performance increase (engineering, e.g. much of the work at ISMIR) or to prove something is true (science, e.g. much of the work at SMPC), but to build the right thing (design) and to articulate why a particular preferred state of the world is something that we all must collectively strive for. 

One reason this discussion is relevant now is the rapid and radical changes in people’s working environments due to the coronavirus crisis. But this is also linked to the more long term changes that will be necessary due to the need to reduce travel because of climate change. In addition comes the general accessibility concerns, making it possible for everyone to contribute to the NIME community, independent of whether they are able to attend a physical conference once a year or not. All of these factors may push more NIME activities toward virtual or physical-virtual communication.

Another reason for a needed change is the increasing focus on more openness in research, which has recently received a lot of political attention through the Plan S initiative, The Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), EU’s Horizon Europe, funder’s requirements of FAIR data principles, and so on. Another important reason for a needed change of practice, is the recent covid-19 lock-down, general need to reduce travel due to climate change issues, as well as accessibility concerns. 

The NIME community has embraced openness principles since the beginning, but has not yet fully exploited this in a systematic manner. Recent attempts in developing a new paper template for the NIME conference have been unsuccessful due to technical limitations, problems of long-term preservation, usability, and so on. It has proven similarly difficult to come up with common solutions for data/media sharing. People in the community have different interests and skills, so it is important to find solutions that are both innovative and user-friendly at the same time. The longevity of chosen solutions is also important, since NIME is central to an increasing number of people’s careers. Hence we need to balance exploration of new solutions with the need for preservation and stability. 

In addition to finding solutions for the NIME conference itself, the establishment of a NIME journal has been discussed for several years. This discussion has surfaced again during the testing of a new paper template for the conference. But rather than thinking about the conference proceedings and a journal as two separate projects, one could imagine a larger NIME publication ecosystem which could cover everything from draft manuscripts, complete papers, peer-reviewed proceedings papers, and peer-reviewed journal papers. This could fit into a more “Science 2.0”-like system in which the entire research process is open from the beginning. This is an approach that is similar to how the Research Catalogue is a first step on the way to publishing in JAR, and the way that systems like Open Science Framework,  Authorea and PubPub in various ways support early publication, open/iterative peer review, and so on. One could here also think about the way Registered Reports are used in some experimental fields. The idea with this publication format is to write up the study design, hypothesis and methodology, which is peer reviewed and accepted before the study is carried out. This has been an important step in supporting the publication also of “negative” and non-spectacular results, as long as the study is well done. A similar format could be useful also in a NIME setting, particularly when it comes to evaluation studies and other empirical studies. 

The recent coronavirus crisis, and the changing of NIME 2020 into an online event, will most likely continue to blur the boundaries between what happens at the conference, and what goes on in the community during the rest of the year. All in all, we see a number of exciting possibilities for the community to explore. There is also a growing number of technical solutions being developed that may support such a shift. The aim of the workshop is therefore to: