Residency Interest Group

***Please note the change to conference dates

Call For Papers

ISIC: The Information Behaviour Conference

1-4 June 2026, Montréal, Canada

More information at https://www.mcgill.ca/isic2026/call-papers

The ISIC conference is the academic home of the Information Behaviour research community. The central theme revolves around people's situational, contextualized interactions with information and engagements in information activities, expressed in forms such as 'information behaviour', 'information practice', 'information seeking', and 'information experience'. The conference is a platform for research exploring information seeking as a rich site of study, going beyond a sole focus on technological aspects and exploring a wide variety of contexts.

ISIC 2026 is the sixteenth ISIC conference and the conference's 30^th anniversary. It will be located at McGill University, Montréal, Canada, 1-4 June 2026. In 2026, we especially encourage authors to reflect on the history and future of our field. However, all theoretical and empirical work that falls within the broad scope of the conference is welcome.

Important Dates:

• ISIC Information Session: 13 May 2025
• Reviewer Workshop: September 2025 (date TBA)
• Paper submission: 8 October 2025
• Notification: December 2025
• Registration: Starting in December 2025
• Revised submissions: 15 January 2026
• Final notification and acceptance: Beginning of February 2026
• Final submission – camera ready: 27 February 2026
• Conference dates: 1-4 June 2026

ISIC Information Session

An introduction to the ISIC community and conference will be offered online on 13 May 2025 at 17:00 CEST / 11:00 EDT. Everyone considering submitting work to ISIC is welcome. The session will discuss the types of research suitable for the conference, the conference themes, and any logistic questions people may have. The session will be held on Zoom: https://mcgill.zoom.us/j/81352217046

Reviewer Workshop

A workshop will be offered in September 2025 for early career academics or doctoral students who might be new to reviewing. It will be a hands-on workshop that will include reviewing a brief piece of work, as well as discussing the principles of reviewing and how to write a review. Those who have taken the workshop will receive an invitation to serve as a reviewer for ISIC 2026.

Conference themes include, but are not limited to, the following

1. Theoretical conceptualisations of the cultural, social, cognitive, affective, and situational aspects of information creation, needs, seeking, searching, use and sharing.
2. Research approaches and methodologies employing and developing qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods approaches.
3. Specific contexts: e.g., in different sectors and organisations (health care, education, cultural heritage, libraries, business, industry, public services and government, emergency services and others); in everyday life, and in social networks, including social media, gaming or virtual worlds.
4. Collaborative information practices: communities, boundary spanning and innovation practices.
5. Information use and value: meanings of information and how information is used to help solve problems, aid or support decision-making.
6. The role of information in building and enhancing the adaptive capacity of organisations: strategy and information absorption, transformation and integration.
7. Cross-disciplinary contributions: integrating studies on information seeking and interactive retrieval; integrating information science and management science.
8. Critical investigations of information activities in contemporary society.
9. Research and actions related to the distribution of false and misleading information threatening social, community and economic development.
10. Application of information behaviour research to practice based settings to enhance decision making and problem solving.

Submission Categories

Authors can submit their work in the following categories:

Full Papers: Original and unpublished research of relevance to ISIC may be submitted as a full paper. The maximum length of a full paper is 5500 words + references.

Short papers: Similar to full papers, short paper submissions must describe original and unpublished work. A short paper could present a more focused study of smaller scope than a full paper. For example, work in progress, preliminary research analysis, or late-breaking results are suitable for short papers. The maximum length of a short paper is 2000 words + references.

Panels: Organized discussions on specific topics or emerging trends. Panels should be designed for 90 minutes.

Posters: Extended abstracts for poster sessions are intended for the presentation of initial results; presenting a poster is a good platform for discussing and receiving feedback on a work in progress that has not been fully developed into a paper.

Workshops: Half-day workshops provide a venue for addressing novel ideas and emerging research. Generally, workshops should be highly interactive and seek active involvement of participants.

Doctoral Consortium: Offering doctoral students the opportunity to present and receive feedback on their research.

Submission Guidelines

Please refer to the conference website (https://www.mcgill.ca/isic2026/call-papers) for submission guidelines, including formatting and requirements.

For inquiries and additional information, please contact Rebekah Willson (rebekah.willson@mcgill.ca).

We look forward to seeing you at ISIC 2026!

Rebekah Willson and Owen Stewart-Robertson

Conference Chairs ISIC 2026