Conference Rubric Development for STEM Librarians’ Publications

Librarians within the Engineering Libraries Division (ELD) annually publish conference papers for the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE). The existing ASEE rubric was not sufficient for our members, so we developed a new rubric as a charged committee for this task. We briefly discuss the sparse literature in this area, focusing on the use of rubrics and the rationale behind them. Due to this lack of literature, our committee primarily utilized additional sources such as rubrics found from other professional organizations in STEM and library fields. Our rubric is designed to encourage substantive feedback and growth of authors during the process, while clarifying the expectations for submissions. This rubric consists of overall guidance and specific needs, with flexibility for the different research methods and applications expected (i.e. work-in-progress/completed research, quantitative/qualitative, etc.). We implemented this rubric successfully for the 2021 conference cycle, but will further refine it as needed, based on feedback following future conferences. With scarce literature on conference peer review, we hope by sharing our work, others may also consider and improve their organizations’ processes.