Dormant Data: Turning the ICFHR 2022 Abstract Archive Into Your 2025 Research Pipeline

Conferences end; archives linger. The ICFHR 2022 abstract library — several hundred summaries spanning talent analytics, workforce wellbeing, and organizational behavior — sits online, free to access, and largely untouched since the final session wrapped. For HR analysts and graduate students planning a 2025 research agenda, that archive is not a relic. It is a raw dataset waiting to be worked.

Here is a practical method for turning dormant conference material into publishable, fundable work.

Step 1: Export and Structure the Corpus

Begin by collecting every abstract into a spreadsheet with four columns: title, author affiliation, track or theme, and the full abstract text. Standardize country designations so US-based studies are easy to isolate or compare against international work. Aim for completeness over speed; a corpus with gaps produces conclusions with gaps.

Step 2: Build a Lightweight Tagging Scheme

Do not invest in expensive text-analytics software before doing the manual pass. Read fifty abstracts and jot down recurring constructs — say, remote onboarding, pay transparency, algorithmic hiring, burnout measurement. Consolidate those into eight to twelve tags, then code the full set. Two coders working independently, with a quick reconciliation session, will get you defensible inter-rater reliability without a methods committee.

Step 3: Map Frequency Against Time

With tags in place, chart how often each theme appears and how that distribution shifted across the conference days. Themes that dominated in 2022 — pandemic-era hybrid work, for instance — may have peaked. Themes that appeared in only a handful of abstracts may represent underexplored territory, which is precisely where new contributions and grant funding live.

Step 4: Identify the Gaps That Matter

Three gap types reward attention. First, population gaps: constructs studied extensively in European samples but rarely in US workforces. Second, method gaps: topics covered only through cross-sectional surveys, with no longitudinal designs. Third, translation gaps: rigorous findings with no practitioner-facing write-up. Each gap type maps to a different output — a replication study, a dissertation design, or an applied white paper.

Step 5: Convert Findings Into Deliverables

The archive supports at least three concrete products. A scoping literature review, citing the abstract corpus alongside published papers, can anchor a thesis proposal or an internal research agenda. A gap analysis — "what ICFHR 2022 did not cover" — makes a compelling frame for grant applications, because funders reward clearly articulated holes. And a practitioner brief, translating three or four underused findings for HR leaders, can become a widely shared white paper with your name on it.

Step 6: Track the Authors Forward

Finally, follow the threads. Search the contributing authors' names in Google Scholar and note what they published in 2023 and 2024. Abstracts often preview work that reached full publication later; connecting the dots lets you cite mature research while positioning yourself as someone who spotted the trend early.

Why This Matters for 2025

Budgets for secondary research are tight, and access to proprietary datasets is harder than ever for students and small teams. The ICFHR 2022 archive costs nothing but time, and its snapshot of the field at a pivotal moment — the immediate post-pandemic inflection in HR research — gives it lasting analytical value.

Archived does not mean finished. Worked carefully, a few hundred abstracts become a research agenda, and a research agenda becomes a career.