[hpc-announce] 14th International Conference on Research Challenges in Information Science (RCIS 2020): First Call for Doctoral Consortium

[George Angelos Papadopoulos]

*** First Call for Doctoral Consortium ***

14th International Conference on
Research Challenges in Information Science (RCIS 2020)

Royal Apollonia Beach Hotel 5*, Limassol, Cyprus

May 20-22, 2020, Limassol, Cyprus

http://rcis-conf.com/

Submission deadline: February 14, 2020 (AoE)

(Proceedings to be published by Springer)

	
RCIS aims to bring together scientists, researchers, engineers and
practitioners from a wide range of information science fields and to provide
opportunities for knowledge sharing and dissemination. RCIS 2020 will
continue paying attention to traditional topics at the conference; in addition,
we solicit submissions aligned the special theme of Information Science in
the Days of Artificial Intelligence. We understand AI in a broad sense,
including machine learning, self-adaptation, logic-based reasoning,
automation, agents and multiagent systems, natural language processing,
user modelling, behavioural analytics, etc.

The RCIS 2020 Doctoral Consortium is an opportunity for doctoral students
to present, discuss and develop their research project in an interdisciplinary
workshop, under the guidance of a panel of senior researchers. The Doctoral
Consortium offers nice opportunities for PhD students. Firstly, the feedback
received during the Doctoral Consortium will really benefit students who have
defined their topic, research plan and have obtained early results, but who
still have room for improving their longer-term plan. Secondly, students at all
stages of their doctoral project can meet the welcoming RCIS community and
widen their network of contacts.

The main scope and topics of the Doctoral Consortium are the same as those
of the main conference. RCIS welcomes submissions from the whole spectrum
of the Information Science field. The list of themes and topics includes, but is
not limited to, Information Systems and their Engineering, Data and
Information Management, Domain-specific IS Engineering, Information
Infrastructures, User-Oriented Approaches, Business Process Management,
Data Science, Reflective Research and Practice (see the call for papers of RCIS
2020 for more detail).


OBJECTIVES

The Doctoral Consortium has the following objectives:
* Provide a platform for students to present their work and to meet other
peers and be familiar with different research topics and methods. 
* Provide feedback on students' current research and guidance on future
research directions.
* Promote the development of a supportive community of scholars and a
spirit of collaborative research and networking.
* Contribute to the conference goals through interaction with other
researchers.

The Doctoral Consortium is organised in sessions that are part of the RCIS
2020 conference programme.


SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Interested PhD students are invited to submit papers, in agreement with their
supervisors, addressing the following instructions. Please bear in mind that
we are not prescribing a specific structure of sections; we just expect that you
cover these topics in the paper:
* Introduce the field of research and identify the main challenges.
* Formulate the research questions and objectives, justifying why they were
chosen.
* Outline the current knowledge of the problem domain, as well as the state
of existing solutions.
* Sketch the research methodology that is being applied.
* Describe the proposed solution and the results achieved so far.
* State how the suggested solution is different from or better than existing
approaches.
* Indicate the issues still to be resolved and describe the next steps that are
planned.

Papers shall be formatted according to the Springer LNCS/LNBIP conference
proceedings template (for LaTeX and Word):
https://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-guidelines
Submissions must be written in English, and must be authored by the student
only. The maximum length of the paper should be eight (8) pages, including
references, appendices, etc. Papers that have already been accepted or are
currently under review for other conferences, workshops or journals will not
be considered for publication at the RCIS 2020 Doctoral Consortium. So,
while we can accept certain overlap with other papers, we discourage re-
submissions and double submissions.

Authors of accepted submissions will submit the camera-ready version using
the same format as the initial submission (some additional instructions might
be issued at this stage). The reviewers’ comments shall be taken into account
in the camera-ready paper. Only papers that have been presented by their
author will be published in the conference proceedings. Authors will receive
information on the presentation, and how to register for the conference.
There will be a discounted registration fee for Doctoral Consortium students.

The accepted papers will be published in a Springer LNBIP volume, along with
the other papers accepted for RCIS 2020. This will give visibility to the work
of the doctoral student and contribute to building their CV.

The submission site is https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=rcis2020 
Please choose “Doctoral Consortium” as a submission type.

By submitting a Doctoral Consortium paper, doctoral students commit that
they will attend the conference to present their research. The appearance of a
paper in the Springer proceedings is dependent on the registration of the
author within the early registration deadline on March 31, 2020.


REVIEW PROCESS

The review and decision of acceptance will be based on the opinions of at
least two reviewers. Several factors will be considered, including the quality
of the proposal, the clarity of the paper, and the stage within the doctoral
education program. The selection process will, when possible, maximise a
good coverage of the topics of the conference and diversity of participants'
background, research objectives, and research methods.


AT THE CONFERENCE

Each student will present his or her work to the participants with substantial
time allowed for discussion and questions by participating researchers and
other students. The discussion will be guided by a member of the committee
of expert mentors, who will play the role of proposal discussant together with
another PhD student that has been accepted at the Doctoral Consortium.

Each student will be invited to review another accepted Doctoral Consortium
paper and prepare a few questions to be discussed during the consortium
day. The papers will be assigned in advance such that the students will have
sufficient time to review the paper and prepare their questions.

The consortium sessions will have an informal and friendly atmosphere where
every participant is encouraged to be actively involved in the discussion, the
core objective being to learn how to conduct excellent research, as well as
provide and receive useful feedback to improve one’s work.


IMPORTANT DATES

* Papers submission deadline: February 14, 2020 (AoE)
* Notification to authors and registration opening: March 15, 2020
* Author registration deadline for all paper types: March 31, 2020
* Camera-ready copy deadline for all paper types: March 31, 2020
* Conference: May 20-22, 2020

 
CONFERENCE COMMITTEES

Steering Committee
* Said Assar, Institut Mines-Telecom Business School, France 
* Marko Bajec,University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
* Pericles Loucopoulos, Manchester University, University Kingdom
* Haralambos Moratidis, University of Brighton, United Kingdom 
* Selmin Nurcan, Universite Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne, France
* Oscar Pastor, Universitat Politecnica de Valencia, Spain
* Jolita Ralyte, CUI, University of Geneva, Suisse
* Colette Rolland, Universite Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne, France 

General Chairs
* George A. Papadopoulos, University of Cyprus, Cyprus
* Pericles Loucopoulos, Harokopio University of Athens, Greece

Organising Chair
* Petros Stratis, Easy Conferences LTD., Cyprus

Program Chairs
* Jelena Zdravkovic, Stockholm University, Sweden
* Fabiano Dalpiaz, Utrecht University, Netherlands

Doctoral Consortium Chairs
* Raian Ali, Bournemouth University, United Kingdom
* Sergio Espana, Utrecht University, Netherlands

Tutorial Chairs
* Estefania Serral Asensio, KU Leuven, Belgium
* Ignacio Panach, University of Valencia, Spain

Posters & Demos Chairs
* Elena Kornyshova, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, France
* Marcela Ruiz, Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland