Download the Call for Doctoral Consortium

RCIS has become a recognized conference on research challenges in information sciences. Organized for the ninth time in a row, RCIS 2015 will be held from May 13-15, 2015.

The RCIS 2015 Doctoral Consortium provides an opportunity for doctoral students to explore and develop their research interests in an interdisciplinary workshop, under the guidance of a panel of distinguished researchers. We invite students who feel they would benefit from this kind of feedback on their dissertation work to apply for this unique opportunity to share their work with students in a similar situation as well as senior researchers in the field. The strongest candidates will be those who have a clear topic and research approach, and have made some progress, but who are not so far along that they can no longer make changes. In addition to stating how you will gain from participation, both you and your advisor should be clear on what you can contribute to the Doctoral Consortium.

The goal of RCIS is to bring together scientists, researchers, engineers and practitioners from a wide range of information science fields and provide opportunities for knowledge sharing and dissemination. RCIS 2015 will continue paying attention to traditional topics at the conference; in addition, the special theme of “Information is all around us” will play a special role this year.

RCIS welcomes submissions from a diverse spectrum of information science. The list of themes and topics includes, but is not limited to, the following themes and topics:

Information Systems and their Engineering Requirements Engineering Method Engineering Software Testing Information Security and Risk	User-Oriented Approaches Human-Computer Interaction Social Computing and Social Network Analysis User-Centred Approaches Collaborative Computing
Data and Information Management Databases and Information Information Search and Discovery Conceptual Modelling and Ontologies	Business Process Management Business Process Engineering and Reengineering Process Mining Enterprise Engineering
Applications E-Health E-Government E-Commerce Web-Based Applications and Services Smart Cities	Business Intelligence Big Data & Business Analytics Decision Information Systems Knowledge Management Knowledge Discovery from Data Information and Value Management
Information Infrastructures Cyber-Physical Systems Web Information Systems Grid Computing and Cloud Computing Internet of Things Pervasive and Mobile Computing	Reflective Research and Practice Research Methodologies in Information Science Impact of Information on the Enterprise and the Individual Lifecycle Models Design Science and Rationale

The Doctoral Consortium has the following objectives:

• Provide a setting where students can present their work and meet other students
• Provide feedback on students' current research and guidance on future research directions
• Offer each student comments and fresh perspectives on their work from researchers and students outside their own institution
• Promote the development of a supportive community of scholars and a spirit of collaborative research
• Contribute to the conference goals through interaction with other researchers and conference events

The DC is organized in sessions embedded in the main RCIS 2015 conference program.

Submitted papers are abstracts 6 pages long and should address the following points:

• Introduce the field of research and identify the main challenges related to it
• Clearly 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
• Introduce the proposed solution and the results achieved so far
• State in what aspects the suggested solution is different or better as compared to existing approaches
• Indicate the outstanding issues and describe the next steps that are planned
• Provide a list of references

Submissions must be written in English, by a single author and must follow the IEEE 2-column format available at (http://www.ieee.org/conferences_events/conferences/publishing/templates.html). Submissions must be unpublished and must not be under review for any other conference, workshop or journal.
By submitting a DC proposal, doctoral students must implicitly agree that they will indeed attend the conference to present their research.
The submission site address is: https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=rcis2015. Please choose “Doctoral Consortium”.
Papers should be submitted in IEEE Xplore compliant PDF format. Please use the IEEE PDF eXpress tool (http://www.pdf-express.org/) to convert your source file into an IEEE Xplore compliant PDF file or to check if your own PDF file is IEEE Xplore compliant. The conference ID for the IEEE PDF eXpress tool will be provided soon on the RCIS 2015 web site. Please note that submitting a file to IEEE PDF eXpress is only used for the creation of a PDF document and does not constitute submission to the RCIS 2015 conference; you must still submit your paper through the online submission site mentioned above. The RCIS 2015 Doctoral Consortium Program Committee will formally review all papers submissions for the Doctoral Consortium.
Authors of accepted submissions will submit in the same format as the initial submission, a camera-ready version. This should take into account the reviewers comments. Authors, will receive information about attending the Doctoral Consortium, about preparing the presentation, and how to register for the conference at own’s cost. There will be a specific fee for DC students.

Accepted Doctoral Consortium papers will be included in the RCIS 2015 Conference Proceedings and will be published with the IEEE Conference Publications Program through IEEE Xplore Digital Library.

By submitting a paper, the doctoral student implicitly agrees that in case of acceptance he/she will register to the RCIS 2015 conference and present the paper. Only papers that have been presented by their authors will be published in the Conference Proceedings.

Submission deadline:	February 22, 2015 (23:59 Central European Time) February 28, 2015 (23:59 Central European Time)
Authors notification:	March 31, 2015
Camera ready deadline:	April 15, 2015
Authors registration deadline:	April 12, 2015
RCIS 2015 Conference:	May 13-15, 2015

The review and decision of acceptance will consider many factors. This includes the quality of your proposal, and where you are within your doctoral education program. It will also include external factors, such as whether the accepted candidates exhibit a diversity of backgrounds and topics. Reviews for acceptance or rejections will be provided to the students.
A specific Program Committee will conduct the reviews (see list below). Confidentiality of submissions will be maintained during the review process.

Each student will present his or her work to the group with substantial time allowed for discussion and questions by participating researchers and other students. Although many fine pieces of work will have to be rejected due to lack of space, being accepted into the Doctoral Consortium is an honour, and involves a commitment to giving and receiving thoughtful commentary with an eye towards shaping and becoming a participant in the field.

Maya Daneva	University of Twente	The Netherlands
Cherifa Mansoura	Senior Consultant Methodologist/Agile Coach/Business Analyst	Canada
Renata Guizzardi	Universidade Federal do Espirito Santo	Brasil

Jolitha Ralyte	Geneva University	Switzerland
Jennifer Horkoff	Trento University	Italy
Joao Araujo	Lisbon University	Portugal
Alain Abran	Montreal Engineering Institute	Canada
Kouninef Belkacem	Oran Telecommunication Institute	Algeria
Farida Semmak	Paris-East Creteil University	France