The IEEE International Conference on Research Challenges in Information Science (RCIS) has become an established venue for the publication of research in the field of information science. The twelfth edition of the conference series (RCIS 2018) will be held in Nantes, France between 29th and 31st May, 2018.

The RCIS 2018 Doctoral Consortium is organized as an opportunity for doctoral students to present, discuss and develop their research interests in an interdisciplinary workshop, under the guidance of a panel of distinguished researchers. The doctoral consortium is especially useful for the students who have defined a topic, a research plan, have obtained some results, but still have room for revising their plan. However, we encourage doctoral students at all stages to participate, because an objective of the doctoral consortium is also to help establish a community of junior researchers in the field of information science.

As part of the RCIS 2018 conference, the scope and topics of the doctoral consortium are the same as those of the main conference, with a special topic: “Enterprise of the future”.

This theme is intended to explore how Information Science, in terms of methods and tools, can help enterprises and organisations face a wide range of challenges, thanks to the power of Information. Indeed, enterprises need to be able to continually innovate as fast as (or faster than) their highly fluctuating environments and markets. However, complexity of information representation and exploitation, decision-making processes at multiple levels and their important –often unforeseen - effects, drastically impact enterprises agility and innovation. How does Information Science currently influence the future of enterprises and how can it influence it in a more efficient and innovative way? What are the main strategic challenges? How can Information Sciences strengthen and become an unavoidable and fundamental pillar of the Enterprise of the Future?

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

Information Systems and their Engineering Requirements Engineering Software Engineering and Testing Model-Driven Engineering Information Systems Development Methods and Method Engineering	User-Oriented Approaches Human-Computer Interaction Social Computing and Social Network Analysis User-Centred Approaches Collaborative Computing Information Science and the Wisdom of the Crowd
Data and Information Management Databases and Information Information Search and Discovery Conceptual Modelling and Ontologies Information Security and Risk Management Big Data, Right Data	Enterprise Engineering Business Process Engineering and Reengineering Process Mining Enterprise Modeling Information Science within Reengineering Scenarios Context-aware Organisations
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 Action Research and Case Studies in Information Science

The Doctoral Consortium has the following objectives:

• Provide a platform for students to present their work and to meet other students in the community
• 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 event.

The DC is organized in sessions embedded in the main RCIS 2018 conference program.

Interested students are invited to submit papers (maximum length: 6 pages) addressing the following points:

• 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 or better than existing approaches
• Indicate the issues still to be resolved, and describe the next steps that are planned

Submissions must be written in English, are authored by the student only, 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 paper, doctoral students commit that they will attend the conference to present their research. Accepted papers will not be published if the author does not register at the conference to present the paper.

The submission site address is: https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=rcis2018. Please choose “Doctoral Consortium” as a submission type.

Authors of accepted submissions will submit the camera-ready version using the same format as the initial submission. The reviewers’ comments shall be taken into account in the camera-ready paper. Authors will receive information on the presentation, and how to register for the conference. There will be a discounted registration fee for DC students.

Accepted Doctoral Consortium papers will be included in the RCIS 2018 Conference Proceedings and will be published with the IEEE Conference Publications Program through IEEE Xplore Digital Library.

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 2018 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 2018 conference; you must still submit your paper through the online submission site mentioned above. The RCIS 2018 Doctoral Consortium Program Committee will review all papers submissions for the Doctoral Consortium.

By submitting a paper, the doctoral student agrees that in case of acceptance he/she will register to the RCIS 2018 conference and present the paper. Only papers that have been presented by their authors will be published in the Conference Proceedings.

Regular paper submission deadline:	February 2nd, 2018 February 9th, 2018 “Anywhere on Earth”, i.e., UTC-12
Author notification and registration opening:	March 28th, 2018
Camera-ready deadline:	April 13th, 2018
Author registration deadline:	April 13th, 2018
RCIS’2018 Conference:	May 29-31, 2018

The review and decision of acceptance will be based on the opinions of at least three reviewers that will conduct a blind review process. Many 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, maximize a good coverage of the topics of the conference, including candidates with diverse backgrounds, research objectives, and research methods.

The reviewers for a proposal will consist of (i) at least two members of the international program committee, and (ii) another doctoral student who submitted a paper. The choice to include a doctoral student in the review process has an educational value, and aims to improve the students’ capability to assess the quality of a research proposal (also through the indirect comparison of the reviewed paper to their own case).

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.

The consortium sessions will have an informal atmosphere where every participant is encouraged to be actively involved in the discussion, and the core objective is learn how to conduct excellent research, as opposed to criticizing each other’s work.