ER 2017 Doctoral Symposium Call For Papers

The ER 2017 Doctoral Symposium will gather together PhD students and academics working in conceptual modeling. The symposium offers PhD students the opportunity to present and discuss their research and to interact with other researchers, experts in the field of conceptual modeling, who can provide feedback on their research. To enable a fruitful discussion, we seek PhD students who are settled in their field but are also still open for valuable feedback. The symposium is open to any topic covered by the main conference and of strong relevance to the ER community.

Submissions to the doctoral symposium comprise two parts: an extended abstract paper and a recommendation letter.

Part 1: Research Extended Abstract
Your extended abstract should be 5 to 8 pages long and must follow the Springer LNCS style. Each submission must be structured as an exposé, focusing on the research questions and the research design to tackle that question. PhD students should write the papers by themselves (single authored) and focus on presenting the idea behind the research in order to receive the most valuable feedback at the symposium.
Submissions to the ER 2017 Doctoral Symposium should be structured like this:
– A sound introduction to the research field – focusing on current challenges and opportunities.
– Clear specification of the research questions and the objectives.
– Brief description of related work highlighting how the proposal differentiates from prior work.
– Justification of the selected research design, focusing also on the research methodology.
– Discussion of the current status of the proposed solution. How is the proposal an improvement over the current state of the art?
– Identification of outstanding issues and a roadmap for tackling them.

Part 2: Recommendation Letter
Ask your (primary) PhD advisor for a letter of recommendation. This letter should include:
• Your name
• An assessment of the current status of your dissertation research
• The expected date for defending your dissertation
The letter should be in PDF format and should be sent directly by your advisor via e-mail to the ER 2017 Doctoral Symposium Chairs, Sourav S. Bhowmick (ASSourav@ntu.edu.sg), Stephen W. Liddle
(liddle@byu.edu), and Dimitris Karagiannis (dk@dke.univie.ac.at). This letter will be held confidential.
The e-mail should have the subject “ER2017-DS-Recommendation-YourLastName”.

The proceedings will be published in the Springer LNCS series; therefore, manuscripts must follow the LNCS author guidelines. The page limit for research extended abstract is 8. Manuscripts not submitted in the LNCS style or exceeding the page limit will not be reviewed and automatically rejected. A research extended abstract submitted to ER 2017 must not be under review for any other conference or journal during the time it is being considered for ER 2017. Submitted research extended abstract must demonstrate to be aware of the state-of-the art literature in conceptual modeling by properly citing relevant papers in the field. Submission is via EasyChair (link).

In 2017, students of the best submissions to the doctoral symposium will receive a $500 travel grant. Up to 6 PhD travel grants will be awarded. Hence, after the final acceptance/rejection decision, the program committee will select those 6 best doctoral student submissions for funding.