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Calls For Participants: DOCAM/RAILS Doctoral Forum & Poster Presentation

Posted January 6, 2015

DOCAM 2015 and RAILS 2015 are pleased to invite submissions from doctoral students in information/document studies or a related discipline to attend a joint Doctoral Forum on the afternoon and evening of 22 July, 2015. Prospective doctoral students developing a PhD application for 2015/16 are also invited to apply. The aim of the forum is to provide a supporting environment where students can discuss their research and receive mentoring and advice from an international panel of senior researchers.

This is a special shared event co-hosted by the 12th Annual Conference of the Document Academy, 20-22 July, 2015 and the Research Applications in Information and Library Studies Conference (RAILS), following DOCAM from 22-24 July, 2015. Both conferences are sponsored by the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), and the School of Information Studies, Charles Sturt University (CSU).

The doctoral forum is open to students enrolled in a doctoral program in any of RAILS and DOCAM’s cognate disciplines (e.g. Information Science, Information Systems, Librarianship, Museum Studies, Rhetoric, Document and Media Studies, Information and Computer Science). The forum is included, at no additional cost, for students registered to attend DOCAM 2015 or RAILS 2015.

The doctoral forum will be led by Professor Pamela McKenzie (University of Western Ontario, Canada) who will be joined by senior academics in the field, including Dr Michael Olsson (UTS, Australia) and Professor Lisa Given (CSU, Australia). To be considered for this event students must submit an abstract outlining their Doctoral research, including the stage of their research that they are currently undertaking and the particular challenges they are facing that they would like to discuss and seek advice about. In addition students attending DOCAM will be given the opportunity to present a poster that introduces their PhD work during DOCAM 2015. Space in the Forum will be limited and, given the interactive nature of the forum discussion, students should be prepared to present on and talk about their research.

The forum schedule will be finalised in conjunction with DOCAM’s co-provider RAILS once the number of attendees has been determined. Notifications of decisions will be made by February 15, 2015. If there are any queries regarding submissions, please email Dr Michael Olsson ([email protected]).

DOCAM/RAILS submission process for Doctoral Forum

Abstracts of 500 words must be submitted through Easychair by midnight (23:59:00 Australian Eastern Daylight Time) on Friday, 30 January 2015. https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=docam2015

Students should provide a brief overview of the nature of their project (research problem, methodology/method, theoretical framework, etc.), a description of their intended poster and explain why they would benefit from participating in the event. Please see the EasyChair Submission Instructions for details, prior to submitting your abstract to the system. Note in front of your title proper, please type these words: Doctoral Forum.

Criteria for Selection

Submitted abstracts of 500 words should address the following criteria:

  • Proposed benefit to the student’s doctoral program (approx. 100 words);
  • Clear, coherent outline (abstract) of original research (200 words);
  • Outline of issues and challenges student wishes to discuss (100 words)
  • Description of the poster presentation to be provided in support of the work (approx. 100 words in addition to research outline); and
  • Indication of attendance at (student rates) for either DOCAM 2015 or RAILS 2015

EasyChair Submission Instructions

The submission deadline for all DOCAM doctoral forum proposals is midnight (23:59:00 Australian Eastern Daylight Time) Friday 30 January 2015. Proposals must be submitted via the EasyChair system (https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=docam2015).  To submit your abstract at EasyChair, please follow the steps below:

  1. name and contact information for the forum participant;
  2. title of work, include the words Doctoral Forum immediately before your title;
  3. select poster in the category type;
  4. add 3 to 5 keywords;
  5. do not complete the abstract box available in the EasyChair template, instead
  6. upload your abstract (500 words) for your proposed forum contribution

Doctoral forum abstracts (a combined 500 word description max.) must be in the word format. References may also be included, beyond the allowed 500 words.

Opportunities for Current Students