Call for Doctoral Consortium Papers

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The Doctoral Consortium (DC) at ECIR 2024 will provide a forum for PhD students in the field of Information Retrieval to present their research and thesis proposal to world-class senior researchers from academia and industry. Students will receive feedback on their work and have the opportunity to engage in detailed discussion with advisors through individual sessions. The DC also gives students an opportunity to meet and share their experiences of PhD research with other students at a similar stage of their studies.

We welcome submissions on any topic relevant to the general field of information retrieval, including those mentioned in the Call for Full papers for ECIR 2024. Example topics of interest include — but are not limited to — theory, experimentation, practice, applications and societal impacts of retrieval, recommendation, representation, management, and usage of textual, visual, audio, and multi-modal information.

Prospective candidates for the Doctoral Consortium

Students who have recently completed their research proposal, or about to do so (typically 2nd year PhD students) are welcome to submit their contribution to the consortium. Students will be selected based on the likely benefit to the student of participating in the DC at this point in their studies and on the potential of their research for future impact on the field of Information Retrieval.

Submission Guidelines

All candidates planning a submission must submit a preliminary Expression of Interest by November 6, 2023, as a single page of LNCS-formatted text that indicates:

  • The name and institutional affiliation(s) of the candidate,
  • The likely title of the final proposal,
  • A brief abstract describing the proposal, of up to 250 words.

The Expression of Interest will be used to select potential mentors who will be asked to provide feedback on the main submission.

The main DC submission is required one week later (November 13, 2023). It may contain previously-published material, as well as ongoing work. This submission must have two parts.

1) A research statement, which should be no more than four (4) pages long (excluding references). Authors should consult Springer’s authors’ guidelines and use their proceedings templates, either for LaTeX or for Word, for the preparation of their papers.

It will be the basis for detailed discussions at the Consortium, and should include:

  • Motivation for the proposed research,
  • Background and related work (including key references),
  • Description of proposed research, including main research questions,
  • Research methodology and proposed experiments (where appropriate), and
  • Specific research issues for discussion at the Doctoral Consortium.

2) A one (1) page description of benefits to their PhD studies that the student expects to obtain by attending the DC. This should be added as an appendix to the research statement and must include:

  • A statement by the student saying why they want to attend the Consortium.
  • A brief statement (1 paragraph) by their advisor saying how the student would benefit by attending the DC. Advisors should also specifically state whether the student has written, or is close to completing, a thesis proposal (or equivalent), and when they expect the student to defend their dissertation if they progress at a typical rate.

Format Requirements

All submissions must be written in English following the ECIR guidelines and the LNCS author guidelines and submitted electronically through the conference submission system (https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ecir2024) and selecting the Doctoral Consortium track. The first page must contain the title of the paper, full author name, affiliation(s) and contact details, and an abstract of up to 250 words.

Accepted Papers

Students accepted to the Consortium will have the option of publishing a 4-page extended abstract summarizing their research in the full ECIR conference proceedings.

Doctoral Consortium Important Dates

  • Expression of Interest: November 6, 2023, 11:59 (AoE)
  • Doctoral Consortium Paper Submission: November 13, 2023, 11:59 pm (AoE)
  • Notification: December 18, 2023
  • Doctoral Consortium day: March 24, 2024

Doctoral Consortium Chairs

  • Yashar Moshfeghi (University of Strathclyde, Scotland)
  • Gabriella Pasi (University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy)

Contact: ecir2024-dc@easychair.org