The ACM SIGIR Doctoral Consortium provides doctoral students with a unique opportunity to have substantive interaction with other researchers regarding their proposed dissertation research.
The objectives of the Doctoral Consortium are:
- To provide a forum where doctoral students can present and discuss their proposed research with experienced IR researchers: the members of the Doctoral Consortium Program Committee.
- To provide students with an opportunity to establish a supportive community including other doctoral students at the same stage of their dissertation research.
The Consortium will take place on the same day as the tutorials (Sunday, July 19), with the format being: student presentations with plenary discussions, individual meetings with experienced researchers, and more informal discussions over lunch and breaks.
Prospective student attendees should have written, or be close to completing, a thesis proposal (or equivalent). It is desirable that the student is not so close to completion that the event would have little or no impact on their work. Prior to submission students should discuss this criterion with their advisor or supervisor to ensure it is met.
Selection for attendance at the Doctoral Consortium will be based on a written paper, singly authored by the student wishing to attend the Consortium. Abstracts of the papers will be published in the SIGIR Conference Proceedings.
Doctoral students who submit to the Consortium are permitted to have previously published papers on their research, and are encouraged to submit papers or posters to SIGIR and associated workshops.
SIGIR may be able to provide travel grants for students chosen to attend the Consortium. Application details for travel grants will be available on the SIGIR web site
Content guidelines
The Consortium submission paper will be the basis for detailed discussions at the Consortium. To get the most out of the discussion, a paper 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)
- Particular research issues for discussion at the Doctoral Consortium.
In addition, a one page appendix to the paper (placed after the references) should include the following:
- A detailed statement by the student saying why they want to attend the Consortium.
- A statement by their advisor / supervisor saying how the student would benefit by attending the Consortium. Advisors should also state whether the student has written, or is close to completing, a thesis proposal (or equivalent).
All papers will be reviewed with respect to overall quality of presentation, the potential for future impact of the research on the field of Information Retrieval, and the likely benefit to the student of attending the Consortium. Because the abstract will be published, the abstract will be critically reviewed.
Format requirements
Submitted papers must be in the ACM Conference style (for LaTeX, use the "Option 2" style).
The first page must contain the title of the paper, full author name, affiliation and contact details, and an abstract of up to 250 words, ACM Computing Reviews categories, and up to 3 keywords describing the topic areas. The paper should be no more than 5 pages in length including all figures and bibliography, but not including the one page appendix. Papers must be submitted in English. Information about categories and keywords can be found in ACM Web pages on the computing classification system and in the LaTeX and Word templates.
As the format for Consortium papers follows almost exactly that for SIGIR papers, it provides useful experience in preparing papers for the SIGIR Conference. Note, the accepted papers will not be published in the SIGIR Conference Proceedings; only the abstracts will be published.
Consortium papers must be in PDF format and submitted electronically via the submission web page (http://sigir2009-doc.confmaster.net). It is the responsibility of the student to ensure that their papers use no unusual format features and are printable on a standard printer. Papers will be reviewed by the members of the Doctoral Consortium Program Committee.
Important Dates
March 2, 2009 - Doctoral Consortium submissions due
April 11, 2009 - Notification of acceptance
July 19, 2009 - Doctoral Consortium held in Boston
