CFP: Ph.D. Symposium, in conjunction with the "On The Move Federated Conferences" (OTM'04)

**** With apologies for multiple postings and cross postings ******

===================================================================
                         CALL FOR PAPERS

                      "1st Ph.D. Symposium"
            http://www.starlab.vub.ac.be/events/OTM04PhD/ 

                         25-26 Oct  2004
                         Larnaca, Cyprus

                       In conjunction with
                On The Move Federated Conferences 
                             (OTM'04) 
                http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/fedconf/

               Proceedings published by Springer LNCS
===================================================================

OVERVIEW
--------
The Ph.D. Symposium of the federated conferences is intended to bring 
together Ph.D. students within the subjects of the OTM community and give 
them the opportunity to present and to discuss their research in a 
constructive and international atmosphere. 

The OTM'04 Ph.D. Symposium will be accompanied by prominent professors 
in the field of information systems which will actively participate and 
contribute to the discussions.

The workshop in Larnaca, Cyprus, will be the 1st Ph.D. Symposium held in 
conjunction with the OTM conference during the first two days 
(25-26 October 2004) of the conference. 

Workshop language is english. 

AIMS & OBJECTIVES
-----------------
Aim of the OTM Ph.D. Symposium is to support the research done by doctoral 
students with constructive remarks and feedback from prominent scientists 
in the information systems field. 

The Ph.D. Symposium will be rounded off by a discussion of general questions 
related to Ph.D. research. They include, but are not limited to, the 
following aspects: 

* problem formulation, 
* analysis and evaluation of the state of the Ph.D. thesis, 
* research methodology, including 
  o underlying principles of the approach, 
  o utility of the approach, as well as 
  o validation of the results. 
* critical evaluation of one's own work, including 
  o identification of the target audience and beneficiaries of a thesis, 
  o validation techniques (such as prototyping, field experiment, or 
    argumentation), 
* definition of the innovative contribution of a thesis to the existing state of the art. 

Additionally keynote speakers will address general purpose issues, related
to Ph.D. research and life in academia afterwards.


SYMPOSIUM TOPICS
----------------
The OTM Ph.D. Symposium deals with the topics of the main conference. 
The general areas addressed but are not restricted to 

* Distributed Objects and Applications
* Management of Semantically-Expressive Information
* Applications, Evaluations, and Experiences 
* Business Process Management 
* Software and information services for CIS 
* Agent technologies, systems and architectures for CIS 
* CIS applications and modeling 

An extensive list of topics can be found at http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/fedconf/


SUBMISSIONS
-----------
To apply for participation at the Ph.D. Symposium, please provide an electronic
version of your paper regarding your doctoral work to the cyberchair web page (http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/fedconf/phd/2004/papers/submit). The paper is restricted to 5000 words (approximately 10 pages). Submissions may be handed in electronically Postscript, PDF or MS Word format. 

Different from other papers, this paper addresses specifically the Ph.D. 
student thesis! The paper should 

* have the PhD student as single author (by preference), or as first author
  with his/her (main) promoter as second author
* clearly formulate the research question, 
* identify the significant problems in the field of research, 
* outline the current knowledge of the problem domain, as well as the state 
  of existing solutions, 
* present clearly any preliminary ideas, the proposed approach and the results achieved so far, 
* sketch the research methodology that is applied, 
* point out the contributions of the applicant to the problem solution, and 
* state in what aspects the suggested solution is different, new or better as compared to existing approaches to the problem. 

Submissions will be judged on originality, significance, correctness, and 
clarity. Admission is limited to 10 - 14 Ph.D. students. 

Failure to commit to presentation at the conference automatically excludes a paper from the proceedings.

ANNOUNCEMENT OF PROCEEDINGS
---------------------------
Accepted workshop contributions will be published by Springer-Verlag as 
LNCS (Lecture Notes in Computer Science) as a part of the workshop proceedings 
of the 2004 International On The Move Federated Conferences (OTM). Author 
instructions and style sheets can be found at the Springer site 
(http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html).

IMPORTANT DATES
------------------------------
Deadline for submission:        July 4th, 2004 
Notification of acceptance:     August 4th, 2004 
Camera-ready paper due:         August 20th, 2004
Ph.D. Symposium:                October 25th-26th, 2004
OTM'04:                         October 25th-29th, 2004

ACCOMPANYING PROFESSORS
-----------------------
Sonia Bergamaschi
DataBase Group Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell'Informazione 
Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Italy 

Jaime Delgado
Distributed Multimedia Applications Group (DMAG)
Universitat Pompeu, Spain 

Jan L. G. Dietz
Department of Information Systems
Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

Werner Nutt 
School of Mathematical and Computer Sciences
Heriot-Watt University Edinburgh, U.K. 


WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS
-------------------
Antonia Albani (antonia.albani@wiwi.uni-augsburg.de)
Business Information Systems and Systems Engineering
University of Augsburg, Germany

Alexios Palinginis (palingin@inf.ethz.ch)
Global Information Systems Group
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, Switzerland

Peter Spyns (Peter.Spyns@vub.ac.be)
Systems Technology and Applications Research Laboratory
Free University of Brussels, Belgium

Received on Sunday, 23 May 2004 15:38:49 UTC