History: Doctoral Symposium 2010

The WikiSym 2010 Doctoral Consortium will be held immediately after WikiSym, from 10:30-17:00 on Saturday 10 July 2010, at the conference location in Gdansk, Poland. The consortium is open to all doctoral students (at the time of the consortium). Students beginning their research are especially invited to submit. The consortium is aimed in particular at students who have defined a dissertation topic but are still approximately one year from finishing at the time of application. However, students closer to completion can submit their work for discussion in the forum.

Session Goals

The WikiSym 2010 Doctoral Symposium aims to offer PhD. students an unparalleled opportunity to present their ongoing working lines on wikis and open collaboration research and to receive supportive feedback from their peers and a panel of faculty mentors. The main goal of the consortium is to offer students valuable feedback from scholars and other attendees to the session, so that students can envision new, added-value contributions to their current research. In the same way, it also offers a perfect environment for the exchange of information, methodologies, practical experiences and advice that may help PhD. students on their way, unleashing potential interactions and opportunities for collaboration.

Session structure

Accepted students will have an opportunity to present their research and receive feedback from the faculty and other students. The consortium will also include a faculty and peer panel on topics of relevance to PhD students studying wikis and open collaboration. Finally, the session will include opportunities for students to interact with each other and with the faculty, thus contributing to the development of their professional networks.

Faculty

The faculty for the consortium include:

• Kevin Crowston, Syracuse University
• Andrea Forte, Drexel University
• Cliff Lampe, Michigan State University

Additional faculty will be announced as their participation is confirmed.

Application instructions

Submitters should submit an application to the doctoral consortium on the main Wikisym submission system, following the conference submission instructions. Submissions should be made by the deadline (21 March 2010) for best consideration, though submissions after this date will be considered if space is available. Evaluation of submissions will be based on fit of the student's topic to the conference, stage in the thesis research and quality of the proposal. Students will be advised of acceptance of their applications no later than 11 May 2010.

The submission should be a PDF manuscript that summarizes in about 5 pages the student's current/prospective research line. The structure and content of this manuscript will vary depending on the background level of the submitter but should state:

• Introduction: summarizing the main objective(s) of their PhD. work, or a brief recap of the main goals targeted in their dissertation.
• Central topic of the dissertation/research work, and area of interest (e.g.: wikis, industrial application, open communities, open publishing, FLOSS development, etc.).
• Methodology/working area: a brief description of the proposed methodology to carry out these research objectives (in case this has been already identified/developed), or a sketch of possible alternatives to pursue these goals.
• A list of previous publications (alternatively, submitted works under review or planned works to be carried out next up).
• Interesting feedback/collaboration opportunities that would offer significant improvement for their ongoing research work.

In addition to the application, your adviser must send a letter of recommendation that includes a brief description of your dissertation progress to date and your expected date of completion to the Doctoral Symposium chair (this letter may be submitted as an email message).

A student may submit both a regular research paper and a doctoral consortium application based on their thesis research.

Inquiries

Further doubts or requests for clarifications can be send to Dr. Kevin Crowston, chair of the Doc. Symposium, who can be reached at the following email address:

Doc. Symposium chair: