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Call for PhD Workshop submissions

PhD students who are pursuing research related to the challenges of digital 
preservation are warmly invited to participate in a PhD workshop organized 
by PERICLES, which will be held on December 2, 2016.

PERICLES - Promoting and Enhancing Reuse of Information throughout the 
Content Lifecycle taking account of Evolving Semantics - is a large EU 
funded research project, in its fourth and final year, comprising of eleven 
partners from six different countries, and which deals with challenges of 
access to digital content in a changing environment. A final conference, 
which will mark the conclusion of this project, will be held on November 30 
- December 1st followed by a day of post-conference events including this 
PhD workshop on December 2, 2016.

This workshop provides a forum for doctoral students to present and 
discuss their research and receive feedback from peers and leading 
scholars in the field. The research presented could be conducted in a 
number of disciplines (e.g. computer science, information science, archival 
science, mathematics, etc), but the common theme of the submitted 
papers has to be related to digital preservation and the topic areas dealt 
with within PERICLES. Doctoral students at all stages are encouraged to 
participate.

This workshop will provide doctoral students a rare opportunity to learn, 
develop, and share their research ideas in a highly competent, critical but 
supportive environment. The students will receive feedback from mentors 
who are members of the PERICLES project, and hence senior members of 
the Digital Preservation research community. The authors of the accepted 
papers will also be given the opportunity to attend the preceding 
conference, enabling them to meet and network with an international 
group of leading members of a community which may prove to be closely 
relevant for the students and their continued endeavours.

Costs
Attendance is free of charge.

Venue
Wellcome Collection Conference Centre
183 Euston Rd,
London NW1 2BE

Acceptance
At the workshop, reasonable time will be allocated to the presentation and 
discussion of each paper, hence the number of accepted papers will be 
limited to only five or six, meaning that participation will be highly 
competitive. The main selection criteria will be the quality of the submitted 
papers and the relevance of the topic for issues addressed within PERICLES.

Research Themes
The submitted papers should study the preservation challenges in different 
domains (e.g. digital art and media or experimental space science), and/or 
explore topics including (but not limited to) the following:

- Preservation and accessibility of digital content
- Modelling of contextual information
- Provenance modelling
- Information extraction
- Automated capture and sheer curation
- Digital ecosystem modelling
- Ecosystem policy management
- Linked data
- Modelling of dependencies
- Ontologies: upper-level and domain-specific
- Dependencies
- Change management
- Semantic change & evolving semantics
- Significant environment information
- Data reuse
- Data management plans
- User community modelling

Research proposals
The workshop invites doctoral students from related fields (e.g. Computer 
Science, Information Science, Archival Science, Mathematics, etc) to 
submit ongoing research proposals for review and feedback. The research 
proposals should not exceed 6000 words and should typically include the 
following:

1. Title of the proposal
2. Problem definition and research questions
3. Literature review
4. Theoretical framework and conceptual development
5. Proposed methodology
6. Results (achieved or anticipated)
7. References

An additional cover page should include the candidate¡¯s name, email 
address, phone number(s), university, name of dissertation advisor(s), web 
site address, and the progress made toward completion of the thesis (i.e. 
beginning stages, midway, near completion, etc).

Submission
The research proposals should be submitted via e-mail to: [log in to unmask]
Important dates
¡ñ Publishing PhD Workshop Call: 25/07/2016
¡ñ Submission closes: 01/10/2016
¡ñ Notification of Acceptance/Rejection: 24/10/2016
¡ñ Binding registration: 26/10/2016
¡ñ (Potential for upload of final version: 01/11/2016)
¡ñ PhD Workshop: December 2, 2016

Selection process
The submissions must fit with the set criteria of the workshop such as 
excellence and thematic proximity. Each submission will undergo a review 
process. Candidates will be notified about the review outcome. Accepted 
proposals will be made available online to workshop participants before the 
Workshop.
[There will also be an opportunity for publication on PERICLES website if of 
interest. More information will be provided at the workshop.]

Poster presentation
Participants, if they so wish, are invited to prepare a poster presentation of 
their papers to be placed on public display throughout the entire 
conference.

Faculty members / mentors
- Prof. S¨¢ndor Dar¨¢nyi (HB), semantic change and evolving semantics
- Dr Rob Baxter (UEDIN), preservation systems, data policy issues
- Dr Mark Hedges (KCL), digital archives, computational methods, digital 
humanities
- Dr Simon Waddington (KCL), digital preservation, data analytics and 
modelling.
- Dr Efstratios Kontopoulos (CERTH-ITI), semantic technologies, Linked 
Data and ontologies.