Friday, February 26, 2010

Good week.....

Good week.....

I have just had another PhD student complete their thesis, take into account the examiners' comments and put it to bed as it were.

At the other end, I have had someone start out on the journey.

How wonderful! Supervision has to be the best part of being an academic without doubt because you have a chance to influence a person's life in a positive way.

ICISO 2010 PhD Consortium - CALL FOR PAPERS

Doctoral Consortium In collaboration with 12th International Conference on Informatics and Semiotics in Organisations

July 19th, 2010, Reading, UK

http:www.orgsem.org/2010

The 2010 International Conference on Informatics and Semiotics in Organisations (ICISO 2010), previously named International Conference on Organisational Semiotics (ICOS), is the twelfth in a series of international events devoted to the latest research in informatics in organisations and organisational semiotics. ICISO has always aimed to provide a focal forum for active researchers and academics, practitioners, business and industrial professionals from a diversified range of domains including information management, information systems, business and engineering.

In support of this aim, ICISO2010 are planning a one-day doctoral consortium for research students who wish to benefit from an environment in which they can share and discuss their goals, methods and results at an early stage of their research. Submitted papers will be assessed independently from those of the ICISO conference, and an electronic set of doctoral proceedings will be available. During the doctoral consortium, researchers will be asked to present their work either in the form of a poster or as an oral presentation. Additional time will be allocated for oral presentations to allow general discuss concerning interesting work in progress. In addition, commercial and academic speakers will lead informative sessions covering relevant research topics. Specific doctoral topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
• Information management
• Information systems
• Organisational modelling
• Information technology in built environments
• Alignment and integration of business and technical systems
• Collaborative systems for organisations
• Digital economy: theory, methods and techniques for design and applications
• Commercial focused research (e.g. EngD.) or tool / software demonstration

Important dates 300 word abstract: 12 April, 2010 Notification of acceptance: 3 May 2010 Camera-ready paper (maximum 6 pages): 11 June 2010 Consortium Date: 18 July 2010
Submission Guidelines Research students are invited to submit a 300 word abstract relating to original, unpublished research. The camera-ready papers (maximum 6 pages, in English), must be submitted via easychair in pdf file format. The paper template can be found here here. Registration cost for the PhD consortium, with full access to the ICISO conference, is fixed at the reduced fee of £280. Registration, to just the PhD consortium, or for ICISO conference authors, is £70.
Doctorial Chair Ana Canhoto, University of Reading, England Stephen Gulliver, University of Reading, England

Conference Contact Details Conference website: http:www.orgsem.org/2010 Conference email address: ICISO@reading.ac.uk

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Call for papers - Journal of Systems and Information Technology

One of the many hats I wear is that of the Editor of the Journal of Systems and Information Technology published by Emerald. Please take a look at the Web site for it and consider submitting a paper. It has a growing reputation and a good turn around time with reviews. I will screen your submission first to let you know if it is suitable for the Journal.
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/info/journals/jsit/jsit.jsp

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Top researchers in your field in your country

Who are the top five researchers in your field in your country - who is still research active (over past 5 years)? You will soon realise that there isn't that much depth in terms of numbers. You may be in the top 5 or you can one day be in the top 5.

This is an exercise to make you think of what is required to be a top researcher. Just list them in a comment with a few words for each explaining why you listed each person - also provide the discipline and country.

www.CompletePhD.com

Monday, February 8, 2010

The Value of Research

Researchers often feel undervalued in their own institution. They work without much internal support such as research assistants, admin support and so on. They may even be unable to attract many research students because of their University's reputation.

Then I thought about the following. Think of Singapore and Hong Kong and how they transformed their universities by buying in good academics. Now they have their own staff in many cases. Think of this also. Korea choose ten discplines they want to excell in. They contact 10 leading academics from the work in each subject and offer them double their salary. They will provide them with admin and research support and build teams around them. I think the cost of the 100 salaries (at double Australian salaries) would be $30 million a year.

Considering they may be paying 15 million for present professors this seems a good deal for them. These academics will publish in the top journals, develop and mentor others and make Korea world leaders in these 10 discplines. I know that Korea is already doing very well in my own discpline and is ahead of Australia in top papers. The result is after a few years Korea is recognised as being a world leader in these 10 discplines and it has avery positive impact on their economy in terms of flow through such as attracting students, improved innovation in the economy and so. The extra 15 million seems trivial!

What I am saying is those same academics are probably undervalued in their own country and even by their own institution. Yet their abilities can change a country - strange but true....



www.CompletePhD.com