July 2004

Call For Abstracts And Papers

Call For Abstracts And Papers

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS AND PAPERS
GRADUATE STUDENT PRESENTATIONS
($800 Travel Awards)


Overview:

The University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS) is a non profit organization of over fifty universities and other research institutions dedicated to expanding and strengthening geographic information science. The organization will hold its Annual Assembly and Summer Retreat from 20-23October, 2004 in conjunction with the Third International Conference on Geographic Information Science (GIScience 2004) at the University of Maryland Conference Center in Washington, D.C. See http://www.giscience.org/ for continually updated information on the GIScience 2004 conference.

Graduate students from UCGIS member institutions are invited to submit an abstract and paper for participation in the Annual Assembly. Our goal is to attract high quality presentations from across the U.S. to foster interdisciplinary discussions among computer science, engineering, geography, natural resources, physical science, social science and other academic programs engaged in geographic information science investigations and research.

One student will be selected from each UCGIS institution to receive a travel stipend to attend these meetings. Three student papers will be selected for presentation in a concurrent session specially designated for winning UCGIS papers, and as many as twenty additional students will be selected to present their work in a poster session. Those students selected to present papers and posters will also be required to prepare an article for the electronic proceedings that is posted to the UCGIS website (see http://www.ucgis.org/ for additional details). Additional students from each UCGIS institution are of course invited to attend and participate in this conference even if not receiving a travel award.

The deadline for all abstracts, regardless of funding source, is 12:00 midnight PST, 10th August 2004, and the deadline for all papers, regardless of funding source is 12:00 midnight PST, 7th September 2004. No abstracts and papers will be considered for funding if received after these deadlines.

Students from UCGIS members who have already submitted abstracts and/or manuscripts to the GIScience 2004 Conference Program Committee can forward their materials to this new UCGIS competition as well.


Funding Details:

The students selected for paper and poster presentations will receive $800 to help cover their costs of attending the GIScience 2004 conference. Students will be responsible for making their own travel and accommodation arrangements. Those students receiving travel awards will be presented with checks for $800 at the conference itself.

If needed, students are encouraged to apply for additional funds from their home universities. In order to receive the award, the student must attend the GIScience 2004 conference and present a paper or poster and provide a written paper for the UCGIS electronic proceedings.


Special Prizes:

The editors of Cartography and Geographic Information Science (CaGIS) and Transactions in GIS (TGIS) will select two manuscripts for publication in upcoming issues of their journals. The awards will be made for the best pair of single-authored posters or papers presented at the conference. To be eligible for consideration, authors must be either engaged in full or part-time postgraduate research or within 1 year of completion of their research degree. The winning manuscripts will be published in upcoming issues of either Cartography and Geographic Information Science or Transactions in GIS. The CaGIS and TGIS awards include a cash prize of $200 and a complimentary subscription to the journal for one year. The editors of the two journals will select the winning entries.


Abstract Details:

Each student abstract must be reviewed and approved by a faculty member at the student's home university before submission. An email from the faculty member to jpwilson@usc.edu verifying review of the student's abstract is required. Any number of abstracts may be submitted by a UCGIS member institution and reviews may come from any faculty member at the institution.

The submission should take the following form, and the information should be numbered as follows with no other formatting:
1. Full name
2. Name of department and university
3. Mailing address
4. Phone, fax, e mail
5. Title of poster/paper presentation
6. Abstract ? The abstract should be 100 to 250 words and should describe an ongoing or completed research investigation or project. The abstract should include a statement of objectives, methods employed, potential impact of the project on advancing knowledge, science, education, or resource development, and should report any findings to date.

Please send your submission as part of the text of an e mail message (not an attachment) to jpwilson@usc.edu on or before 12:00 midnight PST, 10th August 2004.


Paper Details:

All students who wish to be considered for travel support and who submitted an abstract before the deadline for abstracts must also submit a completed paper for web publication by 12:00 midnight PST, 7th September 2004. All papers received by the deadline will be published on the web. The paper you submit must be the paper you present as a paper or poster presentation at the GIScience 2004 conference.

Your paper will be placed on a password protected web site and assessed by a panel of referees drawn from across the nation. Award notifications will be made on or before 20th September 2004.

Some additional information on what you will need to do to prepare your papers for web publication follows:

1. Copyrights
Authors retain copyright to their individual publications.

2. File Transfers
The final paper should be saved in a PDF file named lastname.pdf where lastname is your last name in lowercase letters. This file should be included as an attachment with an e-mail message sent to jpwilson@usc.edu. Make the subject line of this e-mail "UCGIS Web paper".

3. Organization of Paper
The final papers should follow this order of presentation:
Title of Paper
Author's Name and affiliation (include e-mail address)
Paper Body
Endnotes (to be used very sparingly)
Acknowledgments (if appropriate)
References Cited
Appendices (if appropriate)

4. Text Sizes and Formats
Final manuscripts should not exceed 6,000 words. Use a 12-point variable spacing font such as Garamond (this font). Format pages with one inch margins all around and use left justification (ragged right) only, not full justification.

5. Credit Lines and Sources
Credit lines are required for any illustration that you have not prepared or photographed yourself. A credit should be included parenthetically at the end of a figure's caption.

6. Maximum Image and File Sizes
The final PDF files must not exceed 500 KB and the following limits apply to images included in your papers: (a) 200 dpi color; (b) 300 dpi grayscale; and (c) 300 dpi monochrome.

7. Helpful Hints
You should preview your final PDF document on a computer screen and the accompanying output from a printer for comparison to your original document prior to submission. If you are capturing images from a computer screen, capture at the highest resolution and then use an image editing software to resample before importing these images into your document. Do not rescale the images in your document software (i.e. MS Word, Corel WordPerfect, or FrameMaker) as the resampling will distort or degrade the image. The maximum image sizes listed above are for the final image(s) placed in your papers with your document software. Some additional resampling will be performed by Adobe Acrobat when the PDF file is created.

If you are using a document software such as MS Word or Corel WordPerfect, you should insert hard carriage returns on your pages to insure the PDF document retains the same pagination. In addition, your images should be anchored to text; do not use floating images or floating frames for text.
If using fonts other than:
Courier Helvetica-Bold Time-BoldItalic
Courier-Bold Helvetica-Oblique Times_Italic
Courier-BoldOblique Symbol Times-Roman
Helvetica Time-Bold ZapfDingbats

you should set the PDF document to use "subset embedded fonts". You should be aware, however, that the file size increases with each embedded font.