2020-08-16: Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL) 2020 Doctoral Consortium Trip Report

ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL 2020) Doctoral Consortium is a workshop for Ph.D. students from all over the world who are in the early phases of their dissertation work. The goal of this workshop is to help students with their thesis and research plans by providing feedback and general advice in a constructive atmosphere. Here, students present and discuss their research in a supportive atmosphere, with other doctoral students and an international panel of established researchers.

The JCDL 2020 Doctoral Consortium took place in two virtual sessions. The first session took place on July 31, from 10.30 PM - 12.00 AM (UTC-4). The second session took place on August 1, from 1:30 AM - 3:00 AM (UTC-4).

Session 1

The first session took place with Dr. Xiaozhong Liu from Indiana University, USA, Dr. Wei Lu from Wuhan University, China, and Dr. Jian Qin from Syracuse University, USA as the primary mentors, and Dr. Stephen Downie from University of Illinois, USA, Dr. Atsuyuki Morishima from University of Tsukuba, Japan, Dr. Michael Nelson from Old Dominion University, USA, and Dr. Edie Rasmussen from University of British Columbia, Canada as the backup mentors. Three doctoral students, including myself, presented in this session.

Qiao Li

The first presentation, titled "Understanding the Adoption of Dataset Retrieval Innovation in Research", was delivered by Qiao Li of Wuhan University, China  In her research, Li explores the cognitive processes foundational to adopt novel dataset retrieval tools. She proposes a model that describes cognitive factors related to the adoption of such tools. In her model, she uses meta-analysis to identify such relationships. She has conducted exploratory and experimental studies in this regard, and plan to analyze survey data using structural equation modeling to demonstrate the relationships between cognition and adoption. Overall, her goal is to uncover cognitive mechanisms underlying adoption intention, and by doing so, support user-driven design of dataset retrieval.

Khin Mar Shwe

The second presentation, titled "The Impact of Academic Social Networking Sites on Researchers’ Performances among Myanmar Universities", was delivered by Khin Mar Shwe of Wuhan University, China. Her research is based on Academic Social Networking (ASN) sites used in Myanmar, Thailand. Here, Kin Mar Shwe plans to investigate the demographics of academic researchers using ASN sites in Myanmar, and identify why they use ASN sites, what they look for in ASN sites, how often they use ASN sites, and the impact of using ASN sites on research productivity.

Yasith Jayawardana

The third and final presentation for this session was delivered by me (Yasith Jayawardana of Old Dominion University, USA). In this presentation, titled "Towards a Consistent Metadata Format for Data Analysis", I first discussed the motivation behind my research, i.e., the lack of an extensible metadata standard for data streams that generalizes across several domains. Here, I elaborated on the FAIR Guiding Principles, which were foundational to establish metadata standards for datasets. I discussed how these principles are applied to bring clarity to dataset descriptions, but not quite so for sensory data streams. My research explores how such principles can be applied to establish metadata standards for data streams, its impact on data-stream generation, data-stream analysis, and analytics reuse, and to what extent can data analysis workflows be automated using such a standard.

Session 2

The second session took place with Dr. Wei Lu of Wuhan University, China, and Dr. Edie Rasmussen of University of British Columbia, Canada as the primary mentors, and Dr. Milena Dobreva of UCL Qatar, Qatar, Dr. Xiaozhong Liu of Indiana University, USA, and Dr. Jian Qin of Syracuse University, USA as backup mentors. Four doctoral students presented in this session.

Kachollom Chollom

The first presentation, titled "An Ethnographic Study of the Utilization of Electronic Library Databases by Academic Staff in North-Central Nigeria", was delivered by Kachollom Chollom of University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. This study has stemmed from her personal experience as an Academic Subject Librarian (ASL), as well as context-specific issues in the existing literature. She has applied techniques of observation, photo-voice, semi-structured interviews, Day Reconstruction Method (DRM) and focus group discussion to collect ethnographic data for this study. She envisions that her study would improve practices and policies, influence the academic environment, and expand the literature on how e-library databases are utilized in developing countries.

Malte Ostendorff

The second presentation, titled "Contextual Document Similarity for Content-based Literature Recommender Systems", was delivered by Malte Ostendorff of University of Konstanz, Germany. He highlights an interesting problem in current document similarity measures, which in addition to identifying similar and dissimilar documents, does not distinguish the contexts that relate similar documents together. Thus, he aims to develop and evaluate a recommender system that takes contextual similarity into account. 

Samuel Oladunjoye Odeyemi

The third presentation, titled "Evaluation of Digital Libraries for Innovation-driven Research in Six Selected Southwest Nigerian Universities", was delivered by Samuel Oladunjoye Odeyemi of University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. He highlights that only a handful of Nigerian universities are ranked among the top universities in the world, and attributes this to the lack of research, citation, international outlook, knowledge transfer of these universities. He proposes to build a framework to enhance the effectiveness of accessing Digital Libraries (DLs) in Nigeria, which, in turn, would boost innovation-driven research in Nigerian universities and hence their rankings.

Alexander Schoenhals

The fourth and final presentation, titled "Provide Computer-aided Innovation by Intellectual Property Protection Using Distributed Ledger Technology", was delivered by Alexander Schoenhals of University of Konstanz, Germany. In his research, Alexander leverages the immutability of Blockchain Distributed Ledgers to protect developed ideas and early concepts, even during their systematical development, which guarantees that a certain concept can be evaluated for existence, and be traced back to its origin. Having such technology could guarantee the protection of Intellectual Property.

I would like to thank all mentors and participants for providing valuable insights and guidance throughout this event. Receiving such feedback, especially during the phase of refining my research topic, was invaluable, and I hope to apply what I learned to sharpen the focus of my research, and overall, to make an impactful contribution to the world.

–– Yasith Jayawardana (@yasithmilinda)