Graduate Student Papers Competition Winners

 

Call for Papers:  Graduate Student Presentations (printer friendly)

 

Overview:

The University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS) is a non‑profit organization of over seventy universities and other research institutions dedicated to expanding and strengthening geographic information science. The organization will hold its Summer Assembly from June 22 – 23, 2009 at Bishop’s Lodge in Sante Fe, New Mexico.

Graduate students from UCGIS member institutions are invited to submit a full paper of approximately 5000 words  to be considered for presentation at the 2009 Summer Assembly. Our goal is to attract high quality papers and 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. Up to four paper submissions will be accepted and each awarded an $800 travel grant to attend the Summer Assembly. Two of the four papers will be chosen for publication awards, by Transactions in GIS and Cartography and Geographic Information Science, respectively, with each award consisting of $200 and the fast-tracking of the paper into the peer-reviewed process for publication in the journal. The journal reserves the right to recommend that no publication award be given in a particular year.

Paper Submission:

The deadline for submission of full papers to be considered is 12:00 midnight EST, May 8, 2009. Please send an email with full paper submission as an attachment to Prof. Jeremy Mennis (jmennis@temple.edu). Each paper MUST be reviewed and approved by a faculty member at the student's home university before submission. An email from the faculty member to jmennis@temple.edu verifying review of the student's paper is required. Any number of full papers may be submitted by a UCGIS member institution and a review email may come from any faculty member at the institution. Submissions will be assessed by a panel of referees drawn from across the UCGIS member institutions.  Award notifications will be made on or before May 18, 2009.

Students will present their papers in a session specially designated for UCGIS student papers. No more than one student will be selected from any UCGIS institution to receive a travel stipend to attend the meeting. If you have received a UCGIS student paper award in the past, you are still eligible to submit again, but the paper must be on a completely new research topic. Student papers will be posted to the UCGIS website at http://www.ucgis.org/) for review by all members by the start of the UCGIS Summer Assembly.

UCGIS Travel Award:

The students selected for paper presentations will receive $800 to help cover their costs of attending the 2008 Summer Assembly. 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 meeting.
If needed, students are encouraged to apply for additional funds from their home universities. In order to receive the award, the student must provide a written paper for the UCGIS electronic proceedings and present the paper at the 2009 Summer Assembly.

Publication Awards:

The editors of Transactions in GIS and Cartography and Geographic Information Science will select two manuscripts for publication consideration in upcoming issues of the journals. The awards will be made for the two best papers presented at the conference. To be eligible for the publication award, the paper must not have been previously published nor should it be under consideration for publication.  Authors must also be either engaged in full or part-time postgraduate research or within one year of completion of their research degree (assuming the scholar does not have faculty appointment). The editors will approve the selection of the winner. Again, the editors may choose to recommend that no publication award be given in a particular year.

Full Paper Details:

The paper you submit must be the paper you present at the 2009 Summer Assembly.  Information on what you will need to do to prepare your full papers for web publication is as follows.

  1. Copyrights
    Authors retain copyright to their individual publications when submitted to UCGIS.  However, winners of special prizes for publication in CAGIS or TGIS will be required to fulfill copyright release for the respective journal as appropriate.
  2.  File Transfers
    The full 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 jmennis@temple.edu. Make the subject line of this e-mail "UCGIS Student Paper".
  3. Organization of Full Paper
    The full paper should follow this order of presentation:
    • Title of Paper
    • Author's Name, and affiliation to include: Name of department and university, Mailing address,Phone, fax, e‑mail
    • Abstract: should be 150 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.
    • Paper Body (any format from TGIS, CaGIS, or the International Journal of Geographical Information Science)
    • Endnotes (to be used very sparingly)
    • Acknowledgments (if appropriate)
    • References Cited
    • Appendices (if appropriate)
  4. Text Sizes and Formats
    Full paper manuscripts should not exceed 5,000 words. Use a 12-point variable spacing font such as Garamond or Times Roman. 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 2 Mb 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 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.