Student Research Competition

Call for Proposals

Proposals due: Friday, May 6th, 2022

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Special Interest Group on the Design of Communication (SIGDOC) invites you to submit a proposal to this year’s Student Research Competition (SRC). The SRC offers a forum for undergraduate and graduate students to present their original research at a well-known ACM-sponsored conference before a panel of judges and attendees. Participants also have the option of preparing an Extended Abstract to be published in the conference proceedings.

Undergraduate and graduate students are invited to submit proposals of up to 800 words on topics related to the design of communication including, but not limited to:

Content strategy
User experience design and experience architecture
Learning systems and environments
Open source design solutions
Collaborative platforms
Design methods and principles
Digital humanities and design
Project management
Information design and architecture
International and intercultural communication design
Computer-mediated communication
Social impacts of technical communication

Please submit proposals to the SRC coordinator: Dr. Jack Labriola (jlabrio1@kennesaw.edu). Up to 15 undergraduate and 15 graduate students will be selected to enter the SRC that will be held in Boston, MA. Please note that this year’s conference is back in person, and you must be present physically to compete in the SRC. This year’s SRC will include a first round poster session on October 6 and second round presentation October 7.

Students will be responsible for conference registration feeds and are responsible for SIGDOC membership, which begins at $19/year. There are monetary awards for the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd-place winners.

Call for Proposals Flyer [PDF]

Important Dates

To participate in the SRC, please observe the following due dates:

Proposals due: Friday, May 6th, 2022 (with optional statement of eligibility).
Acceptances by May 20th, 2022 (also inform winners of travel scholarship)
Extended Abstracts (optional) due: June ~~17th~~ 26th, 2022.
Reviewer comments back by July 15th
Final version of Extended Abstracts (optional) due: August 12th, 2022

New This Year

Starting July 1, 2022 the SRC is no longer sponsored or funded by Microsoft Research, as it has been in years past. Unfortunately, this means that all participants will no longer be reimbursed for travel expenses to the conference to participate in the SRC.

Thanks to the generosity of donors to SIGDOC, this year we will be able to award four (4) $500 scholarships for travel to the conference for poster presenters. Awards are being offered to encourage scholarship by historically underrepresented groups (this includes Black, Latinx, Asian, American Indian/ Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, or other Pacific Islander scholars as well as individuals with disabilities, regardless of citizenship status).

The SIGDOC Executive Committee considers originality of research, significance of contributions to the field, and potential for larger, subsequent projects when selecting projects.

Interested applicants can submit their poster abstract, along with a brief statement of eligibility noting membership in one of the historically underrepresented groups above and whether you have presented at SIGDOC before.

What is the SRC?

The SRC consists of two rounds of competition at the conference, as well as the possibility to move on to a grand finals competition at a later date.

First Round Competition

The first round of competition is a poster session. This is your opportunity to present your research in the areas specified in the Call for Submissions. Judges will review the posters live and speak to participants about their research; five semi-finalists from each division (undergraduate and graduate) will be chosen to present at the second round of the competition.

Second Round Competition

Semi-finalists continue by giving a short oral presentation of their research before a panel of judges, with supporting slides/visual aids. Evaluations are based on the presenter’s knowledge of their research area, contribution of the research, and the quality of the oral and visual presentation. Three winners will be chosen in each division (undergraduate and graduate) and will receive a medal and $500, $300, and $200, respectively.

The SRC Grand Finals

First-place undergraduate and graduate student winners from the SRC will advance to the SRC Grand Finals. A different panel of judges evaluates SIGDOC winners against winners from other ACM Special Interest Groups online. Three undergraduates and three graduates will be chosen as the SRC Grand Finals winners.

Requirements for Participation

The requirements for participation in the SRC are:

You must be a current ACM student member (rates begin at $19/year, though there are special rates for students in developing countries).
If selected, you must register for the SIGDOC 2022 conference.
You must still be a student at the time of the conference (October 6-8, 2022).
You must apply by submitting a proposal of no more than 800 words on a topic of relevance to the host conference, SIGDOC 2022.
Undergraduates may propose individual or team-based research. Graduate students must propose individual research projects.
For undergraduate teams, one person should be designated by the team to attend the conference and make the oral presentation.
If you propose to the SRC, you cannot propose to the main SIGDOC conference as well; you must choose one or the other.

Frequently Asked Questions

For common questions about the SRC, designing a poster, and what you should expect, see our Frequently Asked Questions page at sigdoc.acm.org/awards/student-research-competition/src-faq/ [external link]. For other questions, you can contact the SRC coordinator, Dr. Jack Labriola (jlabrio1@kennesaw.edu)