General Information

The MOBA Master & Doctoral Consortium (MOBA MASDOC) is a workshop for master and doctoral students whose research is related to the MOBA research topics at any stage in their thesis. Its main objective is to help the students with their thesis by giving feedback on their own research work as well as to give some general advice on making the most of their research environment.

MOBA organizers will accompany the MASDOC. At least two reviewers will study each paper and comment on the content of the thesis as well as on the presentations. The students will have 20-30 minutes for their presentations, focusing on its main aspects, current state and main results. Another 15-20 minutes will be reserved for discussion and feedback from both the members of the referee board and the other students.

When submitting a paper for the MOBA MASDOC, you have to think, write and convince people about validity and perspectives of your work from the perspective of Design Science research methodology. In return, you will receive feedback, guidance and support. You will learn about your own work not only from the discussions, but also from other students in action! The best way to learn how to present your work may be from seeing both good and bad examples. So, the MASDOC provides a friendly and supportive forum for such experiences.

Different from other papers, your paper addresses specifically your thesis where you basically must be able to explain the following aspects:

• What particular problem did I front in my work?
• Why is this problem important for stakeholders?
• Why has not this problem been completely solved by existing research?
• What have I done in my thesis?
• Why is my thesis great?

Submission Process

To apply for presentation at the MASDOC, please send direct email with  a paper based on your thesis the following address: pavel_mlzh AT unitus.it . The subject of the email should be the following: MOBA MASDOC22.  The papers will then be distributed among the members of the referee board in order to review them. Submissions must conform to Springer’s LNBIP format and should not exceed 10 pages, including all text, figures, references and appendices. Information about the Springer LNBIP format can be found at Springer LNBIP Web page. In the author section of the paper, the first name and affiliation should be of the student. The supervisor(s) names and affiliations should follow with the respective role (e.g., main supervisor, or co-supervisor) between brackets after the name. 

Your submitted paper should:

• clearly formulate the research question;
• identify the significant problems in the field of research;
• outline the current knowledge of the problem domain, as well as the state of existing solutions, sketch the research methodology that is or will be applied;
• present clearly any preliminary ideas, the proposed approach and the results achieved so far;
• point out the contributions of the applicant to the problem solution;
• state in what aspects the suggested solution is different, new or better as compared to existing approaches to the problem.

Submissions will be judged on originality, significance, correctness, and clarity. No more than 6 papers can be accepted for presentation. The accepted papers will be published on MOBA website.