Call for Doctoral Consortium
The Doctoral Consortium offers PhD students a unique opportunity to present their ongoing research, receive expert feedback, and build connections with the research community.
Overview
The Doctoral Consortium is a dedicated session of WAILS 2026 designed specifically for PhD students working on topics related to AI and learning sciences. It provides a supportive and constructive environment where doctoral researchers can:
- Present their research to an international audience
- Receive constructive feedback from experienced researchers
- Discuss methodological and theoretical challenges
- Network with peers and senior members of the community
- Gain visibility for their work within the WAILS community
Who Should Apply
The Doctoral Consortium is open to PhD students at any stage of their doctoral research. We particularly encourage students who have a clear research direction but whose work is not yet finalized: the consortium is designed to support ongoing work, not to evaluate completed theses.
Submission Format
Submissions must be written in English and formatted according to the Springer LNCS style. Authors may use the official Overleaf LNCS template and should use the single-column format for submission. General Springer conference proceedings instructions, including both LaTeX and Word templates, are available in the Springer proceedings guidelines.
Doctoral Consortium papers are limited to a maximum of 6 pages (references, figures, tables, proofs, appendixes, acknowledgments, and any other content count toward the page limit). The paper should describe:
- The research problem and motivation
- Related work and positioning
- Proposed approach or methodology
- Progress to date and planned next steps
- Open questions or challenges where feedback is sought
Unlike full and short papers, Doctoral Consortium submissions are not anonymized. The student’s name and affiliation should appear on the paper.
Each submission will be reviewed by the Doctoral Consortium Chairs, with input from senior members of the Program Committee.
Please submit via CMT — select the WAILS 2026 Doctoral Consortium track at submission.
Important Dates
Mentoring
Each accepted doctoral student will be paired with a senior researcher mentor prior to the workshop. The mentor will provide written feedback on the submitted paper and engage in a dedicated one-on-one discussion during the consortium session.
The consortium session itself is structured as a series of short presentations (approximately 10–15 minutes each), followed by an open discussion with the audience and the assigned mentor. The goal is not to evaluate the work, but to help doctoral students refine their research questions, strengthen their methodology, and connect with the broader community.
Publication
Accepted Doctoral Consortium papers will be published in the Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) post-workshop proceedings volume.
Previous WAILS proceedings are available on SpringerLink: WAILS conference series on SpringerLink .
The proceedings volume will be submitted for indexing in DBLP, Google Scholar, and Scopus.
Code of Conduct and Publishing Ethics
Author conduct
Authors are expected to follow Springer Nature’s standards for research integrity, originality, appropriate authorship, and professional conduct throughout submission and publication.
- Submissions must be original and must not contain plagiarism.
- Fabrication, falsification, and inappropriate data manipulation are not acceptable.
- Authorship must accurately reflect substantial scholarly contribution.
- All co-authors must approve the submitted version and agree to its submission.
Official policy
Please review the official Springer Nature policy page before submission:
Springer Nature Book Authors’ Code of Conduct
By submitting to WAILS 2026, authors acknowledge that accepted contributions intended for proceedings publication must comply with the relevant Springer Nature ethical and publishing standards.
Acknowledgements
The Microsoft CMT service was used for managing the peer-reviewing process for this conference. This service was provided for free by Microsoft and they bore all expenses, including costs for Azure cloud services as well as for software development and support.