Details: Part A: Metadata

The following provides a detailed description of each part of the proposal metadata.

A sample template of the DOSA form is available here.

A.1 – Organizers

• An application is submitted jointly by two to a maximum of four scientists from different institutions. If two of the applicants have the same affiliation, we ask for a valid scientific justification for this deviation from the above rule.
• An appropriate composition of the organizing team is very important for ensuring the success of the seminar and participation of a diverse audience (particularly regarding topic, experience, gender, and geographic distribution). Please note that, in our experience, the organizing team and their standing in the research community targeted by the seminar is often a decisive factor in the invitees' decision whether to attend.
• For the organizers, there are no restrictions on their origin, place of work, or nationality. The international orientation of Schloss Dagstuhl should also be reflected in the organizing team. For instance, as a rule of thumb, at least two of the following three geographical regions should be represented: Europe, America, Asia and the rest of the world. It is advisable that submissions on topics that are strongly represented in a region should also have an organizer from that region.
• Schloss Dagstuhl strives to improve gender balance at its seminars, with the goal of encouraging diversity in the field as a whole, and particularly welcomes and encourages gender diversity in the organizing team.
• It is NOT required to have an organizer with a German affiliation.
• Applicants from industry are welcome.
• If a seminar constitutes a follow-up of a previous seminar, there must be at least one new organizer included without exceeding the maximal number of 4 organizers. The goal is to retain the dynamic nature of seminars and to attract new communities and topics.

A.2 – Seminar Title

Although the title should be short and concise, it should also clearly describe the thematic orientation of the seminar. Please omit phrases such as "Proposal for a Dagstuhl Seminar on" or similar. Please capitalize the title as in the following example: "The Great Unifying Theory of Informatics". Please restrict yourself to use at most 80 characters in the title.

A.3 – Type of the Seminar

• Please indicate here whether you are applying for a Dagstuhl Seminar or a Dagstuhl Perspectives Workshop.
• Please avoid speaking of a "workshop" in an application for a Dagstuhl Seminar and of a "seminar" in an application for a Dagstuhl Perspectives Workshop.

A.4 – Size and Duration of the Seminar

∎ Dagstuhl Seminars:

Schloss Dagstuhl offers 4 seminar formats, which are determined by combining the size and duration of the seminar.

There are two choices in terms of seminar size:

• Small seminars with approximately 28 participants (nominally 30 participants)
• Large seminars with approximately 42 participants (nominally 45 participants)

While the Scientific Directorate approves the size of your seminar, the exact maximum number of participants Dagstuhl ultimately determines for your seminar may vary, depending on the booking situation.

There are two choices in terms of seminar duration:

• Short seminars: 3 days (arrival on Sunday afternoon, start on Monday morning, departure on Wednesday afternoon)
• Long seminars: 5 days (arrival on Sunday afternoon, start on Monday morning, departure on Friday afternoon)

In exceptional cases a 5-day seminar may have to be shortened to 4 days (with arrival on Monday or departure on Thursday). Similarly, in some cases, arrival and departure of a 3-day seminar may have to be moved to Monday and Thursday, respectively.

You should choose the format according to content and community. Smaller seminars are suitable for specialized topics and a high level of interaction between the participants. Short seminars are also suitable for very specialized topics or communities that are hard-pressed for time. Please note that it can be difficult to convince industry participants to attend for a whole week. 3-day seminars with 45 participants are not very common due to possible issues with group dynamics.

In general, small seminars have shorter waiting times (9-15 months) than large ones (15-21 months).

∎ Dagstuhl Perspectives Workshops: 

Dagstuhl Perspectives Workshops are conducted with 25 to 30 participants over a period of three to five days. We recommend 5 days to allow sufficient time for working toward creating a manifesto. It is ideal to start writing the manifesto towards the end of the workshop.

A.5 – Classification

Please classify the application into at least one and at most three categories from the list of subject classes provided at arxiv.org. This is helpful for setting up the review process.

A.6 – Keywords

In addition please provide one to five freely chosen keywords or short phrases.

A.7 – Predecessor Seminar (if applicable)

If the proposal is intended as a successor to a previous seminar, please provide the seminar number associated to that seminar. Successor seminars share, in general, at least one organizer with its predecessor seminar.

A.8 – Resubmission (if applicable)

If your proposal is based on an unsuccessful previous proposal, please provide the proposal number of that proposal.

A.9 – Abstract

• Please provide a short (up to 250 words) abstract of the proposed seminar. The abstract needs to be written in a way that is clear, easy-to-read, and understandable also for people in the informatics community who are working outside the intended research topic of the seminar. Again, this is helpful for setting up the review process.
• Please give your consent that if your application is accepted, this text may be published under the CC BY license.
• For this, please also provide the authors of the abstract. Authors are generally all or sometimes only a subset of the proposal applicants.

Details: Part C: Invitee List

Each proposal must be accompanied by a list of tentative invitees.

• For small Dagstuhl Seminars, as well as for the Dagstuhl Perspectives Workshops, with about 30 participants: 40 invitees for the first round
• For large Dagstuhl Seminars with about 45 participants: 60 invitees for the first round

The organizers are to be listed and counted in the invitee list. The initial overbooking is due to the observation that, on average, about 50% of the invited guests accept the invitation. Organizers may additionally provide an optional second round of invitations:

• up to 20 people to invite for small seminars
• up to 30 people to invite for large seminars

Please note the following criteria when compiling the invitation list:

• International and institutional balance and diversity; in general, no more than 3 scientists from the same place or research group should participate in the same seminar.
• Balance between experts on the different facets of the proposal
• Consideration of all groups working in a subject area
• A balance between theory and practice and inviting industry representatives (if appropriate for the topic)
• For Dagstuhl Seminars, a mixture of proven experts (approx. 75%) and talented junior researchers (approx. 25%) is preferred. As a rule of thumb, researchers not yet having completed their Ph.D. or within 5 years after having completed their Ph.D. are treated as junior researchers. Dagstuhl Perspectives Workshop invitee lists usually only contain senior researchers.
• Schloss Dagstuhl strives to improve diversity and balance with regards to the gender of the participants. We are convinced that such diversity is very desirable. Moreover, our funders deem it important. Therefore, we strongly encourage organizers to make an effort in ensuring adequate gender balance in the invitee list.

The participation of researchers with disabilities is welcome. Schloss Dagstuhl provides accessible facilities, and barrier-free rooms are available upon request.

Proposals from and/or involving participants from under-represented groups are welcome.

The list of participants should contain the following information for each person:

• last name and first name,
• affiliation (institution / company), country of affiliation,
• email address, homepage (if available),
• tagging of junior researchers, women scientists, and industry participants,
• scientific field of work (in relation to the seminar topic).

Details: Part C: Invitee List – Form

The first line of the CSV-file shows the titles of all columns in your list. The titles and their sequence are ordered as follows:

Last Name, First Name, Affiliation, Country, Email, Junior, Female, Industrial, Homepage, Topic, Round
 

These column headings correspond to the following content for each invitee:

1. Last name: last name
2. First name: first name
3. Affiliation: institutional affiliation (note: if it is not included in the institution's name, please state also the city where the institution is located).
4. Country: a single ISO-3166 ALPHA-2 code of the country of the (primary) affiliation.
5. Email: email address
6. Junior: an "x" or a "yes" should appear in this column only if the invitee is a junior scientist.
7. Female: an "x" or a "yes" should appear in this column if the invitee is female.
8. Industrial: an "x" or a "yes" should appear in this column only if the invitee's listed affiliation is industrial.
9. Homepage: homepage URL (if available)
10. Topic: A list of seminar-relevant research topics covered by the invitee.
    • Preferably, use only a few categories in total.
    • Names of categories should be self-explanatory (e.g., "Logics" instead of "Topic 1"), no precise definition is needed. If you feel the need to give a definition or want to explicity link a category to one of the seminar's (sub-)topics, do so in the proposal text.
    • Easy to understand abreviations (e.g., AI, ML, HCI) are okay.
    This column is meant to help reviewers evaluate how the proposed invitee list matches the seminar's (sub-)topics.
11. Round: A "1" for people to be invited in the first round of invitations and the organizers, a "2" or "3" for people who may be invited in further rounds. You can find more information about invitation process and invitations rounds here. Please note the following:
    • For large seminars up to 45 participants, please list 60 names including those of the organizers in round 1, and for small seminars up to 30 participants list 40 participants including those of the organizers.
    • The invitees who may be invited in further invitation rounds may consist of up to 30 participants for large seminars and up to 20 participants for small seminars. Please mark them with "2" in the column "Round".
    • If you want to specify even more names, list them with a "3" in the column "Round".

We strongly encourage you to use a spreadsheet program for generating this file. If there are problems to load the example file we provide it here for Excel, Numbers, and OpenOffice. If necessary or possible, please choose UTF-8 as the character set, a semicolon (;) as the separator, and double quotes (") as the escape character. Please upload only csv-files (no other file formats such as xls or pdf, please).

Details: Part E: Seminar Dates

• Please specify your block-out dates to avoid collision with other conferences and other commitments of the organizers. In general, we will take these dates into account.
• Periods in which the seminar should preferably take place can be specified. Due to the numerous constraints regarding seminar dates, we cannot guarantee that the seminar will actually take place on such a preferred date.
• Possible seminar dates for small seminars are generally between 9 and 15 months after the submission deadline and for large seminars between 15 and 21 months after the submission deadline. You can find the current data on the Homepage of our Application Tool DOSA.