2nd Workshop on E-science ReseaRch leading tO negative Results (ERROR) in conjunction with eScience 2016
Baltimore, Maryland, USA
October 23 or 24, 2016

http://press3.mcs.anl.gov/errorworkshop2016

Researchers invest a significant amount of time and efforts in their
research. Similarly, funders significantly invest to cover the costs
of research. New techniques and technologies influence research
approaches, methods, and scale in a rapidly changing e-science
landscape.

Ever-increasing problem and data sizes mean researchers must deal with
novelty in multiple dimensions, some of which are beyond their
control. A combination of such factors increases the likelihood that
some of the obtained results will not be useful in the context of the
goals of the original project: the results are negative (deviating
from initial hypothesis), abnormal (anomalous to results from similar
studies), or otherwise unexpected. Under normal circumstances, such
negative results are never published, and the reasons that they were
obtained are seldom discussed and analyzed.

Many useful lessons known only by a small audience, such as a
researcher and her group, are thus lost to the general community. Yet
ignoring such results and the process by which they were obtained
poses a risk of repetition by another researcher or group. The fact
that other researchers likely face the same situations and the same
pitfalls further increases the cost of research, a cost that would
have been avoided if the negative results were brought forward and
discussed in-depth within and across communities. Documenting and more
widely communicating these experiences will benefit the community and
help recover some positive return from the expended efforts and cost.

Major topics include (but are not limited to)

* Unforeseen technology/problem/technique misfits
* Institutional policies (on rejected research)
* Failures and obstacles faced during a successful research work
* Controversial results because of undiscovered technological/technical glitch
* Unconventional results which contradict theoretical expectations
* Discovery of better approaches after a significant efforts spent on research
* Inadequate or misconfigured infrastructure
* Abnormal and anomalous results
* Ongoing research with setbacks and lessons learned
* A hypothesis with one or more limiting assumptions
* Discovery of unexpected behavior in hardware, networks or platforms
* Data size that is too big or too small for the applied technique
* Implementation of simulation tools based on incorrect physical observations
* Defect in software design, architecture and/or user interface
* Software and platform incompatibilities
* Zero defect software policy and its implications

Paper Submission Guidelines
---------------------------

Authors are invited to submit a maximum of 6-page manuscripts
describing original and unpublished work surrounding the
aforementioned topics. The format of the paper should be of double
column text using single spaced 10 point size on 8.5 x 11 inch pages,
as per IEEE 8.5 x 11 manuscript guidelines. Templates are available
from:

http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/authors/author_templates.html.

Authors should submit a PDF file that will print on a postscript
printer to the easychair conference system at:

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=error2016

Important Dates
---------------

24 June 2016: Paper submission deadline

1 August 2016: Author notification

1 September 2016: Camera ready version

23 October 2016: Workshop dates

General Chair and Contact
-------------------------

Justin M. Wozniak, University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory
wozniak@mcs.anl.gov

Steering Committee
------------------

Ketan Maheshwari, University of Pittsburgh
Daniel S. Katz, University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory
Silvia Olabarriaga, University of Amsterdam
Douglas Thain, Notre Dame University


Program Committee
-----------------

Raj Kettimuthu, Argonne National Laboratory
Matei Ripeanu, University of British Columbia
Sou-Cheng Choi, NORC at the University of Chicago and Illinois Institute of Technology
Tristan Glatard, CNRS (France) / McGill University (Canada)
Eun Sung Jung, Argonne National Laboratory
Tram Truong Huu, National University of Singapore
Cédric Tedeschi, University of Rennes
Javier Rojas Balderrama, INRIA, France
Timothy G. Armstrong, Cloudera
Dagmar Krefting, University of Applied Sciences, Berlin
Simon Caton, National College of Ireland