Multi-Criteria Decision Support System for Recommendation of PhD Supervisor

Abstract

A decision support system (DSS) is a computerized system used to discover determinations, judgments, and courses of action within a business or an organization. In every arena of life, DSS play an important role. In higher education, DSSs are recognized for diverse reasons, for example to conjugate data and intelligence, to pull off the unrivaled and likely interpretations, and to fine-tune decisions under hesitancy. The PhD supervisorselection is itself a very difficult and mind tickling task which makes the student very nervous and sometime make him desperate because he is unable to make the right decision. This work will facilitate the scholars to get proper guidance to make it successful. For the selection of particular supervisor there are some set of criterions which a supervisor should also follow while selecting a particular scholar. Though, the lack of information about the supervisor can hamper scholars in making the selection of the supervisor. Correspondingly, the identification of thought-provoking criteria might be stimulating for potential scholars due to their level of immaturity. Therefore, a system is required which can facilitate scholars in selecting the research work advisors in accordance with the research topic based on multi-criteria like relevancy of the supervisor’s research area of interest and the relevance of the publications. In this research effort, a user-friendly conceptual DSS framework has been suggested to recommend the Ph.D. supervisor to scholars in academics. A multi-criteria DSS framework has been proposed for the facilitation of the scholars while selecting their Ph.D. supervisor. This recommendation is based on several criteria of selecting potential supervisor including the area of research interest along with the publications i.e., in journals and conferences in addition to number of Ph.Ds. produced so far. Finally, the publications of the Ph.D. produced so far and the research projects involved. Preliminary results of the proposed work has been discussed along with the future directions.