Conference Organizers Workshop-2015

Developing and Executing a High Quality Conference Technical Program Amit Kumar, IEEE India Council & IEE Hyderabad Section

25-April 2015

© IEEE 2014 All rights reserved

Overview

! What is the Technical Program? ! Why Peer Review?

! What Steps are involved?

! Getting ready

! Defining the approach

! How to review ! Acceptance, rejection, and notification

! Ongoing challenges

! Non-technical Quality Criteria

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What is the Technical Program? ! The portion of the conference that contains the presentation

and discussion of research, generally in the form of: –  Oral presentations –  Poster sessions –  Workshops and tutorials

! Technical papers published as the proceedings of the event and often included in a digital repository, such as IEEE Xplore –  Peer-review is required for publication in Xplore

! Subject matter falls within the technical scope of the conference

! Often sub-divided into tracks and sessions based on topical areas

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Why Peer Review? ! Determine suitability of material for

conference ! Determine quality of suitable material ! Provide a filter to identify plagiarism ! Build the reputation of the conference ! Organize material into groupings to target

interests of the attendees ! Find people to chair sessions

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What’s Involved in Developing the Technical Program

! Mapping out the overall program flow and content –  Tracks and sessions –  Allocating schedule time –  Assigning space to meet anticipated interest

! Structuring technical program development/peer review –  Call for papers –  Identifying and organizing reviewers –  Establishing review guidelines –  Managing paper submissions, reviews and final program

development ! Building the program

–  Proceedings development –  Publication planning –  Event program

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Preparation for Technical Program Development ! Size the program

–  Target number of papers to match available presentation time and poster session(s)

–  Target submission levels and expected acceptance rate –  Review approach and reviewer requirements

! Determine if the Non-Presented Paper policy will be used and

communicate it during the Call for Papers

! Identify tools to manage paper submission and review

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Defining the Review Approach ! Review model

–  # of reviews/paper, # of papers per reviewer §  We suggest a minimum of 2 reviews per paper (3 is better!), and a

maximum of 10 to 12 papers per reviewer –  Abstract or extended abstract vs. full papers (or two-step approach)

§  We recommend a deep-dive review of the extended abstract, followed by a later, shorter review of the full paper

–  Open, blind, and double-blind review §  We recommend single-blind review

! Submission requirements for authors

–  Should meet IEEE standards for references –  Best if use IEEE conference article template –  Best if done electronically with communication trail with author(s) –  There should be one corresponding author/paper

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Free IEEE conference article template (available in MS Word and LaTeX)

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How to Review

! First: suitability – determine whether paper is in the conference area of interest and meets any guidelines for length, format, etc. – Often done by the TPC Chair, sometimes

with small committee ! Second: quality and originality of the

research – Member of TPC takes lead of an area and is

assigned a group of papers §  TPC consists of subject matter experts

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How to Review (continued) In addition to judging the technical elements of each paper, be sure to consider these criteria:

Content Scope and Written Quality Issues:

–  Papers that are poorly written in terms of technical English

–  Papers outside the stated subject matter scope of the conference

–  Papers outside IEEE’s core fields of interest: engineering, technology, and closely-related areas

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IEEE Conference Proceedings Scope Criteria

! Refining our working definition of acceptable scope for IEEE conference proceedings

http://www.ieee.org/conferences_events/conferences/publishing/paper_acceptance_criteria.pdf

–  Each article or paper in a conference proceedings is required to be within the IEEE stated fields of interest (acknowledging that we’re not just about EE).

–  Articles or papers on topics such as tourism, philosophy, art, politics, economics, pure finance, etc., that do not make use of or interact with IEEE’s primary subject areas in a non-trivial manner, are considered to be outside of the scope of IEEE

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How to Review (continued)

! Third: assign - to one of the major subject areas of the conference – Often associated with an individual or group

on the Technical Program Committee – Papers are reviewed

§  Review guidelines are critical §  Comments from reviewers must be useful in

judging paper

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Preparing for the Final Selection ! Last step: acceptance and notification ! Spend time in the TPC meeting discussing the “Maybe

Accepts” –  Try to understand the reviewers’ concerns (does the

paper have fatal flaws?) –  Look at whether the paper would make a nice

contribution to a session – help round out a session –  How many papers are needed

§  If too many papers have been submitted for the number of available slots, some “Maybe” papers will be rejected

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Notifying Authors of Decision

! You can require that authors make certain changes to papers before they are acceptable

! Communicate to authors the results of the review

process and any next steps: – Requirements for presentation at the conference – Final paper submission dates – Final paper formatting

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Ongoing Challenges in Peer Review

! Every conference faces these two challenges: –  Getting enough high quality papers by the

submission deadline –  Finding enough experts to complete their reviews

by the deadline

! Building up conference quality and reputation will help with both of these

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Good conferences attract good papers and good reviewers

Thank you!

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