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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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