Examples for the Configuration of the Submission and Reviewing Functions

Submission Configuration: First Example – Medium-Sized Natural Sciences Conference 

In the first example, the organizers expect about 200 full paper submissions, of which around 60 will be accepted and presented at the conference (oral presentations). The conference will be held on two days with a total of 5 session slots and each session slot having 4 simultaneous sessions, with about three presentations per session. There will be about 100 further poster presentations, which will be held in two poster sessions in the afternoon starting with the coffee break. All presented full papers will be made available in the conference proceedings. All submissions will be categorized by topics.

This being the goal of the conference, let us take a look at the setup of the reviewing process. The full papers will be peer reviewed by around 80 reviewers. Reviewers first select their priority topics and bid for submissions (optional), then the organizers assign reviewers to submissions. During the peer-review phase the reviewers enter their evaluations into the online review form. 

The program committee members discuss these review results in an online forum and give further recommendations via this tool to the conference chair. The conference chair makes the final decision about acceptance based on the review results and the recommendations from the discussions in the online forum. Authors of fully accepted papers will be able to upload a final, camera-ready copy which will be printed in the proceedings. Full papers can be recommended to be re-submitted as posters.

The submission type "Poster" has a slightly different set-up. The deadlines for submission extend beyond the reviewing phase of the full papers, as authors of full papers, whose submissions did not get accepted as papers, shall still be able to re-submit a poster proposal. Furthermore, there is no peer-review process for posters, the chairs of the conference decide directly about acceptance (See Image 1). 

Outline Data:

Topics: About two dozen topics that allow authors to classify their papers and reviewers to choose their areas of expertise. (See Image 4)

Submission types / tracks: Define two different submission types: "Full Paper" and "Poster"; no special tracks. (See Image 2) 

Settings for "Full Papers" (See Image 3): One anonymized PDF file for the first upload and review process (See Image 5). Final Version: PDF and source file (.doc, .docx or .tex) for camera-ready upload (See Image 6), enable peer-review, bidding for contributions and the online forum. Setting for "Poster": one upload only, PDF; disable peer-review, bidding for contributions and the online forum.

Posters have a later deadline than “Full Papers” to allow authors with rejected papers to submit their work as poster proposal.

Phases: Submission of abstract and upload of first version of full paper or poster, review process by reviewers appointed by the committee, final decision by committee based on reviews, decision about acceptance and results of reviews are made available to the authors, authors of accepted contributions upload their final, camera-ready copies (see image 6), authors of contributions which were accepted as posters do not have to upload any further documents.

Committee: The program committee consists of one Conference Chair who decides about acceptance, 10 more PC members who help with the review process and discuss with the chair about acceptance in the PC meeting and 40 reviewers for the peer-review process.

Acceptance Status: Rejected, Accepted as Paper, Accepted as Poster.

Submission Configuration: Second Example - Medical Symposium

In the second example, the organizers plan a medical symposium. As these tend to be more educative in nature and the focus is on the poster sessions and oral presentations and subsequent discussions of the new findings and the research done, the ensuing setup of the conference will follow an approach that fits the needs of medical conference organizers.

For this symposium, held in the course of two days, about 60 submissions for oral presentations and around 30 poster presentations are expected and the number of participants is envisaged to be around 300. There will be industry sessions in the morning and oral presentations in the afternoon of the first day, the second day will consist of more oral presentations, interspersed with a poster session slot.

The sessions are organized into six different submission types / tracks: four tracks with oral presentations "Education", "Patient Empowerment", "Basic Research", "Therapy Planning", a special industry session track "Industrial Presentations" and one poster track "Poster Presentations". All chair members are in charge of the supervision of the submission process. The submission types / tracks are not further divided into topics.

The submissions are made in one step only in which the authors enter the anonymized abstract of their idea. The submissions will be presented either in oral sessions or in poster sessions, depending on the submission type / track chosen by the author.

The program committee is made up of several chair members with equal rights. The submissions are not peer-reviewed - the ideas are rated by the chairs immediately without reviews and the results are made available to the authors. There will be no camera-ready copies for the oral sessions, as the abstracts will directly be printed in the proceedings. Posters in A0 format will have to be uploaded for reference purposes for the poster track but will not be printed in the proceedings.

Outline Data:

Topics: Not required - included in the submission type / track specifications.

Submission type / track: Four oral presentation tracks "Education", "Patient Empowerment", "Basic Research", "Therapy Planning", a special "Industry Track" and one poster track "Poster Presentations".

• Settings for oral presentation tracks and industry track: Abstract only, max. 800 words, no uploads, no topics, no keywords. Disable "Bid for Contributions", "Enter and Edit Reviews" and "Online Forum for the Program Committee".
• Settings for poster track: Abstract only, max. 600 words, final camera-ready upload: one file, PDF, no topics, no keywords. Disable "Bid for Contributions", "Enter and Edit Reviews" and "Online Forum for the Program Committee".

Phases: Submission of abstracts, no reviewing phase as decision about acceptance is made immediately by chairs, results are made available to the authors; poster track: upload of camera-ready copies of posters.

Committee: One committee for all six submission types / tracks consisting of several chair members with equal rights. They decide directly about acceptance as oral or poster.

Acceptance Status: Rejected, Oral Presentation Accepted, Poster Presentation Accepted

If you plan your conference with more submissions in many different submission types / tracks, it might be beneficial to install the track-chair module of ConfTool Pro and create track-chairs who only have access to the submissions of their own track and thus are only responsible for the shortened review process and setting the acceptance status for their own track. In this way, you can divide the committee into several sub-committees