Introduction

The General Chair is responsible for organising the paper submission and review system. The delais below relate specifically to Easychair, which has traditioally been used; however, other systems exist that couold be considered.

Time Line

12 months

Configure Easychair to ensure that the email aliases and submission forms are ready priro to the publication of the CFPs for each track.

Preparing Easychair

The easychair licence is typically organised by the General Chair, with the invoice being managed by the Local Chair. Aim for an Executive license for aprox 500 submissions (covering all tracks, but not workshop papers). This will cost in the order of EUR 2000-3000 (as of 2024). You can then ask last year’s General Chair for configuration.

In the superchair configuration, there are settings for what track chairs can and cannot change. It is a good idea to allow the track chairs to define their own settings, but the track chairs should coordinate actions to ensure consistency. This could be done by the General Chair or delegated to the Research Track Chairs (advised).

As some parts of the configuration are only defined by a superchair, it is a good idea to give superchair access to the Research Track Chairs, to mitigate avalability and organisational issues etc. Also, changes to the overall configuration may be requried at crunch times such as submission deadlines or the release of acceptance emails, which is overseen by these chairs.

Once the multi-track instance is up, the General Chair should define the email aliases for the corresponding track chairs. This typically follows the format: iswc20XX-research@easychair.org. Consider setting up a ghost track with the email address iswc20XX-contact@easychair.org that includes the General Chair, Local Chair and any others that can help with general questions about the conference.

The submission forms can only be edited by the superchairs, so be sure to consult with the other track chairs prior to opening up for submissions.

One aspect that will require coordination is the review forms. The superchairs should define a set of review questions at the conference level, where for each track, they can then choose which questions to list, and in which order. As this will require significant coordination across all of the tracks, the superchair should share the respective form with the respective chairs, and to adapt it as necessary. Make good use of the previous year’s review forms and modify only where necessary. Decision options (ACCEPT/Accept/…/Reject/REJECT, etc.) work the same (only configurable at the conference level), but the standard set of options should mostly be fine.

Preparing Date Schedule and CFP guidance

It is important to define a schedule of submission and notification dates for each of the tracks, such that there is coherence for the timetable. Factors to consider include:

Identifying submission dates of related conferences and try to avoid collisions.
Set Poster and Demo dates at least a couple of weeks after full paper notification dates to allow poster submission of rejected papers, or demo submissions to accomany accepted papers.
Consider the planning of capacity. For example, synchronise the dates for the main tracks to allow for presentation capacity planning prior to notification. Likewise, as there will be a finite number of rooms for tutorials and workshops, synchronise those dates to ensure a balanced programme.
Be mindful of the dates by which the publisher (currenty Springer) will need the proceedings for the main volumes, and for dates that may affect the publication of associated volumes (such as CEUR for workshop proceedings, etc.)

Once the dates are set, ask each of the track chairs to prepare the CFPs; it is a good idea to coordinate with the Research Track Chairs to oversee consistency across the calls before publishing - this period requires regular communication to avoid embarasing problems. Once ready, publish on the web site, and instruct the Publicity Chairs to start the advertising campaign. It is a good idea to plan this campaign to target the correct email lists and social media. For more details see the section on publicity.

Simultaneously, instruct the track chairs to invite PCs and SPCs. This requries delicate coordination, as the tracks typically recruit from the same pool of reviewers, and as such may accept one role and then reject another. Consider inviting SPC before sending PC invites. Include the date scehdule with the invitations. Getting these invitations out early as this can help encourage paper submissions.

Ensure that the PC has a chance to edit/update their name, affiliation, and country, and pubish the PC list on the web page.

Invited Speaker and other Sessions

Although most of the technical programme will be decided during the reviewing phase, an overall plan can be defined beforehand. Consider candidate keynote speakers; try to balance industry/academia, core SW/related areas, as well as gender and geography. It is a good idea to share your plans with SWSA before sending out invitations. Try to avoid inviting someone who has already given an ISWC keynote, or a recent ESWC keynote (unless there is a compelling reason to do so). Lists of previous keynote speakers are given in this spreadsheet; pleae update for future years.)

Typically their travel costs of keynote speakers will be covered (economy flights, registration, hotel), though you may want to double-check this with the Local Chairs.

Coordinate with the Panel Chairs to think about topics and panelists. Note however, that that panel speaker costs are not typically covered; so this may be planned once the notification phase is over.

Be aware that the conference has to be financially viable; this involves balancing the costs of the conference with revenue generated from registrations. It is important that the quality of the technical programme is not compromised by “balancing the books”; therefore consider other ways in which registration can be encouraged, as well as novel sponsorship opportunities. That said, discussing predicted numbers of acceptances from all of the tracks when the submission closes and prior to notification is a good idea, to identify or highlight possible financial challenges.

Notes, Tips and useful Resorces

The following spreadsheet lists previous keynote speakers for ISWC and ESWC - please update for future years.