Introduction

The track chairs are primarily responsible for the Submission, Review and Notification phase, with the Research Track Chairs overseeing the whole process. However, it is a good idea to monitor this and ensure the process is “on track” in a timely manner. It is also important to ensure that the publicity chairs advertise regularly and to a diverse an audience as possible, to maximise submission numbers.

Throughout the review process, coordinate with the Research Track Chairs to assess submission numbers, targets for acceptance rates (these can affect the overall conference rating) and inclusion criteria (important if soliciting in related areas, such as the inclusion of “Semantic Web Agents” in ISWC 2025) to maintain awareness of possible numbers and the financial implications.

Notification and Registration

When sending out notifications for the main tracks (Research / Resources / In-Use), be sure to encourage the chairs to advertise upcoming submission opportunities at the conference, such as Poster and Demo, late breaking results, and Workshop submissions. Ths should allow revised submission of (otherwise rejected) papers, or demo submissions to accomany those papers that are accepted. Details of submission opportunities can be included in the notification emails.

Be mindful that some Universities may restrict funding to students/academics that have a paper in the main tracks. Therefore, submissions of the later tracks (e.g. Poster and Demo) may be affected by the results of the notifications and the attendees availabiility of funding.

During the notification phase, finalise the details for the registration and publish this at the same time as releasing the notifications; this is normally done through coordination with the Local Chairs. Use the predicted number of papers to estimate attendees, sponsorship, and budget to review the registration prices accordingly. Coordinate with the Student Grants Chairs to ensure that details regarding student grants are also published. Ensure that sufficient detail regarding registration to allow attendees to budget their trip when notifications are released.

In addition to the registration process, ensure that details of travel advice and hotel suggestions for attendees are given on the website. Also ensure there is a process to generate invitation letters for visas, as many attendees will require them; ideally, these are automatically generated upon registering.

Venue Planning

Coordinate with the Local Chairs to check the status of planning with the venue. This can include issues such as:

  • room pricing and discounts;
  • planning rooms for workshops/tutorials;
  • planning the space for the poster & demo session;
  • what goes on the registration badges;
  • the organisation of student volunteers;
  • reception planning (including catering and drinks);
  • the gala event (alcohol and dancing are expected insofar as possible!);
  • the timing of coffee breaks and lunches (where relevant);
  • how presenters will connect/show slides;
  • how many microphones there will be (for large sessions, four per room is good: one for the speaker, one for the chair, one for for current question, one for next question, but the chair can also manage without one);
  • dietary requirements, including vegetarian/vegan food (make sure there’s enough as carnivores eat that food too!)
  • etc.

Finalise which members of the Organising Committee will be attending, and determine what support (such as complementary registrations) can be provided, where necessary.

During this time, you may also be contacted by Videolectures (which SWSA tends to prefer) regarding recordings, flights, etc., which should have been factored into the budget by the Local Chairs. This may require negotiation in terms of number of days, the number of parallel sessions to record, number of personel, etc, which will be affected by the finalised programme. Aim to record at least Main Track presentations, Keynotes and Panel.

Preparing the Proceedings

Before the Notification phase, agree on a schedule of activities for preparing the proceedings with the Proceedings & Metadata Chairs. This should be based on the deadline when the proceedings will have to be ready (currently these are published by Springer, whose dates are quite strict). Other content will be required, including the Preface, which is authored by the General Chair (delegate the summaries of each track to the relevant track chairs). The preface should include:

  • submission and acceptance rates for the different tracks;
  • information about sponsors;
  • a liist of main track PCs (ensure that the name/affiliation data is correct);
  • an entry for each Keynote, including title, author and abstract.

Also ensure that the details for the final Camera Ready Version of the accepted papers is ready to share when the notifications are released. These details can accompany the notifications or be sent out independently by the Proceedings & Metadata Chairs, but ensure that these are sent in a timely manner, and turnaround can be tight. Do not underestimate the work involved in preparing the proceedings; it is important that things are scheduled in a timely manner, to ensure that the proceedings are ready and than preprints of papers are available.

Note that SWSA has an agreement with Springer whereby (1) preprints of papers can be published on the conference website; (2) the official proceedings papers are available for up to two weeks after the conference.

To be revised…

  • A couple of weeks after notifications (when the Main Track chairs have had a bit of time to breathe) is a good time to start to think about the overall schedule, which you will need to coordinate. This includes all five days. This requires a lot of coordination between Local Chairs and Track Chairs, so better to start early. Also attendees will ask you for this to plan their travel, so try to advance with this as soon as you can. From the Local Chairs, you’ll need to check constraints for rooms, coffee breaks, lunches, P\&D session, gala, etc. Then you need to work with the DC/W\&T Chairs and Local Chairs to figure out room assignments for the first two days. Then figure out keynotes, panel, P\&D session, town hall (typically penultimate day), etc., as well as slots for challenges, industry and main tracks. Finally you will need to coordinate across the main tracks to group by topic and assign slots (avoiding two or more similar topics in parallel).
    • TIP: This is also a good time to ask at least the Main Track chairs to start to think about award candidates. These presentations should not be scheduled in the session before the closing / awards ceremony to give time for deliberation.
    • TIP: Coordinate with SWSA regarding any awards they announce, including dissertation and test-of-time award. These people need to be invited with enough time to plan travel.
    • TIP: I suggest to try to keep the same timeslots and session durations each day so the “rhythm” for attendees is predictable, e.g., 1.5 hour sessions followed by a coffee or lunch break. Some exceptions are okay, but hopefully can be kept to a minimum.
  • Around the time of Main Track / DC notifications, be sure to check in on your Student Travel Grant chairs to see how things are going. The first call should be out to coincide with these notifications. (In fact, even better if the first call is out prior to submissions to let people know there are funds available if accepted.)