Our system divides a conference into phases. In this section, we will go through all the processes in our system in order to give you an idea on how an academic conference is conducted using our system.

Before any conference commences, program committees install our system to their web server and setup accounts for administrative purpose.

System Installation – Step 1

During installation, user will launch the installation script and encounter the above page in the browser. User need to choose between two types of installation. For clean and first time installation, “New Install” will be chosen. If they want to restore a conference from a previously created backup archive, they should choose “Restore Conference”. Details of system backup archive will be discussed later in this section.

System Installation – Step 2

User will then be required to enter the conference specific parameters to initialize the system.

System Installation – Step 3

The system will then validate all the parameters and update the configuration xml files and show a message after successful completion.

System Installation – Step 4

Finally, a system installation summary will be shown to the user. The summary includes a status showing whether a module is successfully installed and the corresponding operations done by each module. A default administrative account is created by this time if all the modules are successfully installed. User can now go to the login page of the system and use the given username and password of the administrative account to proceed for login.

Login page of the system

System’s Main Page

Program Committees should then use the invitation module to invite people to the conference. They can invite themselves to the system as “Program Committees” and other people to the corresponding position.

Invitation Module

By this time, the system is ready to roll out for public access.

An academic conference starts with paper submission phase. In this phase, author can register to our system and submit papers.

Author’s Main Page during Paper Submission Phase

Paper Submission

Author can submit papers using the paper submission module. They will need to submit, for each paper, a PDF document and enter the relevant information specified by paperSubmission.xml.

Paper Submission List

User can view a list of paper submitted by them. They can view, edit or withdraw any paper submitted by them at any time during the paper submission phase.

The next phase is the “Track Chair Assignment” phase. In this phase, program committees assign track chairs to tracks. Each track will have three track co-chairs. They will be assigned, by program committees, a list of paper under their tracks to monitor. They will be responsible for the reviewer assignment, paper acceptance decision and award recommendations of the paper assigned to them.

Assigning Track Chair to Each Track

Assigning Papers to Track Co-Chairs

Assigning Papers to Track Co-Chairs

In our system, each paper and user will have their own list of corresponding tracks. Our system will compare these lists and compute the Match Degree between a paper and a particular user. The higher the match degree, the more likely a paper will be suitable for a particular user to monitor/review. The system will automatically sort the list of track co-chairs in decreasing order of match degree so that program committees can assign papers to track co-chairs more easily.

At the end of this phase, program committees will have to notify track co-chairs about their assignment. Our system provides a function for them to automate this task. Program committees only need to enter a notification template and the system will generate emails to all the track co-chairs automatically.

Sending Notification Email

The conference continues with the “Reviewer Assignment” phase. Track co-chairs, after receiving the notification email from program committees, will login to the system and assign papers to reviewers.

List of paper assigned to a Track Co-Chair

Similar to the track chair assignment module, Match Degree will also be computed during reviewer assignment. Track Co-Chairs can assign papers to the reviewers with the highest Match Degree. At the end of this phase, track co-chairs can notify reviewers about their assignment via the reviewer notification function.

Reviewer Assignment

Reviewer Notification

Reviewer can decide whether they will accept a paper review assignment during this phase. Once they accept the assignment, they can download the paper to review and complete a review form afterwards.

Accept/Reject Paper Review Assignment

List of accepted to review paper

After reviewing the assigned papers, reviewers are required to complete a review report form for each paper assigned to them. They can obtain a copy of the review report in email format after completing the review.

Review Report Form (partial)

Review Report Form (Cont’d)

Track Co-Chairs and Program Committees can read the review reports submitted by reviewers and decide whether a particular paper is accepted in this conference.

List of Papers assigned to a Track Co-Chair

Summary of paper information and review reports

Decide Paper Acceptance/Awards

Program committees can read the decisions and recommendations made by track co-chairs. They can override the decisions and once they do so, track co-chairs can no longer update the decision for that paper.

List of papers under a track (For Program Committee Access)

Decision already made by Program Committee

At the end of this phase, program committee can notify all authors about their paper acceptance status using a function provided by the system.

Author Notification

Author can submit a final version paper for each paper he/she submitted and accepted by the conference’s program committees. They will also be reminded to submit a copyright form and a paper abstract in PDF format for each accepted papers.

List of accepted papers

Program committees can view the documents submitted by authors in this phase. In case some author may send their copyright form using other methods, program committees can override the copyright form submission method in the system.

List of submitted documents

At the last phase of the conference, program committees can use our system to generate an archive of papers (together with the supporting documents) in an order provide by them. These help program committees to smooth the conference proceeding generation process.

Conference Proceeding Generation

Apart from the normal functions that model the conference activities, there are a lot of other supporting functions that exist in our system to smooth the conference management works.

This function allows news to be announced and viewed by users in this conference.

Viewing News

This function list all the papers submitted to this conference and their relevant information. Relevant information includes the paper track, review scores, awards and acceptance status. This provides a clear and simple way for the program committees to look at all the paper information quickly.

Conference Paper Listing

This module computes the statistics of the conference.

Paper Submission Statistics (Partial)

This module allows program committees to send email to a particular group of user quickly.

Email Module

Administration module allows program committees to change conference parameters and backup the conference. Parameters include conference name, organizer, chair email address, conference URL, time-zone, current phase and database configuration. The backup function automatically packs and compresses the current conference’s configuration files and database’s data into a single archive, which can be used to restore the system via the installation script.

Administration Module - Backup

Downloading the backup archive

Administration Module - Configuration

This function allows program committees to search for any users / papers with a certain searching criteria.

Search For User (Partial)

Search Result (User)

Search For Paper (Partial)

Search Result (Papers)