Having reviewed the following:
- Springer OCS: the Online Conference Service - https://ocs.springer.com/ocs/
- ScholarOne (Sage / Thomson Reuter's integrated conference review/publication system). This system incorporates the old Manuscript Central application.
- EasyChair - http://easychair.org/
Conclusions
I recommend going with Springer OCS
- It is FREE for us to use due to our publication contract.
- It is linked to Springer's systems for publishing proceedings,
- It offers a fully featured call-review-to-publication cycle
- It easily supports the session structure proposed in supports the "draft conference schedule" with the "Sessions" feature
- It has standard built in roles (PC chair, PC Member, Author, Submitter, Reviewer, Subreviewer)
- Important: PC chairs have admin rights to the OCS whereas PC Members have access to all content. In general volunteer reviewers should NOT be assigned to the PC Member role.
- It offers an internal discussion area and internal message system if needed
- It offers user self-subscription, password reset and fine grained permission control (via roles).
- Basically we'd be mad not to use it.
For further information on the OCS feature list have a look at:
www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-447109-0
Steps
Assuming we use OCS our committee members will need to register an account in the system.Even if you have another Springer account you will probably need to register for directly to OCS.
1. Register your preferred email/account at
https://ocs.springer.com/ocs/
2. Having done that the current PC Chair will be able to subscribe you to the IS&O 2016 account (ifip_WG8-2_WC_2016).
https://ocs.springer.com/ocs/home/ifip_WG8-2_WC_2016
3. Next step is to discuss and agree conference milestone dates. The following placeholders dates are indicative e.g.:
Phase:____________________ Deadline
Abstract Submission:______ May 11, 2016 (including posters, work-in-progess and position papers)
Paper Upload:_____________ May 11, 2016
Assignment of Reviewers:__ May 20, 2016 (assignment of AEs and reviewers)
Review period ends:_______ Jun 17, 2016
Decisions announced:______ Jul 5, 2016
Final copies:_____________ Sep 2, 2016
Consider working back from the final final deadline on the publication timeline?
For example, the finished manuscript copy for printing must arrive latest at Springer Heidelberg 7th Oct in order to guarantee availability of the books in Dublin, a couple of days before the conference starts.
4. Once members have registered accounts the PC Chair can modify permissions so that the roles are appropriate.
5. Once the conference is live any user will be able to submit a paper, and submit revisions, via:
https://ocs.springer.com/ocs/conference/submitpaperto/ifip_WG8-2_WC_2016
Paper Submission
The OCS enrolment / submission process provides authors with the following messages (email & and internal account message log):
1. [OCS] Registration of new user account successful
ocs-admin@springer.com 9:45 PM (12 hours ago) Dear Firstname Surname,
A new user account was successfully registered for you. This email address was used:
(an email address)
If you ever should forget your password, you can request a new one here:
( https://ocs.springer.com/ocs/ForgotPassword/)
2. (optional) [OCS] Set New Password
Dear Firstname Surname,
Please follow the link to set a new password:
(password reset url)
3. [ifip82dublin_2016] Please verify post-processed document for [Your Document Title]
Dear Firstname Surname,
Recently a new document was uploaded for your paper
'Your Document Title'
In order to enhance compatibility with different PDF-Viewers, the uploaded document has been post-processed. Please verify the post-processed document here:
https://ocs.springer.com/ocs/conference/paper/verifydocument/ifip_WG8-2_WC_2016/URL
If there are any display errors or other problems please contact the PC Chair of this conference:
https://ocs.springer.com/ocs/conference/contactpcchair/ifip_WG8-2_WC_2016
4. [ifip82dublin_2016] Submission received
Dear Firstname Surname,
Recently you submitted your paper
'Your Document Title'
to the conference
'ifip WG8.2 Working Conference Dublin 2016'.
Please follow the link below to view the paper's detail page:
https://ocs.springer.com/ocs/conference/paper/view/ifip_WG8-2_WC_2016/URL
Enclosed please find a schedule of the conference:
1. Paper Submission (Until May 11, 2016 23:59 IST)
Paper Upload (Until May 11, 2016 23:59 IST)
2. Assignment of Reviewers (Until May 20, 2016 23:59 IST)
3. Review (Until June 17, 2016 23:59 IST)
Decision (Until July 5, 2016 23:59 IST)
4. Final (Until September 2, 2016 23:59 IST)
Roles
The following User Roles are described in the OCS User Guide
The Program Committee Chair (PC Chair): is the head of the program committee of a conference. The PC Chair and all Co-Chairs are given this role. These people have full editorial control. PC chairs also have admin rights to the OCS
Program Committee Member (PC Member): The program committee is the panel of voluntary users invited by the PC Chair.
- Important: if reviewers are subsequently chosen out of this committee, they should have their role reassigned from PC Member role to Reviewer role. This is because PC Members have wider access to OCS content.
Author: Along with the submission of a paper a list of authors is provided. Additionally an author may be marked as a corresponding author, thus receiving all mails sent by the system regarding the paper.
Submitter: In many cases a secretary’s office or another representative submits a paper instead of one of the authors. Therefore the submitter role enables to file a paper for someone else, without having an author conflict with the paper. Since an author is prejudiced against his own paper, an author conflict prohibits that the user can be assigned as a reviewer to the paper, for example.
Reviewer & Subreviewer: These are our volunteers, conducting anonymous reviews anonymously. Very large conferences may also employ subreviewers to cope.
Information on manuscripts and submissions
The LNCS Web homepage that contains the following "Information for Authors of Computer Science Publications":
http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0
There is also a page for volume editors of proceedings volumes:
http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-791222-0
This page contains instructions for a more traditional workflow (read: without usage of the OCS). Nevertheless you will learn something about the overall process of publishing proceedings volumes within Springer's LNCS and its associate series.
The LaTeX support for authors can be found at
ftp://ftp.springer.de/pub/tex/latex/llncs/latex2e/llncs2e.zip
CS Proceedings and Other Multiauthor Volumes - Using Office 2007 Word are supported by
ftp://ftp.springer.de/pub/tex/latex/llncs/word/splnproc1110.zip
Predecessor conference proceedings:
IS&O 2014, held in Auckland, New Zealand (
http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-662-45708-5)
Q: Now that we've got submissions what do we do?
Bidding and Assignment
These phases start simultaneously after the abstract submission phase has been stopped. The assignment phase ends after the bidding phase.
Bidding: A Program Committee Member (PC Chair and/or PC Member) bids for or rejects becoming a reviewer of a paper. If he doesn’t express his position he will be marked as indifferent. One way of running this is for the track chairs, associate editors or similar supervisory role to bid first. Then the AE/Chair takes responsibility for assignment of other reviewers (see below). OCS also has the possibility of an automated and market-style mode for PC Members to engage in bidding to review papers.
Assignment: A Program Committee Chair (PC Chair) assigns PC Members to papers. An assigned PC Member becomes a reviewer of the respective paper.
