Flexible conference phase model

Organizing scientific conferences is typically done in different phases of organization (abstract and paper submission, bidding, assignment, review, pc meeting, submission of camera ready copies). In Paperdyne, these phases are used to control access to the system. This model is very flexible, with various exceptions individual rights can be granted. It is e.g. possible to grant the right for submitting of a paper file late to individual authors.

Support for Various Contribution Types

Handling of regular and invited papers, camera ready copies and source archives is provided.

Bidding Support for Reviewers

Reviewers may bid for papers, they would like to review. Based on this bidding and based on the paper reviewer conflicts, the program committee chair gets assistance in assigning papers to reviewers. Additionally reviewers are asked for their conflicts of interest. Conflicts of interest can be published within the program committee and with Paperdyne you can ensure that no confidential information goes to wrong reviewers. All reports for reviewers take conflicts of interest into account.

Flexible Paper Assignment and Reassignment Assistance

Within the process of assigning papers to reviewers, the program committee chair gets automatic or semi automatic proposals by the system. Paperdyne uses an optimizing algorithm for the assignment proposal, such that a pairwise permutation cannot improve the result anymore. This algorithm can be optionally parameterized. E.g. it is possible to define the number of reviewers for each individual paper, a review load for an individual reviewer or any pre-assignments. A pre-assignment can be positive (reviewer will get the paper) or negative (reviewer won’t get it). The Paperdyne algorithm takes care about the rest. With this system it is e.g. very easy to find additional reviewers for some papers, even if the reviewing phase already started. The bidding is basis for the algorithm. If a reviewer does not enter the bidding, the algorithm tries to match topics of interest with paper topics in lower priority.

Complete and Flexible Email Communication Assistance.

Paperdyne provides a very powerful communication tool. Templates for all standard situations are already prepared, each instance of an email can be modified before sending. Technical basis of this email component is a powerful XML semantic, that generates complete emails with correct content and recipients. With this automatism, the flexibility is not limited at all: In a first step the global template can be adjusted, in a next step each individual generated mail can be changed, so that each mail can be as individual as necessary. Notification of authors, reminders for reviewers and many other emails can be sent with just a few mouse clicks to the correct recipients. The PCC gets copies of each individual email to a bulk email address.

Various Notification Emails

For all important operations users get notification emails. The PCC gets copies to his bulk email address. It is not always necessary for watching the submission progress. Important system warnings are sent directly to the PCCs main email address.

100% Web-Based System, Accessible Anywhere, Anytime:

No system administration needs to be done by the program committee chair. Most program committee chairs decide to handle Paperdyne themselves, because it is so easy to handle. It is not necessary, that a research assistant does this job. The PCC can control the whole process himself.

Various Reports e.g. for the PC Meeting Preparation:

With a variety of reports the program committee chair is perfectly prepared for a PC meeting. These reports are e.g. rankings, review status, submission reports, etc. All reports can easily be exported to native Excel or to the plattform independent csv format for other office products.

Personalized Reports for Reviewers for Discussion

For online discussions, it is possible to provide many reports for reviewers. Depending on the status of the reviewing and discussion process, additional information can be provided for reviewers. The PCC can define a discussion order for submitted papers, and he may move papers into discussion sections. All reviewer reports can be sorted according to this discussion order.

Email Discussion

The email discussion can be started by the PCC, or the PCC can allow reviewers to start the discussion themselves. The pcc may start discussion according to defined discussion groups. All recipients can be collected automatically by the system (e.g. all assigned reviewers or all reviewers without conflict of interest).

PC Meeting Support

According to a discussion order the PCC can generate a slide show for the pc meeting. In this slide show, title pages for each paper are generated, so that reviewers with a conflict of interest can be asked to leave the room, before the discussion of each paper starts. Reviewers can use Paperdyne online or offline at their notebooks to get all important information. The PCC does not need to worry about privacy restrictions, Paperdyne takes care about that.

Paperdyne Roles

The Paperdyne user management is role based. One user e.g. can be an author and reviewer at the same time. Authors can extend their author account with reviewer functionality, if they get a key from the PCC, reviewers can extend their reviewer account with author functionality, if the submission site is not closed for authors. In Paperdyne all email addresses of co-authors are collected. The co-authors get ccs of all relevant emails. Especially for the call for participation it is necessary to have the information of all co-authors.

User Management controlled by the PCC

The PCC is the super user of the user management, he can add, change or delete user data any time. It is not necessary to share any information with any other conference chair, the system is completely owned by the PCC. The PCC may even log in as another user and he may act on behalf of any user of the system.

Review of Camera Ready Copies

In Paperdyne reviewers are automatically asked to check camera ready copies. As soon, as an author uploads the camera ready copy, the assigned reviewers are notified to check, whether all comments were considered by the authors. The PCC usually cannot do this work himself, because he does not know the details of all papers. The comments can be forwarded to authors and another iteration step can be started.

Proceedings Preparation

Preparing proceedings can be a very time consuming job. With the new version of Paperdyne the PCC can configure his proceedings online. The table of contents and the author index is generated automatically.

All Information provided by Paperdyne is Live Data.

Paperdyne is not based on scripts, that only run from time to time. If any user changes data, all reports will be up to date at the next request. Non-live systems can especially be very annoying during discussions, e.g. if a reviewer changes his rating and the ranking reports are not up to date at the same time.