Web-Based Conference Management System

Customer Contact: David Rosenblum

Summary

Build a system for managing the submission, review and selection of technical papers for a research conference.

Background and Problem Description

Professor Rosenblum will be Program Chair of the ACM SIGSOFT 2000 Eighth International Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE-8). He would like to have an automated system for managing the technical program for this conference. The system must support management of author and program committee (PC) member information, electronic submission and numbering of paper abstracts, submission of technical papers, assignment of PC members to review papers, generation of review sets for the PC meeting (with review sets customized to eliminate reviews of papers for which a PC member has declared a conflict of interest), discussion of papers at PC meeting (including alerting about conflicts of interest on discussed papers), generation of decision letters for authors, and other tasks related to the management of the technical program.

Detailed Requirements for the Project

1. The system will be Web-based and supported by a database for storing all relevant information. The system will be deployed on a Microsoft NT machine configured as a Web and database server. Suitable technology choices include Microsoft Excel, Microsoft SQL Server, and Active Server Pages (ASP), plus Java to allow for portability and maintainability.
2. The Web interface will be forms-based and will allow unsecured access by authors solely for submission of abstracts, and password-protected access by PC members for submission and management of their own reviews.
3. The database must be able to store the following kinds of information (with each kind perhaps as a separate database table):
   1. Submission profiles (title, authors, affiliations, contact author, abstract, paper number, submission type, topic areas, comments to include in notification letter); authors submit this information via Web a form (which assigns paper number upon submission)
   2. PC member profiles (name, short name for use in other tables, contact address, email address, Web home page, topics of expertise, login ID and password for Web/database access); PC members submit this via Web form
   3. Paper bids by PC member (paper number, PC member, level of interest (high, INDIFFERENT, low), expert in area (YES, no), conflict of interest (yes, NO)); PC members submit this via Web form
   4. Reviews by PC members (paper number, PC member, category scores, comments to PC, comments to authors); PC members are presented with their assigned papers on the Web, and then they click paper number to see review (which they can fill in and then change later); submission of inconsistent scores brings up warning and requests (but doesn't require) that inconsistency be fixed
   5. Paper assignments (paper number, reviewers 1-6, PC member assigned as discussion leader at PC meeting); generated from Excel spreadsheet described below, which is itself generated from PC member profiles and submission profiles
   6. PC meeting results (paper number, title, authors, conflicts of interest, status (not discussed yet/accepted/rejected/deferred for additional discussion/deferred for additional review/rejected as duplicate submission))
4. The system must support generation of a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet that the Program Chair can use to assign papers to PC members, resolve conflicting reviews, and manage paper discussions at the PC meeting; note that it must be possible to generate the spreadsheet contents incrementally, since the information will become available at different times.
5. The system must automatically make frequent backups of the database contents.
6. The system must send email receipts in response to submission of Web forms and tell the submitters to keep the forms for their records; the receipt contains the complete text of what they submitted and is CC'd to Program Chair
7. The system must be able to generate email notification letters based on outcome of PC meeting and incorporating anonymous copies of reviews
8. The system should be completely conference-independent and customizable to the details of a particular conference, including conference name, submission topic areas, PC member profiles, design of forms for submission of abstracts and reviews, CC list for email receipts, etc.