Instructions for Symposium Organizers
Session Information
The 2006 SES Conference will be held on the campus of Penn State University on August 14-16, 2006 (Monday-Wednesday). The technical program will consist of plenary sessions and breakout sessions. One plenary session will be held each morning of the conference, followed by three breakout sessions. Up to eight simultaneous breakout sessions will be run each day. Individuals will organize and chair topical symposia consisting of one or more breakout sessions. Two co-organizers/chairs are requested for each symposium. This is being done to ensure a seamless running of the session(s) in the event one of the organizers cannot attend the conference due to some unforeseen circumstances.
Presentation rooms will be equipped with a screen, an overhead transparency projector, and an LCD projector. Individuals must bring their own computers if they desire to use them for their presentations. The local organizers and conference facility are not responsible for the operation or safe keeping of computer-related equipment belonging to attendees.
A uniform schedule has been established for all breakout sessions so that attendees can move easily from one breakout session to another. Session chairs must closely follow this schedule. If speakers do not appear in time for their presentation, they should be rescheduled for a later time. In the event of a "no-show," the session chair must call a session break until the next regularly scheduled presentation. These procedures have been established so that attendees know when certain presentations of interest are to occur.
Plenary presentations will be 50-minutes long. Each breakout session will be 125 minutes long and will consist of typically five presentations of 25-minutes duration, including the question and answer period. Keynote presentations will be part of the breakout sessions and can be longer than 25 minutes, but that will make for fewer than five presentations per breakout session.
Paper Information
Symposium organizers agree to take the initiative to attract speakers for their respective symposia. Papers appearing in the conference proceedings will consist of 1-page abstracts only. Symposium organizers may pursue separate publications of full papers based on presentations made at a particular symposium. Such publications are pursued independently of the local organizing committee of SES2006 or the SES itself.
Abstracts must be submitted on-line from the Abstract Submission Page. Abstracts will be reviewed and approved on-line by the symposium organizers in accordance with the conference schedule. Provisions will be made for the reviewers to suggest changes on-line for poorly written abstracts. Symposium organizers must ensure that the abstracts conform to literary and technical standards typical of engineering and science publications.
In order for a paper to appear in the proceedings, the following conditions must be satisfied:
- the abstract must be approved by the symposium organizers and the local conference organizers by the abstract review cutoff date
- a presenter for each paper must have registered for the conference by the early registration cutoff date
Papers received after the early registration cutoff date will not appear in the proceedings, even though it may still be possible for the author to present the work at the conference. Important dates for the conference can be found on the conference Important Dates Page.
Abstract Review
When an abstract is submitted to the conference website, it is first screened by the Technical Co-Chairs to ensure that it is a valid submission. If the abstract is found to be valid (and most are), it will be forwarded for review to the organizers of the symposium to which the abstract was submitted. All co-organizers of that symposium are notified of the submission via an email that contains: the title of the abstract, the name of the symposium it is being submitted to, and the contact information of all the authors. Each email also contains a hyperlink to the review page for that abstract on the conference website. Read-only access is available to symposium organizers by logging on with your email address and password either by the hyperlinks sent in the notification emails or at this page below:
Your email address is the same address you used when you first submitted your symposium proposal. Symposium Organizers may obtain their password from the password page below:
Passwords will be sent from the password page to you by email. If you have lost your password, simply go back to the password page at the above link and request your password again. Send an email to ses2006@psu.edu if you have difficulties with the abstract review access.
Click to view full size.
You use this read-only access to download the PDF versions of the abstracts, review them, and then email reviews, through this website, back to the contact authors. At the Symposium Organizer page, after you log in you will see a popup menu with a list of symposia that you are organizing. Choose a symposium from the menu, and then a list of all abstracts submitted to that symposium will be displayed. See the image on the right for an example of this listing. The list displays the title and authors of each abstract, the date the abstract was submitted, the date the abstract was accepted, and the status of the abstract. When an abstract is first submitted, the status shown in the status column is "Submitted". From this page, you can download the PDF of any abstract by clicking the "View PDF" link in the leftmost column that is in the same row as the abstract, or you can view more detail about the abstract by clicking "View Detail". Also you can accept, accept with changes, or reject the abstract by clicking "Accept/Reject".
It is important that authors understand the status of their abstract. Organizer will notify each author, through this website, in which of three categories their abstract is placed:
- Abstract has been accepted as is. Status: Accepted
- Abstract has been accepted with required revisions. Status: Accepted w/Changes
- Abstract has been rejected. Status: Rejected
Symposium organizers review and set the status of each abstract from each abstract's review page on this website that is accessed directly by clicking the link sent in the abstract submission notification emails or by clicking the "Accept/Reject" link for any abstract from the list of abstracts. The abstract review page for each abstract contains the links: "Accept As Is" to accept the abstract, "Accept With Changes" to accept the abstract with revisions, or "Reject Abstract" to reject the abstract. An example of the abstract review page is shown to the right. Each of these links will take you to a page that displays a form email that will be sent to all authors of the abstract and all co-organizers of the symposium. The pages to accept with revisions and to reject the abstract have a text box for you to enter appropriate comments to be included on the form email. The three images below show examples of the form emails to Accept, Accept with Changes, and Reject abstracts.
In the cases of Accept Abstract with Changes, or Reject Abstract, you must first submit your comments in the comment box and press the "Submit Comments" button. Then to send the notification email to the abstract authors, press the "Send Email" button. Pressing "Send Email" also sets the status of the abstract as displayed on the abstract list.
In the case of "accepted with required revisions," the abstract is assumed to have been accepted. The form email sent to authors in this case, contains a link that will allow the authors to revise and resubmit their abstract. Upon resubmission the symposium organizers will be notified by email. Reviewing a resubmitted abstract is the same as reviewing new abstracts.
If you want to keep original copies of the abstracts you review for any reason (e.g. to compare to revised abstracts because the database only stores the newest version of each abstract) keep the PDF files you review as a hard copy or electronically on your computer.
Organizers are encouraged to continue to accept new abstracts up until the Abstract Submission site is finally closed to *new* abstracts on March 10, 2006 at 05:00 PM local time.
Remember that abstracts are limited to a single formatted page. (The abstract submission page automatically prevents submission of longer abstracts.) Reviews must be returned to the authors by March 24, 2006. Symposium organizers must ensure that the abstracts conform to literary and technical standards typical of engineering and science publications. See the example abstract at this link for an acceptable format. Organizers are urged to remind authors of the April 14, 2006 deadline for revised abstracts.
Finally, since sessions consist of five papers, papers in a significantly undersubscribed session may be combined with papers from other sessions (such as the General Sessions) to eliminate large holes in the conference schedule. Organizers of these undersubscribed sessions will be asked to chair the combined sessions.
The local organizing committee thanks all the organizers for their time and effort.