Standardized Program Guidelines Proposal
July 5 2002
Committee Members: Bob Eberlein (chair), Vedat Diker, George Richarson, Khalid Saeed, Jonathan Coyle, Jim Hines, Brian Dangerfield, Pal Davidsen, Mike Radzicki
During the February 2002 policy council meeting this committee was charged with proposing a set of guidelines that would help standardize the process for creating and managing conference programs. The intent of this standardization is to decrease the administrative burden on the central office, improve the submission and review experience and provide a mechanism to channel good work toward submission to the System Dynamics Review.
Vocabulary notes: We will refer to anything submitted for presentation at the conference as a “work.” As can be seen under format requirements the presentation of a standard academic “paper” is not a requirement and this term will not be used.
Roles and Responsibilities: Though this document pertains only to the program, it is useful to clarify the different roles involved in running the conference and who these are filled by. The Program Chair is the President Elect holding office on the year in which the conference occurs. Having the President Elect be the Program Chair is a policy the was voted on by the Policy Council in 1996. The Conference Chair is the one that proposed the selected conference venue. When the Policy Council selects a conference site they also endorse the Conference Chair. The Conference Manager is the Executive Director or the society. This is a role that has emerged as the central office has taken on a larger role in conference organization. The Program Manager works under the direction of the Executive Director of the society and will normally be a student. This is a role that has emerged over the last few years and is being codified in this proposal.
Program Committee: The Program Chair should appoint a small program committee to assist in the management of the program. One member of the program committee should be the Program Manager who will help in the day to day management of submissions and responses and will be chosen in consultation with the Conference Manager.
Conference Content: The formal program of the System Dynamics Conference consists almost entirely of presentations by conference attendees. These presentations are made in plenary sessions, parallel sessions and poster or alternative format sessions. Determining the mix and length of these sessions is up to the Program Chair in consultation with the Conference Chair and Conference Manager. There are a number of logistical considerations that do drive this scheduling.
Conference Theme: The Program Chair in consultation with the Conference Chair will select one or more themes around which to structure the conference program. These themes will be selected to be topical, broaden research in the field or bring in others from different disciplines for interaction with members of the system dynamics community. The conference announcement should encourage people to submit work related to these themes.
Plenary Sessions: Plenary sessions are used to present material that is of interest to all conference attendees by presenters who can clearly communicate this material. Many, though not necessarily all, of the Plenary Sessions should be organized around material related to the conference theme. Speakers for plenary sessions need to be selected not only on the basis of the content of their work, but also with some confidence that they will be able to present that work clearly. If there are doubts about this it is incumbent on the program chair to contact the presenters and verify that they will do a good job, not move them into the plenary program, or provide some presentation help for them.
Mandatory Sessions: In addition to plenary sessions based on reviewed works, there are two mandatory sessions. The Society Business meeting needs to be held during the conference after the Policy Council meetings. The Jay W. Forrester award presentation and acceptance speech must also be included as a plenary session. This acceptance speech is not subject to submission and review.
Parallel Sessions: Parallel sessions are used to present works that are likely to be of interest to many but not all attendees. Parallel sessions can also include workshops and other activities. Typically there are from 5 to 8 concurrent sessions.
Poster or Alternative Format Presentations: Works that are likely to be of specialized interest, works that do not lend themselves to a formal presentation and works that would prosper in a one-on-one setting are appropriate for Poster or Alternative Presentation format sessions.
The format for these sessions is normally the creation of a poster to be put up in a designated area or the provision of a panel to which the author can attach material. The size and format for this is determined by the Program Chair in consultation with the Conference Manager and taking into account the available facilities. The Program Chair, with the agreement of the Conference Chair, may add or substitute an alternative format to present these works.
Invited Speakers: The Program chair may choose to invite speakers. It is expected that such speakers will submit presentation material and this material will be subject to the standard review process. In very special circumstance, with the approval of the Conference Chair, invited speakers may be included in the program without being required to submit presentation materials.
Workshops: The program chair may choose to solicit proposals for and schedule workshops. The workshops may be scheduled during parallel sessions or as activities outside the normal conference schedule. In either case these are activities that are explicitly sanctioned and do require that they be screened for value and applicability.
Designated Presenter: Each work submitted must have a designated presenter. One individual can be a designated presenter for at most two works. This is likely to be a binding restriction on some individuals.
Presenter Registration: In order for a work to be included in the conference program and proceedings the designated presenter must be registered for the conference.
Submission Process: Works will be submitted electronically to the Society’s central office using a technique (web based or email) specified by the central office. Works will be submitted in sufficient detail to make clear their meaning and value, this is the only minimum requirement. Works may be submitted as prose, in outline format or as presentation slides. All works must be in English and are limited to 20,000 words (approximately 40 pages). Submission of models and other supporting materials is encouraged in all cases.
The aspiration will be to have 3 files submitted with each work. The first will be the contact information for the authors, the second the body of the work with no author information, and the third is supporting material including models submitted as a single file or a .zip archive.
Authors submitting works will also complete a short questionnaire about the appropriate session placement and format for their presentation.
Review Process: All works submitted will be transmitted to three people for review. Reviews will be done anonymously. The review will be blind to the extent the automated review process permits. The options for the reviewer will include:
In addition to the recommended disposition the reviewer will be given a place to make comments to be conveyed to the authors and comments only for the program committee. The reviewer will also be given the option to check:
If this is chosen the reviewer should provide a note explaining why they think the work would be good in the journal. This note along with the information on how to find the paper will then be sent to an Associate Editor so that they can look it over and send a note to the author encouraging submission.
Note: The submission process for the Review and conferences are completely separate. This simply provides a mechanism to identify good work and bring it to the attention of the associate editors.
After the reviews have been completed the reviews will be forwarded to the program chair. The program chair will then designate the work as one of:
1. Not Appropriate
2. Not Appropriate but Resubmission Encouraged
3. Accepted Poster
4. Accepted Parallel
5. Accepted Parallel under consideration for Plenary
6. Accepted Plenary
The designations will be conveyed to authors via email. For works under consideration for plenary the authors will be encouraged to submit a revision for further consideration.
If more than one of the reviews is not completed in a timely fashion the program committee will arrange an expedited review or do it themselves before making the designation.
In addition to Accepted Plenary works it is wise to designate a number of Alternative Plenary Works and inform the authors of this. This allows for last minute program adjustments for speakers who are not able to attend.
Review Turnaround: The aspiration is to get the speediest possible reviews and move toward an automated and continuous process. However, to motivate people to submit early there will be two review completion dates corresponding to the two submission deadlines.
Deadlines: The outlined submission process is a single stage process. Still, because people often wait for deadlines to do things there are two deadlines. The first is the deadline for early review, and this will be set in mid February. The second is the final deadline, which will be 30 to 45 days before the date final materials are required for the electronic proceedings (this means the final deadline will typically be toward the end of March).
Corresponding to the submission deadlines will be two response deadlines. The first will be 30 to 45 days after the first submission deadline (late March). The second will be approximately one week before final materials are required for the electronic proceedings.
There is an additional date that needs to be included and that is the date at which we begin accepting submissions for review. This should be January 2.
Works received after final submission deadline will be dealt with at the discretion of the Program Chair. Late works are still subject to review. If the Program Chair chooses to accept late submissions, those submitting late will receive notification that we will make every effort to, but cannot guarantee the timely review of their work for consideration in the conference program.
The deadline for submission of materials for inclusion in the electronic proceedings is dictated by production logistics and will typically be a little more than 2 months before the conference date.
Quotas and Quality: The number of works accepted for Plenary and Parallel sessions is strongly limited by the amount of available time during the conference. Poster sessions are limited by space considerations. Some flexibility is available for parallel sessions by varying the number presentations during a session although having more than 6 presentations in a single session is likely to be problematic.
Acceptance or rejection or works should be based on quality and not quantity. Assignment to different session types needs to balance program requirements with available capacity. Historically the rejection rate on submitted works has been very low and has largely been limited to papers that are not really appropriate for the conference. While the Program Chair does have discretion in setting this bar, significant changes from past practice should not be made without the approval of the Policy Council.
Should it happen that there are too many works submitted and deemed acceptable to be managed in the venue of the conference the Program Chair, Conference Chair, Conference Manager and Program Committer will jointly determine a course of action to deal with it. If there is time, the Policy council will be consulted on the course chosen. It is recognized, however, that such a situation would likely need to be resolved very quickly.