1. Integrating further Event Management Solutions
When planning a scientific conference, abstract management is just one aspect. However it’s not a stand-alone process but rather one that’s intertwined with other areas of event management.
For instance, the names of authors who are set to present their paper during the conference appear on the attendee list and thus have to pay their participation fee as well.
Therefore, the best solution would be to connect the abstract management with software for registration and payment handling.
That’s also more convenient for authors: They only need to register once to use all the features.
2. Mapping the whole Process of Abstract Submission and Reviewing
Effective abstract management can cover every step from the abstract submission by the authors right through planning the conference program.
In the abstract management software’s administration area, all information required from the authors are determined prior to the submission process.
Following this, the reviewers chosen by the scientific committee assess the papers assigned to them using the criteria that were also defined in the administration area.
Based on the results of the reviewing, the scientific committee then comes to a final decision as to whether to accept or reject an abstract.
Even a multi-level submission process shouldn’t cause the abstract management software any problems. In the course of this, authors whose abstracts were accepted by the committee are requested to submit their complete papers. The papers then undergo the same review process.
In both cases, it should be possible to send the submission back to the author for revision.
3. Custom-built Submission and Reviewing
Every event is different.
In order to take this into account, your abstract management software should enable you to define submission periods, topics as well as presentation modes (oral presentation, workshop, poster presentation etc.) individually.
It’s up to you to decide whether authors paste the text of their abstracts into a text box or upload them. You also determine the file format and file size and set the limit for the number of abstracts an author may submit or a reviewer may assess.
In addition, you should be able to specify whether one or more reviewers assess an abstract.
If you want to save time, you’ll choose an abstract management software that automatically provides suggestions for assigning papers to the reviewers.
4. Planning the Conference Program
Once all abstracts have been selected, the abstract management software should provide an option to automatically turn them into an overview of all items your event’s agenda will be made up of.
The option suggests sessions for each conference day and saves you a great deal of planning work.
5. Current Notifications
Your abstract management software helps you to stay up to date about what’s going on.
It informs you about new abstract submissions and provides you with a constant overview of all abstracts.
During the ongoing reviewing process, it only takes a glance to see how many abstracts have yet to be reviewed.
6. Communication with Reviewers and Authors
An abstract management software is also suitable for the exchange between organizers, scientific committee, reviewers and authors.
In order to connect all of them, you can send mails from the system.
That’s relevant when deadlines are concerned. It should be possible for you to remind reviewers who have yet to assess the abstracts assigned to them before the reviewing period is over.
We recommend sending a confirmation of receipt to the authors as soon as you receive their abstract. You should also let the authors know about the committee’s decision regarding their papers.
That doesn’t mean you have to compose every single one of the emails and press “send”. That’s something your software for the abstract management does for you.
Who’s allowed to communicate with whom via email? Can the reviewers send messages to the authors or the scientific committee? That’s also up to you.
7. Who sees what?
Not everyone should see everything when reviewing the papers. What information is displayed mustn’t depend on your abstract management software.
From the reviewers’ perspective, you should be able to specify if:
- … they only see the abstracts assigned to them
- … the author’s name remains anonymous to them
- … it’s clear who else is reviewing the abstract
8. Importing instead of creating individually
If a list with the names of all reviewers already exists, you shouldn’t waste precious hours by manually entering them into the system.
Make sure that the software you’re planning to use for your abstract management is equipped with a feature which helps you with importing the list.
Importing is a must have, particularly when you’re organizing a larger conference where you have to deal with huge numbers of abstracts and reviewers.
Tell us which features you’d like to see included in an abstract management software. We’ll gladly sit down with you and analyze if Converia is suitable for your events.