The ProceedingsBuilder Tool
ProceedingsBuilder is a system that collects and supports verification of material related to a scientific conference, such as articles or abstracts, and builds products belonging to the conference, such as master copy for printed proceedings, conference brochure, conference web pages with links to articles, etc. ProceedingsBuilder is a hybrid of a web-content-management system (WCMS) and a workflow application. It nicely supports the collaboration of authors, author groups, conference chairs, their helpers, and other individuals involved. It significantly reduces the workload of proceedings chairs and complements existing conference-management systems well. (ProceedingsBuilder comes in after the reviewing process and after author notifications - the point of time where existing conference-management tools typically stop.) ProceedingsBuilder has originally been developed for the VLDB 2005 conference, one of the most prestigious outlets for results in database research, and has worked well without any disturbance.System Features
ProceedingsBuilder- guides layout verification at fine detail, and allows to define additional fault types for layout verification,
- handles all author communication and sends out reminders and confirmations,
- makes spontaneous author communication easy -- declarative specification of message recipients yields high flexibility,
- lets authors correct their affiliation, list of authors of their paper, etc. and shifts responsibility for the data being correct to them,
- lets organizers and chairs view current status of publication process from many perspectives, e.g.,
- list of contributions sorted by title.
- list of contributions sorted by status
- list of contributions with already uploaded abstracts sorted by status.
Advantages
- Leverages database functionality, such as consistency, multi-user mode, etc.
- Layout of conference products is of high quality, due to rigid verification process.
- Layout verifications are more timely, compared to 'late bulk verification', i.e., once all contributions have been collected.
- Does not only collect final versions of articles, but any information relevant to produce conference products, such as abstracts for conference brochure, conference web pages etc., with data confirmed by authors. For instance, see information to be collected for tutorials.
Generated Output
ProceedingsBuilder can generate various products. Here are some examples generated for the VLDB2005 Conference:- part of the electronic proceedings.
- brochure, see e.g., a part of the generated program overview,
- brochure, see e.g., the list of abstracts of the contributions,
Planned Extensions
ProceedingsBuilder is currently being refined, and we welcome your comments!Testing the System
Here you will find information on how to test ProceedingsBuilder. The idea is that some of your colleagues assume the role of authors (some of them fully cooperative, some of them 'forgetful'), and you assume the role of the proceedings chair. This will give you a feel for the system interface and its functionality.Production Team
The following people of the Database Research Group at Universität Karlsruhe (TH) have been involved in designing and implementing the ProceedingsBuilder system:- Tobias Sünder
- Nicolas Röper
- Jutta Mülle
- Prof. Dr. Klemens Böhm
ProceedingsBuilder Contact Universität Karlsruhe (TH)