Conferences

CORE makes it possible to host multiple conferences simultaneously. These can be managed under the 'conferences' tab. Each conference has its own specific settings and layout. CORE uses the host name to differentiate between conferences.

• General settings
  All the required fields, apart from email address, are populated by the installer. All notifications and error reports are sent to the conference admin email.

• Google Calendar settings
  If you want to synchronise the CORE schedule with your Google Calendar, you have to set the fields: Google calendar event feed url, Google calendar username and Google calendar password. Make sure the Google Calendar is publicly available. Any changes made to the CORE schedule will also update the Google Calendar.

• Submit/review/feedback dates for papers.
  This specific option will be available only within the specified date range. The feedback option does not have a manual start date since this is based on the date the feedback codes are sent out.

• Layout settings
  If you want to change the layout of the current conference, set the custom layout option (see Theming).

• Time slots
  A time slot consists of a start/end date, a number and a type. Type can be 'presentation', 'lunch' or 'break'. Only presentation slots are shown in the schedule. When setting up a new conference, you can let CORE create an initial set of slots so that you do not have to go through the manual process of adding slots. Enter the number of days and the start date, click 'Create smart defaults' and CORE will create the slots for you.

• Locations
  You define a location by providing at least a name, abbreviation and type. The type can be 'room' or 'external'. The room option assumes that your conference is hosted in one venue. Only rooms will be displayed in the schedule. External locations are mainly used for side events. The abbreviation, together with the time slot number is used to represent a session in the schedule as follows: <room abbreviation><time slot number> - <name of session>. If you provide a picture it will be automatically resized to 90px width/68px height. To change these values, edit application/modules/core/forms/Location.php - line 85.

Submit

If submit is open (see above) users who are logged in can submit their papers. Anonymous users cannot submit papers! For normal users, the 'submission' tab links to the 'new paper' page. For an admin or reviewer, the 'submission' tab links to the submit overview page.

Submit overview from reviewer perspective

When a reviewer logs in and visits the 'submission' page they have the option to 'review' a paper. Under the default setting the page only displays the papers that the reviewer should review. Papers that have been assigned to the reviewer show the 'review' link in red. A reviewer can review any paper, also the ones he was not assigned to review.

In case a particular paper needs a tiebreak review it will only show to a reviewer if:

• he is responsible for this tiebreak;
• an extra review for that paper is required.

Filters

A reviewer can filter the submission list by using the filter bar at the top of the page. This also allows him to download papers assigned to him for review.

Review tab

For a reviewer the review tab will display the papers he should review and the ones he already has reviewed. If you are not a reviewer nor an admin, this tab will not be displayed.

When a reviewer is nominated to act as a 'tiebreaker' for a paper and this paper ultimately does not require a tiebreak, the paper is greyed out in the review tab. If a tiebreak is required, the link will become active and the text 'new' will be appended to the paper.

Submit overview from admin perspective

Upon successful paper submission, the conference admin is notified by email. You can disable this notification by changing the value of application.ini/core.observer.submit to 0.

Reviewers

Assign reviewers to papers by clicking on 'reviewers' next to the respective paper. Select a user from the select box to link them to the paper or remove a linked user by clicking the 'x' next to their name. To toggle tiebreaker status, use the 'tiebreaker' button next to the 'x'.

Tiebreakers

This process is to streamline the review process and to prevent overloading reviewers since 0.9.2 the tiebreaker concept was added. When a user is a tiebreaker for a paper he will only be asked to review this when overall reviews are conflicting. This means that initially the list of papers a reviewer should review is short but may become longer over time in case more tiebreaks required.

If a tiebreak is required the tiebreaker automatically receives an email requesting he reviews the particular paper. You can configure this behaviour by changing the value of application.ini/core.observer.tiebreaker.notify to 0.

Whether or not a tiebreak is required is decided with the following algorithm.

LOD = Level Of Difference. This is calculated using the formula below and has a value between zero and one. LOD is higher if two people of equal experience disagree than if two people of disparate experience disagree. For fixed values of experience, LOD increases as the disagreement in ratings increases.

The threshold can be configured in application.ini/core.review.tiebreaker.

If a tiebreaker is required, the respective paper will have a yellow box around the Reviews table cell, with either 'WR' (Wrong Reviewer) or 'LOD: <value>' (Level Of Difference).

Email reviewers

Send an email to all people assigned to review a paper. The email includes links to all the papers that they need to review plus a link to download their assigned papers as a zip archive. If a user is a tiebreaker for a paper, this is excluded from the list.

One the email is successfully sent out the link will change in sending a reminder (what link will change?). This sends out a similar message as before, however:

• the reminder is not sent to the reviewers who completed their tasks
• only the papers that still need to be reviewed are listed. This includes papers that require a tiebreak if user is a tiebreaker for that paper.

Set status/proposed session

Click on the number/percentage to get a parallel overview of all the reviews for a particular paper. You can assign the status/proposed session here as well.

Email accepted/rejected

All papers with a status set to 'yes' are papers that have been accepted and can be imported into CORE as presentations. Use the 'email accepted' link to notify the users whose papers have been accepted. Use the 'email rejected' to notify the users whose papers have been rejected.

Sessions

Sessions are basically presentation containers defined by a place and time. They require a title, a location and a time slot. Once you created a session it will appear in the schedule.

Session chairs

The drop-down list only shows users with a 'chair' role. Select a user from the drop-down list to add them as a session chair. Click the 'x' next to their name to remove them. You can add multiple chairs to one session.

Files

Use this if you want to upload a session slide.

Google Calendar (conference)

If you set all of the Google Calendar fields in the Conference form, your sessions are automatically saved and synchronised with Google Calendar. If you added the Google Calendar details after you already populated the system with sessions, you can always use the 'sessions/synchronise' option to synchronise all your existing sessions with your Google Calendar. If you do this, you might want to purge your calendar beforehand. This can only be done from the Google Calendar interface.

Google Calendar (personal)

Users also have the option to save a specific session to their own personal calendar. This is no way related to the feature described above.

Link presentations

Click on a session to view session details. To link a presentation to the session, select a presentation from the drop down list. To remove the presentation, click 'delete' next to the presentation name. The order of the presentations can be changed by drag and drop.

Evaluate session

Session chairs can evaluate a session by using the form fields at the bottom of a session overview page. Chairs can only evaluate sessions they are assigned to.

Presentations

A presentation requires a title and an abstract.

Speakers

The drop-down list only shows users with a 'presenter' role. Select a user from the drop-down list to add them as a speaker. Click the 'x' next to their name to remove them. You can add multiple speakers to one presentation.

Files

Allows the user to add a paper, slides or an extra file.

Import submissions

All accepted submissions within a certain date range will be imported as presentations. You can fine-tune the import with several options.

Schedule

The schedule builds a table based on defined time slots and locations. The columns contain the time and the rows contain the rooms. During the conference, CORE automatically shows the current day. You can view a fullscreen version of the schedule by appending /size/1 to the url.

Swap sessions

An admin can move and swap sessions by clicking the respective checkbox in front of a session name.

Events and Posters

Besides the CORE sessions you can also add extra events (meetings/workshops etc.) to CORE. These events will also show up in the schedule. Posters only show in the poster overview.