Trackview Review

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Youcan add or review changes and comments as you scroll through a document on your iPad or iPhone. When Track Changes is turned on, Word uses a unique color to mark the changes made by each author.

START's administration console is the "central command center" for your conference. Its clean, single-panel interface provides all the controls you'll need to manage your entire submission and review process. The administration console includes the following features:

Conference Setup:

This is where you enter basic conference information, which customizes the START interface for your event. You can enter the name of the conference, its acronym, meeting dates, location, the conference homepage URL, the name of the PC chair (used to auto-sign email sent by START), and the main contact email address for the event (which will appear on the "from" line in email sent by the PC chair). There is also an option to enter a submission deadline - after which newly arriving papers will no longer be accepted by START.

Submission Page Setup:

This tool automatically builds your submission page, and initializes the server to handle on-line submissions. The first step is to enter the document formats which you plan to allow (PDF, Postscript, MS Word, RTF, Powerpoint Presentation, and/or Plain Text, etc.). You can also determine whether START should do document conversion for you (among the formats supported). You can also determine whether or not you plan to run a blind review process. If so, the submission form will be generated to include special instructions for authors (e.g., not to include their names on their submitted manuscripts, etc.). The "blind review" selection will propagate throughout the review process; in other words, reviewers will not be able to see the author names, until you decide to expose them. This tool also allows you to add submission categories and keywords to your on-line submission form - which will then be selectable by the authors. If you have multiple submission types - e.g., full papers, short papers, demos, panel proposals, etc. - you can create a category variable to reflect these different formats. You can also create a category variable to characterize the manuscript's subject area; this feature is particularly useful if submissions from different technical areas are reviewed by semi-autonomous sub-committees. The category information can be supplemented by keywords, which can be checked by submitting authors. These keywords are often used by committee members to "bid" on the papers they wish to read.

Monitor Incoming Submissions:

Using this tool, you can check on the progress of your submission pool, as papers get sent it. Two views are presented - a brief overview list of submissions, and a more comprehensive report (which includes summary, category and keyword information, as well as links to download the actual manuscripts).

Delete/Merge/Renumber Submissions:

START provides a password-protected login entry for authors who wish to revise their submissions. Occasionally an author bypasses this option, and resubmits a revision as if it were a new paper. You can use this tool to merge the information from duplicate submissions, and to delete the redundant versions. Paper deletion is also necessary when an author decides to withdraw his/her submission from consideration.

Edit Submission Information:

Occasionally, editing the submission information is necessary. For example, authors occasionally mistype their own email addresses on the submission form. This tool allows you to change any of the information in a recorded submission. You can even upload a revised manuscript, on behalf of the author.

Get Author Information:

This tool extracts submission information from the START database, and presents it in a plain-text form. Check-off boxes are presented to select the type of information desired. For example, if you would like to generate a mass-mail list of submitters, you can request "author emails" - and the result will be a textual list of email addresses, ready to plug into any email client program. Any of the submission information can be selected, and retrieved in a textual format.

Setup Reviewer Policies:

This tool sets up the structure for your evaluation and review process. The options presented control the degree to which you share information with your committee, and when you decide to share it. The selections can be altered at any time in your review process. You can return to this page at key points, and update the policies to reflect the current stage of your editorial workflow. Some of the options available are the following:

Bidding for Papers: START can be of great help in assigning reviewing duties, if PC members "bid" for papers to review. In the bidding phase, reviewers inspect the summaries/papers which were submitted. Then they send in their preferences, selecting one of the following "bids" for each submission:

Unsolicited Reviews: Obviously a paper's assigned reviewers are expected to complete their reviews. However, you can optionally allow committee members to voluntarily submit reviews for any paper - except those who are identified as having conflicts of interest. It is often helpful to have more reviews (rather than fewer) - and in any case, you can always delete reviews which fail to contribute additional useful information. The options you have for this policy are:

Sharing Reviews: This option allows a reviewer of a paper to see all other reviews of the paper - after he/she has submitted a review. (Otherwise, there may be a temptation to just copy someone else's review, and not read the paper.) You can do this at any time in your review process. It is particularly helpful for committees which do not have formal meetings, since it helps achieve consensus beforehand. The options available are:

Report Access: After the reviews are completed, you may wish to give your committee access to the review information, in one form or another. If your conference committee is not meeting (physically) to determine the program, the report facility will be invaluable. Even if you are hosting a real meeting, the reports can still prove useful, by letting members achieve some consensus opinions beforehand. You can control the degree of information you wish to share with your committee, and when you wish to do this. There are two types of reports you can show your committee, the Summary Report and the Comprehensive Report. The Summary Report includes paper titles, and some statistics based on the numerical scores awarded by the reviewers. The summary report does not include reviewer names, nor does it include the detailed comments in the reviews. The available options for setting access to the Summary Reports are:

The Comprehensive Report presents all information in the reviews, including the reviewer names, the numerical scores, the detailed comments, and "confidential comments" (for the use of the Program Committee, but not sent to the authors). The policy settings for accessing Comprehensive Reports are:

Message Boards: You have the option to enable message boards for each paper. This selection creates "webmail" threads for each submission, in which reviewers can discuss the merits/liabilities of including the paper in your program. Access to a submission's message board is limited to reviewers who are able to see the comprehensive report for the paper (this includes the program chairs). There is also a "main message board", in which all PC members can participate. The messaging facility can be of great help in running an on-line PC meeting - and it can also help build consensus among the committee before your actual "submission vetting process." However, whether or not you enable this feature is voluntary - and it can be enabled at any time during your review cycle.

There is also an option to forward all message-board postings as regular email. The email will be sent to all the people who have access to the message board used - and it will include a back-link to the message board's URI. The email's "From" address will be that of the person who posted the message - and all recipients are included on the "To" address line (so follow-ups can automatically be sent to the same recipient group). In this way, discussions about papers can be initiated within START; however, they need not remain there. With email forwarding, a discussion thread can be initiated within START, and then continued via regular email. Again, this feature can be optionally enabled or disabled at any time.

Multi-Track Conference Management:

START V2 includes comprehensive support for multiple tracks and hierarchical reviewing, so that sub-editors can assign their own sub-committees, and control their processes via a mini version of the START manager console.

There are many ways to use tracks. Some conferences create tracks for various submission categories. These can be defined by technical areas, or submission type (short papers, papers, panel proposals, etc.) - or, tracks can be defined by both subject area and submission type. Some conferences create a track for each committee member. Then each member can recruit his/her reviewers autonomously, to review the submissions assigned to the member. Some conferences even create a separate track for every paper.

Other reasons to use tracks are not so obvious. For example, you may want to recruit external reviewers. These are not members of your committee; rather they could be other specialists, whom you call on to review a few papers. In such a case, you could set up a track called "Reviewers". Then all papers requiring external review could be inserted in this track. The track policies can be set at the most restrictive level (in which reviewers are only aware of their own assignments, and their own reviews). Then you could create "Reviewer Track" accounts for the external reviewers, with their assignments made using the "track manager" console. The reviews will still "flow up" to the main level.

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