Step 1a: Get publication quotes for printed proceedings -------------------------------------------------------- Well in advance of the paper-submission deadline, get quotes from the appropriate publication houses. Arch. conferences tend to use IEEE Computer Society Press and ACM Press. Conventional wisdom at the time of this writing is that IEEE CS Press is far easier to work with, and they do most of the work for you too! They lay out the front matter, generate the table of contents and author index, and paginate the proceedings. This means you mainly serve as liason. As long as you make sure things happen on time, people will think you did a good job. With other publication houses, you may have to do more of the layout, which can be time-consuming. **It is important to get the quote before the date of the PC meeting is set and before the paper deadlines are set and established. This way you can work backwards from how much time the publisher wants. Otherwise bad situations can arise if the conference publicized dates that are incompatible with what the publisher wants. You will need to know: - est. # of pages - est. # of copies (IEEE CS Press should find out how many copies any ACM co-sponsoring SIGs will require) - est. author notification and final-manuscript dates - est. date when flyers and other publicity will effectively set these dates in stone (see Step 2 below) - whether you want them to produce CD-ROMS (I recommend doing them separately; see 1b below) IEEE CS Press contact: Tom Baldwin, tbaldwin@computer.org ACM Press contact: Lisette Burgos, burgos@hq.acm.org Step 1b: Get production quotes for CD-ROMs ------------------------------------------ First of all, a CD-ROM may not be necessary if the conference will post a page with links to paper softcopy and this page will persist. TCCA has investigated this and learned that as long as the softcopy is not maintained on IEEE websites but rather conference or other independent websites, this does not violate copyright or any other IEEE rules. If you produce a CD: In my experience, the IEEE and ACM shops charge too much for CD-ROMs. You can get them done much more cheaply on your own. I have used Technicolor, located in Ruckersville, VA, (804) 985-1100. Depending on what sort of discount you can negotiate, at the time of this writing the unit cost was about $0.75/CD including sleeve, minimum order 1000 units, plus a nominal fee for creating the artwork for the face of the disc. This is compared to $5-$15/CD from IEEE/ACM. If you only order CDs for conference attendees, expect a quote closer to $15. The $0.75 unit cost was obtained through a standing discount the University of Virginia has with Ruckersville. You may find that your university has a similar agreement with a local production company. The major tradeoff is that IEEE/ACM will format the CD-ROM for you. If you have an independent shop do it, you will probably have to format the CD-ROM yourself. If a directory of PS and PDF version of the papers plus a web page index is sufficient, that's not too painful. Even simpler is to simply create folders with the paper source and a non-html list of the contents, eg the PDF table of contents that the publisher sends for proofing. A third approach is to contact Kathy Preas, kathy@kppubs.com, another independent CD-ROM producer who will do the content design for you for a price of perhaps $8-$10 per unit. Step 2: Get approval and sign the quote --------------------------------------- Make sure everyone agrees that the dates will work! You need to have enough time after the program committee meeting for the PC Chair to compile a list for you, and for you to compile and provide an author's list to the publisher. You also need enough time for the authors to produce final copy. As part of the contract, the publisher will negotiate dates with you, so you *really* want to do all this negotiation BEFORE massive publicity has already fixed the author notification and final-manuscript dates. A good strategy is to set the date for e-mailing author kits one week after the PC meeting, and to set the date for final manuscripts five weeks after the author kits are mailed (but tell the authors they only have four weeks). For IEEE CS Press, allow 3.5-4 months from the time you send author info to the publisher until the books arrive at the conference. This is also a good time to agree with your conference general chair AND the program chair on extra-page charges and how many extra pages will be allowed. Step 3: Try to get the keynotes determined early. -------------------------------------------------- Contact the program chair for this. You want speaker, title, abstract, and bio in hand by the time of author notification, because you will need these materials for your front matter. Actually you only need to know speaker and title in time for the front-matter deadline; you need the abstract in time for the final-manuscript deadline; but it's easier to get them all together early. Speakers are notoriously tardy in getting their info to you once they know they're confirmed as speaker. You also want to make sure that the reviewer database is set up to generate a list of reviewers when it comes time to do the front matter. This needs to be verified well before the paper- submission deadline so that the database can be set up appropriately. Step 4: Wait until author notification draws close. --------------------------------------------------- Step 5: Generate front matter -- due around time of author notification ----------------------------------------------------------------------- This typically includes book cover, title page, list of committees, foreword, etc. IEEE CS Press will do the table of contents for you. Not sure about ACM. Don't underestimate how much time it takes to make this look acceptable, to get people to agree on a cover image, and so forth. Before the PC meeting, try to get the PC chair to agree to send the author/title list, the program (broken into sessions), and the list of reviewers directly to your contact at the publisher (and CC you). The list of reviewers should come from the review database. Step 6: Get author kits sent out -------------------------------- Provide a list of authors, paper titles, designated paper lengths, and short-paper/long-paper designations to your assigned editor. Step 7: Approve front-matter proofs ----------------------------------- If keynote speakers, abstracts, and so forth haven't yet been decided, you're stuck... Step 8: Dun authors for extra page charges ------------------------------------------ After final manuscripts have been submitted, you will know (or can find out from your editor) who had extra pages and can request payment appropriately. Ask your general chair what payment types are acceptable. It's worthwhile to send e-mail to each author asking them to confirm the amount and confirm that payment is being processed. Many authors won't send payment until it's requested, so this is a polite way of prodding them. Some authors will want to pay with credit card. It's best to have this set up with the general/finance chair by the final-manuscript deadline.