Authors & Publish chair page, blog	Paper formatting page, blog	Initial paper submission chair, page, blog	Final paper submission chair, page, blog	Problematic papers - corrections page, blog
	Author [PDF,CrossCheck] tests page, blog	IEEE PDF eXpress - paper format chair, page, blog	IEEE electronic Copyright (eCf) chair, page, blog	Attendee downloads of papers page, blog
	Conference registration page, blog	Travel visas to Hungary page, blog	Conference presentations page, blog	HELP contacts WCCI2020, system
Non-Author actions	Paper reviews - authors' perspective page, blog	IEEE CrossCheck text similarity chair, page, blog	IEEE Xplore web-publish chair, page, blog
	IEEE Conference Application chair	IEEE Letter of Acquisition chair	IEEE Publication Form chair	Software systems page

Conference Guides for [IEEE-CIS, INNS] conferences : Although this guide was initially set up for IJCNN2019, and was used for IEEE WCCI 2020, hopefully some of the basic information may still help [organising committee members, authors] up to 2023-2025 (assuming a half-life of links and process information of 3-5 years?). The Authors' and Publications menus have been combined, allowing authors to see the Publications Chair perspective as well. I am no longer keeping this up to date. Bill Howell, 11Dec2020

Publications Chair Guide

Warnings and recommendations

My advice is spread out over this "Publications Guide", but warnings for two particularly critical themes are covered by :

IEEE CrossCheck text-similarity - provide the quantitative criteria to the authors, get them to check BEFORE submitting, and don't call it "plagiarism"!!
IEEE electronic Copyright form (eCf) - test the system BEFORE final papers are due!!
Last minute things not found elsewhere :
- sftp site - set this up long before initial paper submissions, as it's a great tool for committee work : sending contact lists, paper lists, CrossCheck results, etc]
- Strong Advice - Do NOT handle [PDF eXpress, eCf, etc] submissions manually, as I did in the past when things fell apart. Take 2 or 3 weeks if required to delay the submissions and fix the process, or you will waste a HUGE amount of your time!
- Set "Liberation serif" 10 point as the standard font!! DO NOT use Times New Roman, which is proprietary and causes headaches and a big waste of everyone's time!!

15Aug2019 TOO MUCH WORKLOAD, Howell's additional comments :

Things are far more detailed now than even in the recent past 2-5 years ago. if the new standards are to be maintained, then we need far more volunteeers for Publications, or we should pay more for the management company's time, AND contract IEEE-MCE to do the IEEE system stuff.

I would certainly NEVER do that amount of work again, it was ridiculous.

There is a lot of work associated with the Publications processes, especially when the systems don't work well. I strongly recommend having at least FIVE Publications Co-Chairs (up from my 01Ap2019 recommendation of >=2 Co-Chairs!), which would allow them to focus on specific tasks with some limitation to the time required for each task. For example :

Publications Co-Chair #1 - [setup, testing] of Cholewo's paper review system for copyrights, submitt IEEE applications :

[Initial, final] paper submission setup and testing - While this is done by [Tomasz Cholewo, [IEEE-CIS, INNS] conference management company], the Publications Chair needs to be able to test the process and see the system [emails, error messages]. Serious glitches with BOTH conferences I was involved with as Publications Chair are a huge waste of time and annoyance at the wrong time! Key item - create at least 10 fake papers to put through all stages of paper pre including final paper acceptance etc. This is very importnat for testing, and these are easily removed at the end of the process.
Set up [Conference, Publications, PDF eXpress, Copyright, CrossCheck, Letter of Acquisition] applications to IEEE. Normally, the conference application is done by the General Co-Chairs, but if this isn't done early, then the Publications Chairs have to step in and do it or it will creat big problems for them very soon!
manually check ALL pages of final submission papers that had formatting problems at the initial submission stage. Email a warning to authors to submit fixes to Publications Co-Chair #1, or their papers will be rejected.

Publications Co-Chair #2 - CrossCheck:

CrossCheck - Heed my warnings on the CrossCheck text-similarity site! Authors must be able to test their initial papers BEFORE submission! They need to SEE the quantitative criteria and formulae for rejection! And these policies should be specified very early - long before initial papers are being submitted! Changes can always be made, but they do mean extra work for the Publications Co-Chair (maybe a HUGE amount of work!).
Conference program and papers [USB or Online] - if the program is printed, this goes to conference management company
manually [run, spreadsheet results] CrossCheck LONG BEFORE paper acceptance notices! :

Publications Co-Chair #3 - PDF eXpress problems, Conference program book :

Help authors with PDF eXpress checks on paper formatting - often page [margins, size], maybe fonts etc
Keep this job separate from CrossCheck! Both tasks are time-critical at the same time.
Adapt Yoonsuck Choe's latex setup to produce the conference program. Tomasz Cholewo provides some download material, I think.
Gather material from [INNS, IEEE-CIS] Presidents, IJCNN General Co-Chairs, Pleanary Speakers, Sponsors, etc etc
Online version for public download - with links to papers that are put in same directory.
Printed version for use during the conference - printing is typically arranged by the conference management company (Association Resources for IJCNN2019).

ALL Publications Co-Chairs - manual check of ALL initial submission papers after CrossCheck is run on them all

For 800 papers, I recommend AT LEAST 5 people are needed to manually check ALL pages of ALL initial submission papers. Failing that, I don't belief that a serious, competent] check will be done, based on my experience. It's really boring work that no-one wants to do, and it takes a great deal of time - say 3 minutes per paper at least, plus download times of CrossChecked papers - 7 ours for 100 papers?). Remember, there is no company doing these checks and compilations for us! Besides the Publications Co-Chairs, ask the Technical Co-Chairs to help. EACH volunteer needs to compile lists of [papers, problems] :
- talley CrossCheck key indicators (eg maximum contiguous text similarity, etc) for each paper
- formatting note for papers with problems - [margins, page size, NO [headersm, footers], font (Liberation Serif), acknowlegments in section before references, etc]
- collate reports from all"checkers" (Publications Co-Chairs) -
- email all authors with formatting problems
- report to General Chair - to reject papers that have not been fixed

Publications Co-Chair #4 - copyrights, overlay [header, footer]s on ALL conference papers (several iterations) :

IEEE electronic Copyright form (eCf) - including "special copyrights", and assurance that the proper copyright notices appear in each final paper. This issue has cost a HUGE amount of Publications Co-Chair time for both IJCNN[2017, 2019], especially 2017 when it failed at a critical moment. Pre-test the system long before paper acceptance notifications to make sure that it works.
Help authors with copyright problems.
Check Cholewo's paper system to make sure that copyright information is getting through. Download paper info to spreadsheet for tracking [missing, problematic] copyrights.
Create a text file of [paper #, Copyright type, paper title], where "Copyright type = one of [CRWN, Euro, IEEE, USGv]. This listing must be updates, as it dictates which final papers are processed to IEEE Xpress status.

Publications Co-Chair #5 - online paper access for conference attendees, CrossCheck results for Publications Committee :

IF online paper access is used in the future, then at least for a couple of years as conference attendees get used to it and as bash scripts or software systems are being built, I strongly recommend that this be handled by a an individual with NO other conference responsibilities.
Contract sftp server, and [modify, augment] scripts to maintain it. For future conferences, automated user de-activation based on cumulative file download volumes is needed.
Upload final papers to sftp system for access by [conference attendees, IEEE-Xplore].
End-user support is the big challenge here - quite frankly, many attendeesstruggle with [simple, basic] software. On the other hand, we all have to use hunderds, perhaps thousands of different software, so no-one wants to become an expert in using yet another package. The great majority of attendees easily use sftp, a fraction cannot seem to get it right.
NO end-user support should be provided during the conference, as this will ruin the volunteer's own participation in sessions etc. Some work is required to add new attendees that registered at the conference. New attendees can look at the [web, blog]-pages, and ask other attendees for advice if they are having trouble.
IEEE Xplore submission post-conference (within 6 weeks!)
Eventually, perhaps the IEEE will contract Tomasz Cholewo to extend his paper review system to handle online paper access. That would be the most efficient apprioach, I think. Even if a Publications Co-Chair does this, sftp is dead simple and robust, so once automated it won't require much time. Most current volunteer [work, time] is user support, but in future attendees should pay consultant for help if they need it, as we shouldn't baby-sit for basic tools like this!
Note that this system would be GREAT to work with CrossCheck results etc within the Publications Committee, long before online access for conference attendees!

Authors' Guide - an historical note and assessment

For IJCNN2019, the [Authors', Publications] Guides were created MAINLY as an aid to help better understand the Publications process, with provision of [information, instructions] to authors being only a side-benefit (targetted to young researchers in particular, and scientists with no familairity with the IEEE systems). This was a trial project, and I DON'T recommend continuing it, as it requires a huge amount of time, and <<1/4 of the papers made use of it. Only IF a targeted survey provides strong support from student authors that it was useful would I recommend considering it, and even then... good luck finding someone as stupid as I to do it!

It is definitely NOT worth doing if the time is not put into regular posting of author inquiries and the solutions to the blogs, with modifications to the pages as required during critical times of [system, process, policy] problems.

If the Authors' Guide is continued by future IJCNNs, then it's important to add a Publications Co-Chair to handle it alone, with committement of othe Organising Committeemembers to copy the Authors' Guide Co-Chair on emails [from, to] authors. Without the latter, the site will rapidly become useless.

Remember that the Authors' Guide covers more than just Publications Issues, and [repeats, overlaps] information available on the official conference website.

Description of the Publications Guide website

The purpose of this Guide is to provide a [simple, compact] description of the Publications Chair's [responsibilities, process, links], especially for volunteers who are new to this role. This web-page is the "home page" for the Guide, providing an overall description. Details that are already available in the Authors' Guide for IEEE conferences are not usually included here. That includes most "policy" details, meaning that authors and chairs will have the same view by looking at the Authors' Guide.

The site is composed of several web-pages, with a [simple, ugly] menu table near the top of each web-page (HTML-only coding). Note that all images have links, and that [People, Contact, mailto] links are specific to the current conference being organised.

I have NOT provided separate blogs for each of the themes of the Publications Chair Guide. Instead, selected emails [from, to] the Publications Chair over the course of the conference organisation are pasted at the bottom of Publications web-pages. These will hopefully provide some valuable [guidance, information] on [processes, contacts, problems, solutions] for future Publications Chairs.

Notes on the Menu of the Publications web-pages (near the top of each page, under the conference image) :

the upper 3 rows are the same as the Menu of the Authors' Guide, for familiarity
items have links to the Authors' Guide [web-pages, blogs]. HOWEVER, the Authors Guide [web-pages, blogs] do NOT link back to the Publications Guide! This is to avoid confusing authors with information that they don't need.
Author-only items not directly involving the Publications Chair do not have a "chair" link.
Items with no Author Guide equivalent (4th row of Menu) do not have [page, blog] links

Note also that as of 10Jan2019, this website is [incomplete, sometimes erroneous, user untested].

Publications schedule : [Actions, Processes]

The rough schedule below is based on the IEEE high level conference timeline. For [first time, rare] use, the [terminology, process] of the IEEE system can be a bit confusing. It's important NOT to omit actions at critical stages of the process, and perhaps this Guide will help with that.

The IEEE-MCE webpage "Quick links to Required Forms" (oops - I've lost the link) is a good reference to keep in mind.

WARNING! : My experience with IJCNN[2017, 2019] is that I routinely lose access to ALL of the IEEE systems, including my normal IEEE WebAcess account as a member! This can be very frustrating as it can occur at critical times when I was in a rush. I have no idea of the cause of the problem - some of it is my own fault (somehow), but I suspect that there is a programming glitch somewhere...

Initial setup for IEEE publications :

Month	Description
-24 (-10)	IEEE Conference Application This is usually prepared by the General Chair(s), but as Publications Chair I did it for IJCNN2019 to speed the processes below up. You must specify the use of IEEE [PDF eXpress Plus, eXplore, CrossCheck] and perhaps a few other details....????
-18 (-9)	IEEE Letter of Acquisition The IEEE Conference Application must have been accepted (or at least submitted) before the IEEE Letter of Acquisition can be submitted, but I suggest that you don't wait. Prepare it early, and leave it in "Edit Mode" so that you aren't messing with it if deadlines get compressed.
-18 (-9)	IEEE Publication Form "Officially" the IEEE Conference Application (see above) must have been accepted (or at least submitted) before the Publication Form can be submitted, but I suggest that you don't wait. Prepare it early, and leave it in "Edit Mode" so that you aren't messing with it if deadlines get compressed.
-18 (-9)	IEEE PDF eXpress plus Following acceptace of the IEEE Publication Form, the IEEE will setup a PDF eXpress Plus site for the conference. They will email you a temporay password and link to the site, and provide a guide for its use. ?Set this system up so that authors can check their paper formats as they START preparing their initial paper submission.?
n/a (-9)	IEEE Cross-Check plagiarism checks After the IEEE Publication Form has been accepted, Register for IEEE CrossCheck when you receive the email notice of acceptance of the IEEE Publication form.
n/a (-9)	Paper reviews Tomasz Cholewo's paper submission system is CORE to the publications process!! Tomasz sets it up on request from the Publications Chair (or for IJCNN2019 by inquiry by the INNS management contractor). While not directly involved in the review process, the Publications Chair must be aware of its progress, and prompt the General Co-Chairs if needed for an early setup and testing. The Publications Chair requires admin priviledges to be able to access papers for [CrossCheck, eCf confirmations, conference program. proceedings]. The [General, Program] Co-Chairs test it with practice submissions, and the INNS management company provides a portal and quick instructions for authors on the www.ijcnn.org site.
-18 (-7)	IEEE Electronic Copyright Form (eCf) After the IEEE Publication Form has been accepted, the IEEE Electronic Copyright Registration Form is sent out to you (or the person who registered the [conference, publications] ~2 WEEKS before the initial Paper Submission deadline that you defined in your ?[IEEE Conference Registration, IEEE Publication]? form. A link to this form must be provided to authors : in the paper submission confirmation email, on the conference Paper Submissions web-page, and in the Authors' Guide for the IEEE electronic Copyright form (eCf).
+1.5 (n/a)	IEEE eXplore web-publishing of conference proceedings In the IEEE Conference Application, you must have committed to IEEE Xplore web-publishing of conference proceedings. AFTER the conference, papers are packaged with other material, and the package is submitted within ?6 weeks? to IEEE eXplore. ... further comments to be added later ...

Month = months [before(-), after(+)] the conference starts. Numbers in parenthesis are actual times for IJCNN2019.

Short description of key processes :

Follow the [initial, final] paper submissions : (-6 to -4 months)
IEEE Cross-Check plagiarism checks Technical Co-Chairs - do the paper checks, making detailed notes on papers to be considered for rejection consistent with "policies" as described in the Authors' Guide : IEEE CrossCheck web-page, plus feedback from reviewers where available. Publications Chair provides back-up to assist the Technical Co-Chairs. Also, a list of papers with authors that may be under a "publication ban" is provided to the IEEE Intellectual Property group (IEEE-IP) - see below. General Co-Chairs make the final decisions on rejections. IEEE Intellectual Property group (IEEE-IP) - looks closely at the list of authiors potentially under a "publications ban" and confirms whether or not the papers will be removed from the list of papers in IEEE Xplore online proceedings. Note that they are very cautious about this - even if author names are the same as banned authors, it requires confirmation of the instution etc to make sure that innocent authors are not unduly punished.	IEEE PDF eXpress plus Publications Chair : Respond to any problems that authors are encountering with this, and where appropriate get them to go through PDF eXpress help. Note that most requests for help might go to the [Program, Technical] Co-Chairs.	IEEE Electronic Copyright Form (eCf) after the final paper submission deadline Publications Chair : Double check to make sure that the system is working well before the final paper submisssion deadline! If it fails, as in IJCNN2017, it creates a huge amount of work! Email a reminder to authors who have not yet submitted the eCf. [General, Program] Co-Chairs may also be doing this?
Publish the conference program book :
Prepare front-end material : (-6 to -4 months) INNS managment company : [front&back covers, table of contents, layout of conference rooms, Organising committee list, Topic chairs, ?Reviewers? [INNS, IEEE-CIS] President, General Co-Chairs] : Write welcome text forthe conference.	Build the conference schedules : after paper acceptance (-6 to -4 months) [General, Program] Co-Chairs : After the "camera ready" paper submission deadline, iteratively produce the schedule of conference [sessions, papers], using Tomasz Cholewo's paper submission system, and Yoonsuck Choe's Latex setup. Publications Chair : Produce (via LaTeX) the "program at a glance".	Build the conference program book : after "camera-ready" paper submission deadline (-4 months) [Publications Chair, INNS management company] : Use the [front end material, conference schedules] and Yoonsuck Choe's Latex setup to iteratively produce the electronic version of the conference program.	Publish and ship the conference program : (-3 months) This is done by the INNS management company, who selects the publisher. Often a publisher local to the site of the conference is selected.
On-line publishing of conference proceedings after the conference
IEEE eXplore (+0.5 month) Once the conference has taken place, "no show" papers that were not authorized by the ?Program? Co-Chairs are removed from the list of papers that go in the proceedings. ... as I have not personally done this part of the publications, more comments etc should be added by others later. IEEE links do provide many details ...

months [before(-), after(+)] the conference starts

Primary publication duties

A good overall description of the Publications Chair's duties is provided by the IEEE-MCE :

Completing and submitting the IEEE Conference Publication Form, which is required for inclusion in the IEEE Conference Publications Program (CPP). The CPP handles conference content acquisition and post-conference distribution for conferences sponsored and co-sponsored by IEEE Organizational Units (Society/Council, Charter, Region, Section and/or Board).
Ensuring adherence to the requirements outlined in the Letter of Acquisition received upon acceptance into the CPP.
Working closely with the Technical Program to ensure that authors receive proper instructions for final paper submission.
Determining if non-presented papers will be pulled from submission to IEEE Xplore© (more information about Handling Non-Presented Papers).
Ensuring that the IEEE Copyright Form has been submitted with each paper to be published.
Ensuring that papers are submitted according to the specifications addressed in Preparing Conference Content for the IEEE Xplore Digital Library.
Guaranteeing adherence to guidelines and policies within IEEE Intellectual Property Rights including use of copyright, master brand/logo and trademarks.
Preparing the design for the on-site conference proceedings.
Pursuing publication alternatives for on-site publications.
Collecting all front matter for the final program and conference proceedings from various organizers. Front matter may include: cover art, General Chair's message, Program Chair's message, listing of Conference Committee Chairs and Members, conference sponsors, listing of sessions, photos, and other conference-specific information.
Determining price of on-site conference proceedings. Conference proceedings may be included in the registration fee or sold separately at the conference. IEEE requires that IEEE members receive a discount from the price charged to non-members.
Understanding IEEE's responsibilities with respect to International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR) as well as IEEE's policy for handling manuscripts from authors in embargoed countries based upon rulings of the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).

Problems with the conference systems

01Apr2019 Howell's initial comments

We are using fantastic systems for managing the IJCNN conference, including those for [conference website, Cholewo's paper system for [initial, final] paper submissions, IEEE CrossCheck text-similarity, IEEE PDF eXpress checker, IEEE copyright, author conference registrations, etc]. The IEEE provides a wealth of information for each of their systems, including rich sets of FAQs. There is so much information, it can be a barrier even for Organising Committee members, as none of us want to invest a huge amount of time into becoming experts for all details. Pragmatically, it is far more efficient to learn just what is necessary to handle current problems, than to go into details that we will forget immediately anyways, when they won't be useful to the current work at hand.

And yet, there are always problems that cost a lot of time and scrambling to fix, and that are [annoying, scary] for both [authors, Organising Committee]. It is not at all helpful to listen to the [positive, definite] assurances that these systems [are set up, work, don't worry] - these people are usually [wrong, not much help when things do go wrong]. What has worked well is teamwork (Tomasz Cholewo has always been a powerful help for many IJCNNs!!), and this includes the authors, who are sometimes the best trouble-shooters!

Most of the problems for IJCNN[2017, 2019] were associated with the [CrossCheck, PDF eXpress, copyright, final paper] submissions, and these arose from :

"Memoryless" conference organisation - The passing on of information from past conferences is sporadic at best, and it is difficult to get pragmatic details from previous Chairs (usually read "zero"). I assume that information at the General Co-Chair level is still passed on, but that lacks most usable detail for specific Chair responsibilities.
[insufficient, inadequate] testing - As a rule, systems should be tested, especially for the "[Inter-system handshaking, Information hiding, lack of information on how systems work together]" issue listed below. Frankly, this hasn't worked well! Things often seem to be in place and working well, but reality is otherwise. I recommend that the Publications Co-Chairs set up about 10 test papers, with a variety of special [ALL student, copyrights, PDF eXpress, CrossCheck, etc] content. These can be taken all the way through all of the processes, to be deleted before sending for the [conference program, IEEEXplore].
Failure to specify policies (missing entirely) - In theory, carry-over of policies from previous IJCNNs is the rule, but when the web-pages are copied over from previous IJCNNs, this is not done fully, or it may in some cases be difficult to find the old web-pages. Perhaps an operational contributor is that web-pages aren't put together until they are needed by authors, resulting in a flood of author requests that was totally unnecessary. I recommend preparing ALL web-pages and having them posted at the very start of setting up the website, but having only active web-pages included in the ijcnn menu until they are required by authors (which is often long before they become available).
[insufficient, incorrect, poorly specified] policies - both on the [IJCNN, Authors' Guide] websites. There is a wealth of detail available, and it's hard to condense that down to [simple, coherent, consistent, correct] information for all to see.
Changing policy details - This isn't really so much a problem, as it is normal that policies evolve over time. However, it often creates delays and avoidable request from authors as the new policies aren't [reflected on web-pages, well formulated, stable, lack necessary details]
Information hiding of [inter-system handshaking, how systems work [individually, together]] - This is a major impediment to solving problems quickly, as it's just not clear how this works, and what information is being passed. Author feedback has been critical to resolving several issues, as they often figure out how to make things work for their own papers - but you have to follow up with the successful authors to find out how they succeeded.
Insufficient attention by authors to the details, even when well specified. I think a fair portion of this is due to unfamiliarity with the IEEE systems, and probably language issues as well.
Authors usually don't provide adequate information related to their problem, even after subsequent requests for specific details.

Blog (email) exchanges for WCCI2020 advice

The following exchange brings out further comments regarding the organisation ofthe Publications Committee. Note that for IJCNN2019, [Chul Sung, Yoonsuck Choe, Bill Howell] did substantive work on on the Publications tasks, with [Khan Iftekarhudrin, Dongbin Zhao] putting in several hours to help with [CrossCheck, paperformatting] checks of ~200 papers each.

-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: Re: WCCI2020 Publications notes from IJCNN2019
Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2019 14:53:11 -0400
From: Chul Sung <...@gmail.com>
To: stefano squartini <...@gmail.com>
CC: Bill Howell. Hussar. Alberta. Canada <...@univpm.it>

Bill is much above me so I don't have to add on your comments but the below information checklist is very helpful.
And the below link is an online guide for the Attendee sftp downloads of conference papers Bill created.

http://www.billhowell.ca/Neural%20nets/Conference%20guides/Author%20guide%20website/Attendee%20downloads%20of%20conference%20papers.html

+---+
Dear Conference Organizer:

As you prepare for your conference, we want to take the opportunity to provide you with information on the progress of your copyright compliance and Packing List preparation.

Electronic Copyright:

Included in this email is a link to the "IEEE Electronic Copyright Transfer Report". This report provides the status on transfer of copyright by your conference authors for each of your conference papers.

The report includes: eCF Paper ID, Author Name, Author Email and Copyright Status. Please ensure all authors of accepted papers complete copyright transfer, prior to submission of your final content to IEEE. If your conference is not 100% compliant in regard to copyright transfer; we will be unable to publish your conference proceedings in the IEEE Xplore digital library.

When reviewing your report please be aware of the following:

The Authorized Signatory Name & Email fields are populated when an Author designates a representative to sign the IEEE Copyright form.
If a "Pending" status is displayed in the Copyright Type field, copyright has not been transferred to IEEE. Please contact the Author, or if listed, the Authorized Signatory, to complete the copyright transfer.

To access the report, click here

Packing List Preparation (New Features):

In order to ensure eCF compliance you will need to include the following information in your Packing List:

eCF Paper ID field: "Original Research" must include the eCF Paper ID if copyright has been transferred.
eCF Transfer Complete (Y/N/NA) field: Indicate whether copyright has been transferred for your "Original Research" by selecting "Y" (Yes) or "N" (No). For all other file types, please select "NA" (Not Applicable)

Packing List Checker tool: Utilize this tool to validate the Packing List prior to submission. The Packing List Checker tool should be used anytime a change is made to the Packing List.

If you have any questions regarding the IEEE Electronic Copyright Transfer Report, please contact the IEEE Intellectual Property Rights Office:
+---+

Sincerely,
Chul Sung

-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: RE: WCCI2020 Publications notes from IJCNN2019
Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2019 09:27:09 -0600
From: Bill Howell. Hussar. Alberta. Canada <...@BillHowell.ca>
To: Alice Smith. Publication Co-Chair. WCCI2020 Glasgow. Auburn U. Alabama. USA <...@auburn.edu>
CC: Stefano Squartini. Publication Co-Chair. WCCI2020 Glasgow. Universita Politecnica Delle Marche. Italy <...@gmail.com>

Chul - Again, you will have a valuable perspective on Alice's questions, ideas that are different from mine.

Alice - My intent was to "remove the scariness" of the role, not to induce it. So I guess my email backfired. To me, as long as you have more than enough people on the committee, and somewhat defined [tasks, challenges, roles, etc], Publications will be a [reasonable, pleasant] effort for each Committee member! That's important - otherwise people won't come back to volunteer, and others won't be scared away from assuming the roles.

But if it all falls to two people WITH the new tasks (see "Kill or reduce tasks" below), to do everything is too much, at least for my liking. Approaches that can be [used, mixed] to reduce the workload per Publications Co-Chair include :

Kill or reduce tasks :
- Online access to papers by conference attendees - Go back to USB memory stick, and you won't have any work to do beyond what you already have to do (collect all papers in a format ready for IEEE Xplore).
- CrossCheck - Nobody else is doing CrossCheck in the detailed way, so you don't have to. Take a simplistic cut-off that is automatically produced by the CrossCheck Summaries, and use that (see the Authors' Guide : CrossCheck). That's essentially what some journal associate editors are doing.
- [Authors', Publications] Guides - I've already stated elsewhere that while this helped me understand the Publications process, the low level of usage of the site does not justify the work required to operate it (i.e. adding details, comments etc). (...Howell's addition 21Aug2019, this wasn't in the original email...)
- Fix the ongoing [confusion, crashes] for [copyrights, [initial, final] paper submissions, post-final paper edits]. Frequently these occur at the interface of [IEEE, Tomasz Cholewo's paper system, IJCNN Publications] systems, activities]. My problem for [2017, 2019] was mostly due to the [obscurity, invisibility] of these interfaces. It's a really bad idea to hide the details, as it makes trouble-shooting very [difficult, slow].
Publications Committee strength - My guess is that 5 active people will make this a comfortable, pleasant experience. That may be too many, but far better too many than too few!
Less will be required over time as the systems mature. There were two radically different processes for IJCNN2019 :
- CrossCheck - I'll repeat a quick description of why this took so much time for IJCNN2019 :
  - a complete listing of all automatic summary indicators for ALL initial paper submissions
  - a manual, page-by-page perusal and measurement of all papers having >30% text-similarity ratings by CrossCheck. This was also useful for paper formatting and other common problems.
  - [development, approval] of strict [measurements, formulae] for paper rejection by text-similarity, with different factors for [self, external] similarity
  - copying CrossCheck results to a spreadsheet of all papers, with the addition of [measurements, notes, comments] for papers >30% similarity
  - long lists of papers to reject - we provided warnings for many to give them a chance to comply. That of course takes a lot of time
  - All of this is time-critical - >50% of rejections were not implemented because we ran out of time!
- Online paper access - sftp is really easy to [administer, use] once [administrators, users] learn the system & software evolves to do it [properly, easily]. Sftp's [maintenance, security] can be automated, and it is far more [adpatable, powerful, automatable] than most commercially-available free systems. If IEEE will accept [DropBox, Google Docs, etc], then that is even much easier (albeit far less secure in its normal form, less adaptable).
IEEE-MCE Publications group services - can be contracted to do much of the real work. Insofar as much of the work is[dull, repetitive, detailed, complex], there is a big advantage to having it done professionally. Management Company's (Association Resources for IJCNN2019) have long been used for much of the real work of conferences, this would add more, and leave the "really [fun, interesting, direct science-people-related]" work to scientists.

What are the most important / minimum steps we need to collectively accomplish for this role?

Summary information is available on each [web, blog]-page of the [Authors', Publications] Guides, including overall [summaries, recommendations]. I'm not fond of "arm waving, yapping" for something like this, I always want to see the details (substance over rhetoric). So I won't try to distill it down, beyond many [summary, recommendation] lists in emails and on the [web, blog] pages. Hiding away from the details makes them seemingly disappear, but they are still there and thereby become unknown and treacherous. Those doing a task need to go into details, but easy access to the [web, blog] pages makes it easier for others to understand what is being done, when it affects them, and without a flurry of superficial emails that cannot even repeat the essence of what has already been said.
I had trouble in 2017 keeping track of the tasks and nomenclature, which is why I did the "Authors' Guide" [web, blog]-pages - it's really more of a Publications Co-Chair Guide, but I had to understand the authors' point of view to do that. It's the detailed [critical path, planning-action following] that count for me, and it was hard for me to [understand, follow] the huge amount of information on the IEEE Publications web-sites. Those IEEE sits are still the core of information, it's just a question of how to make it easy to follow the material. Obviously, the exact same challenge exists with my [emails, [web, blog]-pages]!
You could easily do a MUCH better job than I at preparing a Publications Guide. Maybe the main use for my [Authors', Publications] Guide is to help you and other Publications Committees to do that, while at the same time trying to address the "memoryless organisation" that the conference organisation seems to suffer from. Perhaps IEEE-CIS guides for WCCI, IJCNN, FUZZ-IEEE, IEEE-CEC] are much more appropriate - but I've never seen anything from them, even when I was the WCCI2018 Publiciaty Co-Chair for mass emails.

-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: RE: WCCI2020 Publications notes from IJCNN2019
Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2019 10:15:50 +0000
From: Alice Smith <...@auburn.edu>
To: Bill Howell. Hussar. Alberta. Canada <...@univpm.it>
CC: Chul Sung. Publications Chair. IJCNN2019 Budapest. IBM Watson. USA <...@gmail.com>

Hi Bill, thank you. I do not really understand what all is needed for this role. And, frankly, your email is scaring me. What are the most important / minimum steps we need to collectively accomplish for this role? Alice

-------- Forwarded Message --------
From: Bill Howell. Hussar. Alberta. Canada <...@BillHowell.ca>
Sent: Thursday, August 15, 2019 6:07 PM
To: Stefano Squartini. Publication Co-Chair. WCCI2020 Glasgow. Universita Politecnica Delle Marche. Italy <...@auburn.edu>
Cc: Chul Sung. Publications Chair. IJCNN2019 Budapest. IBM Watson. USA <...@gmail.com>
Subject: Fwd: WCCI2020 Publications notes from IJCNN2019

Stefano Squartini, Alice Smith - I spent today on finishing touches to the [Authors', Publications] Guides for IJCNN2019, so as to leave some notes and recommendations for future conferences. Even though the [menus, content] have changed, just refresh the webpages linked below to make sure that you are looking at the most recent versions, and the menus for the [Publications, Author] Guides will allow you to access [new, updated] [web, blog]-pages.

From your perspectives, perhaps the most important overall issues relate to :

Workload for the Publications Co-Chairs - I feel that there is far too much work for two people, especially if you continue to do all of the "components" that we did to the same level of detail. I definitely recommend a committee of five persons, with a preliminary guess at the responsibilities for each in a list below. That may seem like a lot of people, but it's best to have too many than to end up overwhelmed with work at critical times!
Early decisions and preparations -
- CrossCheck analysis - will you do a full analysis of ALL papers according to well-described criteria? If so, you should have an agreement on that from the General Co-Chairs by mid-September, and a description of CrossCheck-based screening should be available to authors by the end of October! Ideally, you should also provide an easy software tool to do approximate Cross Check analysis during paper preparations. That might not be [cheap, easy]. You will also need to set up spreadsheets for the papers (from Cholewo's system) and for CrossCheck results. The latter for IJCNN2019 is on one of the web-pages as an example (also very useful for the authors!).
- Online paper access for conference attendees - from one month before the conference, to one month after. WCCI2018 used Whova, IJCNN2019 used (at the very last moment) sftp. I don't consider [Google Docs, Drop Box, etc] to have adequate security (at least in the way they are commonly used), but IEEE may give the OK to their use in the near future? sftp is a long-time standard, very simple to set up and use, and powerful beyond the common "user friendly" free software. It is also quite useful for other Committtee work! Note that several attendees HATED sftp, but ~2/3 seemed to download papers within 6 accesses, and I don't know of any who didn't ultimately succeed if they were serious about it (i.e. asked for help).
- Both items above are new to IJCNN, in the sense that they go far beyond what was done previously. For example, one of our Technical Committee Co-Chairs routinely does CrossCheck analysis for a publication. But that was nothing like the details of the system used for IJCNN2019.

Chul Sung - You probably have valuable comments to make from your perspective. Don't worry at all about contradicting me, it's important that any [suggestions, comments, criticisms] that you have are made known.

I hope that helps with your WCCI2020 efforts,

*******************
Quick description of recent changes, missing components

Authors' Guide - key changes to :
- Attendee downloads of conference papers blog.html
- Attendee downloads of conference papers.html
- Attendee downloads - summary.html
- Paper final submission.html
- Paper formatting.html
- Paper initial submission.html
>> double-check these after "conference guides - update inserts.ndf"

Publications Guide - key changes to :
- PubChair guide.html

Publications Guide - missing web-pages :

Conference program book
- I don't have a full description of Yoonsuck Choe's conference book production via [LaTeX, Perl], but key components are available on my website.

Software consolidation/ description : (mostly bash scripts, QNial programs)
- While all or most software is available on my website, I was going to clean it up, update the files, provide some overall guidance. However, that would take considerable time, and what is posted is a great start if someone wants to use it.

****************
Preliminary suggestions for Publications Chair responsibilities
(from the Publications Guide)
15Aug2019 TOO MUCH WORKLOAD, Howell's additional comments :

Things are far more detailed now than even in the recent past 2-5 years ago. if the new standards are to be maintained, then we need far more volunteeers for Publications, or we should pay more for the management company's time, AND contract IEEE-MCE to do the IEEE system stuff.

I would certainly NEVER do that amount of work again, it was ridiculous.

There is a lot of work associated with the Publications processes, especially when the systems don't work well. I strongly recommend having at least FIVE Publications Co-Chairs (up from my 01Ap2019 recommendation of >=2 Co-Chairs!), which would allow them to focus on specific tasks with some limitation to the time required for each task. For example :

Publications Co-Chair #1 - [setup, testing] of Cholewo's paper review system for copyrights, submitt IEEE applications :

[Initial, final] paper submission setup and testing - While this is done by [Tomasz Cholewo, [IEEE-CIS, INNS] conference management company], the Publications Chair needs to be able to test the process and see the system [emails, error messages]. Serious glitches with BOTH conferences I was involved with as Publications Chair are a huge waste of time and annoyance at the wrong time! Key item - create at least 10 fake papers to put through all stages of paper pre including final paper acceptance etc. This is very important for testing, and these are easily removed at the end of the process.
Set up [Conference, Publications, PDF eXpress, Copyright, CrossCheck, Letter of Acquisition] applications to IEEE. Normally, the conference application is done by the General Co-Chairs, but if this isn't done early, then the Publications Chairs have to step in and do it or it will creat big problems for them very soon!
manually check ALL pages of final submission papers that had formatting problems at the initial submission stage. Email a warning to authors to submit fixes to Publications Co-Chair #1, or their papers will be rejected.

Publications Co-Chair #2 - CrossCheck:

CrossCheck - Heed my warnings on the CrossCheck text-similarity site! Authors must be able to test their initial papers BEFORE submission! They need to SEE the quantitative criteria and formulae for rejection! And these policies should be specified very early - long before initial papers are being submitted! Changes can always be made, but they do mean extra work for the Publications Co-Chair (maybe a HUGE amount of work!).
Conference program and papers [USB or Online] - if the program is printed, this goes to conference management company
manually [run, spreadsheet results] CrossCheck LONG BEFORE paper acceptance notices! :

Publications Co-Chair #3 - PDF eXpress problems, Conference program book :

Help authors with PDF eXpress checks on paper formatting - often page [margins, size], maybe fonts etc
At initial paper submission stage - check authors against IEEE's blacklist of authors - their papers cannot be included in the conference proceedings!! You must identify potential "blacklusted authors", but IEEE makes the decision
Keep this job separate from CrossCheck! Both tasks are time-critical at the same time.
Adapt Yoonsuck Choe's latex setup to produce the conference program. Tomasz Cholewo provides some download material, I think.
Gather material from [INNS, IEEE-CIS] Presidents, IJCNN General Co-Chairs, Pleanary Speakers, Sponsors, etc etc
Online version for public download - with links to papers that are put in same directory.
Printed version for use during the conference - printing is typically arranged by the conference management company (Association Resources for IJCNN2019).

ALL Publications Co-Chairs - manual check of ALL initial submission papers after CrossCheck is run on them all

For 800 papers, I recommend AT LEAST 5 people are needed to manually check ALL pages of ALL initial submission papers. Failing that, I don't belief that a serious, competent] check will be done, based on my experience. It's really boring work that no-one wants to do, and it takes a great deal of time - say 3 minutes per paper at least, plus download times of CrossChecked papers - 7 ours for 100 papers?). Remember, there is no company doing these checks and compilations for us! Besides the Publications Co-Chairs, ask the Technical Co-Chairs to help. EACH volunteer needs to compile lists of [papers, problems] :

talley CrossCheck key indicators (eg maximum contiguous text similarity, etc) for each paper

formatting note for papers with problems - [margins, page size, NO [headersm, footers], font (Liberation Serif), acknowlegments in section before references, etc]

collate reports from all"checkers" (Publications Co-Chairs) -

email all authors with formatting problems

report to General Chair - to reject papers that have not been fixed

Publications Co-Chair #4 - copyrights, overlay [header, footer]s on ALL conference papers (several iterations) :

IEEE electronic Copyright form (eCf) - including "special copyrights", and assurance that the proper copyright notices appear in each final paper. This issue has cost a HUGE amount of Publications Co-Chair time for both IJCNN[2017, 2019], especially 2017 when it failed at a critical moment. Pre-test the system long before paper acceptance notifications to make sure that it works.
Help authors with copyright problems.
Check Cholewo's paper system to make sure that copyright information is getting through. Download paper info to spreadsheet for tracking [missing, problematic] copyrights.
Create a text file of [paper #, Copyright type, paper title], where "Copyright type = one of [CRWN, Euro, IEEE, USGv]. This listing must be updates, as it dictates which final papers are processed to IEEE Xpress status.

Publications Co-Chair #5 - online paper access for conference attendees, CrossCheck results for Publications Committee :

IF online paper access is used in the future, then at least for a couple of years as conference attendees get used to it and as bash scripts or software systems are being built, I strongly recommend that this be handled by a an individual with NO other conference responsibilities.
Contract sftp server, and [modify, augment] scripts to maintain it. For future conferences, automated user de-activation based on cumulative file download volumes is needed.
Upload final papers to sftp system for access by [conference attendees, IEEE-Xplore].
End-user support is the big challenge here - quite frankly, many attendeesstruggle with [simple, basic] software. On the other hand, we all have to use hunderds, perhaps thousands of different software, so no-one wants to become an expert in using yet another package. The great majority of attendees easily use sftp, a fraction cannot seem to get it right.
NO end-user support should be provided during the conference, as this will ruin the volunteer's own participation in sessions etc. Some work is required to add new attendees that registered at the conference. New attendees can look at the [web, blog]-pages, and ask other attendees for advice if they are having trouble.
IEEE Xplore submission post-conference (within 6 weeks!)
Eventually, perhaps the IEEE will contract Tomasz Cholewo to extend his paper review system to handle online paper access. That would be the most efficient apprioach, I think. Even if a Publications Co-Chair does this, sftp is dead simple and robust, so once automated it won't require much time. Most current volunteer [work, time] is user support, but in future attendees should pay consultant for help if they need it, as we shouldn't baby-sit for basic tools like this!
Note that this system would be GREAT to work with CrossCheck results etc within the Publications Committee, long before online access for conference attendees!

-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject:
RE: WCCI2020 Publications notes from IJCNN2019
Date: Mon, 4 Mar 2019 13:40:37 +0000
From: Alice Smith <...@auburn.edu>
To: stefano squartini <...@billhowell.ca>

Indeed, thanks. Ciao, Alice

-------- Forwarded Message --------
From: stefano squartini <...@gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, March 3, 2019 11:59 PM
To: Bill Howell. Hussar. Alberta. Canada <...@billhowell.ca>
Cc: s.squartini <...@auburn.edu>
Subject: Re: WCCI2020 Publications notes from IJCNN2019

Dear Bill,

thanks a lot for your email and useful information therein.

All the best

-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: WCCI2020 Publications notes from IJCNN2019
Date: Sun, 3 Mar 2019 16:43:36 -0700
From: Bill Howell. Hussar. Alberta. Canada <...@BillHowell.ca>
To: Stefano Squartini. Publication Co-Chair. WCCI2020 Glasgow. Universita Politecnica Delle Marche. Italy <...@auburn.edu>

Stefano, Alice - I created [Authors', Publications] Guides to help me plan Publications-related work for IJCNN2019, and in case these might be of use to you, the links are below in my 25Feb2019 email to Chul Sung, who has taken over from me as IJCNN2019 Publications Chair.

I started with the Authors' Guide, which provides most of the details, whereas the Publications Guide is mostly for details and processes that would [not help, confuse] authors. As such, the menu at the top of each "Publications Guide" web-page links to the "author" and "blog" web-pages of the "Authors' Guide", but the "Authors' Guide does NOT link to the "Publications Guide" (this can be confusing). The "blogs" in the "Authors' Guide" provide some level of detail about concerns and issues that arose.

As I haven't done all of the Publications responsibilities, the "Publications Guide" is missing information about the [preparation, printing] of the conference program and USB memory stick of the Proceedings, nor is there anything for the IEEE Xplore post-conference submission of papers for online posting by the IEEE.

There is, of course, no need to refer to these websites, especially if you've done the Publications Chair job before. Key information is available from the IEEE websites, which change regularly.

All the best,

-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: IJCNN [Authors', Publications] IEEE electronic Copyright forms (eCf) - update of sites
Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2019 16:45:01 -0700
From: Bill Howell. Hussar. Alberta. Canada <...@BillHowell.ca>
To: Chul Sung. Publications Chair. IJCNN2019 Budapest. IBM. USA <...@gmail.com>

I've updated the web-pages for copyrights :

Authors' Guide : http://www.billhowell.ca/Neural%20nets/Conference%20guides/Author%20guide%20website/IEEE%20CrossCheck.html
Authors' blog : http://www.billhowell.ca/Neural%20nets/Conference%20guides/Author%20guide%20website/IEEE%20electronic%20Copyright%20form%20blog.html
Publications Guide : http://www.billhowell.ca/Neural%20nets/Conference%20guides/Publications%20website/IEEE%20electronic%20Copyright%20form.html

You should check the "mailto" links, which are specific to your email address and the topic that authors are inquiring about. I didn't do many changes other than that - just some clean-up and tables of contents for two of the pages. At some time over the next two weeks, I'll update other places where I am linked to (other than for comments to the [Authors', Publications] Guides themselves, although I'll copy you on those).

That should be it for now - I'll just wait for a link from Tomasz Cholewo to test copyright submissions, but if we don't get anything by Thursday, I think you need to test it with Organising Committee submissions, before the authors try to do it and we run into problems.

Directory of available files for this webpage

Many thanks to our Sponsors & Exhibitors

Ongoing support : [IEEE, IEEE-CIS] for [CEC, FUZZ, IJCNN]; INNS for IJCNN; [IET, EPS] for CEC

2020 IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence, Glasgow, Scotland.....19-24 July 2020

2019 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks, Budapest, HUNGARY.....14-19 July 2019

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