Paper Submissions for SIGCSE Conferences by Henry M. Walker, Grinnell College For decades, authors have submitted papers to SIGCSE conferences; reviewers have supplied ratings and comments; and conference leaders have selected papers to yield a balanced, interesting program. Of course, with advances in technology, the process for submitting and reviewing papers has evolved remarkably; and plans are in progress for what we hope will be yet another successful transition for ITiCSE 2012. In the 1990s (and before), authors submitted papers in hard copy; of the four copies submitted, three were mailed to reviewers, and leaders retained one. By SIGCSE 1999, Program Chair, Bob Noonan, had developed scripts to collect and tabulate the reviews via email. However, because papers had to be mailed, reviewers were geographically limited to North America. For SIGCSE 2000, with strong encouragement from Conference Cochairs, Nell Dale and "Boots" Cassel, I worked with students, Weichao Ma and Dorene Mboya, and software consultants, Theresa Walker and Wayne Twitchell, to develop on-line submissions and reviewing. Papers could be submitted electronically or in hard copy (with an online cover sheet) as a backup. Although hard copy papers still required mailing to North American reviewers, electronic papers could be viewed by reviewers around the world. Initially, electronic submissions followed HTML format, but variations in browsers resulted in many reviewers seeing a different format from what authors thought they had submitted. Thus, SIGCSE 2001 replaced HTML format with pdf. SIGCSE Bulletin, Vol. 43, No. 4 Very quickly, electronic submission became quite popular, and hard copy was phased out by SIGCSE 2002. By 2004, John Dooley joined me in supporting, refining, and extending the online system; and by 2005 the system was adopted by ITiCSE conferences as well as SIGCSE Symposia. Over the years, additional conferences (sponsored by SIGITE, CCSC, and other groups) have adopted the software system, and the software is now used by 7-8 conferences annually. Of course, when the current system was first developed, conference submission and review systems were not widely available, and the current system evolved to meet specific needs of SIGCSE and its conferences. Now (in 2011), however, several vendor-supported systems are in wide-spread use, and elements of the past SIGCSE software are showing signs of their age. Thus, John Dooley, in consultation with me, has been examining other systems. Of special concern, the SIGCSE organization has wanted to include all interested SIGCSE members in the reviewing process --- supplemented for SIGCSE symposia by Meta reviewers. For example, papers are typically sent to 6 reviewers (plus the Meta reviewers), and this places considerable demands on conference software. At this writing, with support of the SIGCSE Board, we hope that ITiCSE 2012 will use OpenConf software for submissions and reviews. In the next few years, as we gain experience, other conferences may turn to OpenConf or other software as well. October 2011

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