1.  Online Submission and Acceptable Formats 

The workshop is using an online submission system.  The system will only accept uploaded documents in these formats: 

• Postscript (PS)
• Adobe PDF
• Microsoft Word (DOC)
• Rich text file (RTF). 

The system does not accept Latex or HTML submissions.  In these cases, the output of server-side conversion may differ dramatically from the author's original document. Hence, authors are responsible for converting these types of documents to PDF or postscript and confirming the appearance of the converted document.

2.  Blind Review, Conflicts of Interest, and Keyword Matching

The workshop is using a blind review process.  This means that the reviewers will not be aware who wrote the papers that they are reviewing. 

A real or apparent conflict of interest (COI) exists when the author and reviewer have a mutual stake in the acceptance of the submission or in some fashion one has influence over the other.  For some (not all-inclusive) examples, COIs exist when the author and reviewer are involved in:

• an advisoral relationship (one is or was on the other's dissertation committee).
• an employment relationship (one is the boss of the other).
• a contractual relationship (one controls the awarding of contracts to the other).
• a close personal relationship.
• a financial relationship.
• a current or very recent collaboration, co-authorship, or co-worker relationship.

To help ensure a good match between reviewers and papers, the reviewers and the authors are asked to identify applicable keywords. 

To make this process as fair as possible, authors must do the following in the initial submission process:

• Remove personal and institutional identification information throughout the paper.  This information will be captured as part of the online submission system, but will not be visible to the reviewers.
• Examine the list of reviewers on the online submission page and identify any conflicts of interest (COIs) by checking on the reviewer's name.  This will prevent the assignment of the paper to those reviewers.
• Placing a check next to each of the keywords / topics that applies to the paper.  This will help in the assignment of the paper to a qualified and interested reviewer.

3.  For review and acceptance (initial submission):

The papers should be emailed to the Program Chair.  

4.  For accepted, corrected papers:

Once notifications have been sent, paper authors will be expected to consider reviewer suggestions, update their papers, and email properly formatted versions of their final papers to the Publications Chair (Lynn.Futcher@nmmu.ac.za).  

You will also need to submit a copyright transfer form (see local copy or download instructions on the Springer Lecture Notes page).  Once you fill in the form, there are two options for submitting it:

1. If you have the ability to scan the filled-in and signed document, you can submit it online along with the final paper.
2. Alternatively, you can fax it to this number:  845-938-3807