Organizing a cmc-corpora event
If you’d like to organize a conference in the cmc-corpora series, please get in touch with the steering committee. Send a short exposé which covers the scientific part of the event, as well as details of the local organization – see hereafter – and a provisional budget.
Table of Contents
Overview
Each conference is organized by local organizers in cooperation with the steering committee. cmc-corpora conferences are announced via the cmc-corpora mailing list, the cmc-corpora Facebook page and other mailing lists & networks with a call for papers at least six (better: eight) months in advance. Papers are submitted for the conference via an online submission system (e.g., EasyChair, ConfTool) which is administered by the local organizers.
The scientific committee has a chair which is composed equally of representatives of the steering committee and representatives of the local organizers (1:1 or 2:2).
The other members of the scientific committee are chosen cooperatively by the scientific chairs. It should comprise 10 people at minimum and – for continuity’s sake – include people from the scientific comitee of previous conferences of the series.
The conference language is English. All submissions are peer-reviewed independently by two members of the scientific committee. Reviews are assigned to reviewers by the scientific chairs.
The scientific chairs make sure that submissions accepted for the conference as result of the review process represent projects from different countries and on CMC and social media discourse in different languages.
Each conference has a volume of proceedings which is made available online together with the conference and which includes all submissions which have been accepted for the conference. The proceedings are openly accessible. The local organizers make sure that the proceedings remain accessible persistently.
It is expected that the organizing institution is able to finance travel and accomodation for one international keynote speaker. A cmccorpora conference typically has two keynote talks given by one local keynote speaker (= from the country where the conference takes place) and one international speaker.
Besides the scientific comitee there is an organization committee with members nominated by the local organizers.
Roadmap for organizing the conference
The local organizers report to the steering committee early in advance about their plans for local organization (venue, program structure, accommodation) in the format of a concise exposé (An example for an exposé of a previous conference is attached). Open issues will be discussed with the steering committee via skype or email. The exposé should include suggestions for a conference date (or dates) which fit for the local organizers and their institution.
After (1) is finished, the steering committee and the local organizers cooperatively nominate the scientific chairs for the conference and define dates and formats for submission, reviewing, notifications, and for the publication of the online proceedings.
The scientific chairs create a call for papers for the conference.
The local organizers set up a conference website with the call for papers, important dates, the list of committee members and at least preliminary local information (venue, travel, etc.) which may later be expanded.
The steering committee is involved as a partner in general aspects of planning the conference while the main responsibility for the overall organization of the event is with the local organizers and the responsibility for the scientific organization is with the scientific chairs.
Further aspects which the local organizers may wish to address in the exposé
The program & schedule of the conference is made available on the conference website as early in advance as possible.
Up-to-date technical equipment in the conference venue (beamer, computer for presentation, enough room for the expected number of participants).
Each session for the conference should have a session chair (e.g., members of the scientific and of the organization committee).
If different sessions in the conference are scheduled for different rooms, it should be always clear for the participants during the conference where to find the room of their choice, and participants should have time to switch from one room to the other.
In the conference breaks, a coffee bar with at least coffee, tea and non-alcoholic drinks should be provided. If there’s no option for getting the coffee bar funded by a third party, it is acceptable to include costs for coffee breaks in the general conference fee, or to ask the participants to pay a lump sum for coffee bar & refreshments which covers the expenses of the organizers.
For lunch breaks, the local organizers make suggestions where participants could go for lunch (or organize to have lunch with the whole group). Participants pay the lunch by themselves except that the local organizers should have funding to invite them.
The conference should include a social event (e.g. a conference dinner) which is organized by the local organizers. We recommend to let participants decide if they wish to attend the social event together with the (online) registration. Costs for the social event should not be included in the general conference fee but be only paid by those participants who decided to attend it.
On the conference website, the local organizers provide travel directions for the participants considering different means of transportation.
The publication of a monograph with follow-up proceedings is encouraged (but not compulsory) to preserve the major outcomes of the conference for the scientific community. Whereas the online proceedings which are published together with the conference include the short papers submitted for the conference, the follow-up allows authors to present their contributions in the form of full papers. If a follow-up book is planned we strongly recommend to publish it as open access. For the follow-up book, there should be a separate call for papers which is published after the conference. The scientific chair of the conference decides about the call for papers. The call may also address people who have not presented a paper at the conference.