Frequently Asked Questions

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Meeting Costs

TCCC is concerned with current conference costs, and seeks ways to reduce these costs. TCCC formed a committee to review conference cost within TCCC. Specific proposed actions include encouraging ComSoc to have a volunteer to oversee committees, to encourage the use of standing committees for all recurring meetings, and to encourage basic common procedures for those committees. ComSoc does not directly oversee individual meeting budgets; that happens in steering committees (where they exist), or in executive committees.
Updates:

1. The current Comsoc no-show policy now requires that each published paper have an *author* registering. The Comsoc tracks whether the paper is presented at the meeting, and is in the process of updating the policy to require the presenter to be an author. (note: exceptions are permitted on a case-by-case basis at the discretion of the meeting chair).
2. The Comsoc initiated Online GreenCom in 2011, and online-only conference intended to explore the viability of low-cost Internet-based meetings. See http://www.ieee-greencom.org/
3. After a review of various services, Comsoc conference proceedings preparation was moved from IEEE Conference Xpress to EDAS (with two current exceptions, due to legacy scheduling). Last year alone this saved the Comsoc over $100K USD, and we expect an additional $100K reduction this year as remaining meetings shift. The result saves the Comsoc over $200K USD/year in ongoing operational costs.

Support for Resource-Challenged Authors

Travel and registration costs can be prohibitive for resource-challenged authors to attend meetings in person. TCCC will be updating its web pages with pointers to resources for travel grants. TCCC will encourage specific meetings explore support for remote presentation where feasible. The cost to meetings needs to be considered, esp. where it involves high-speed network access or A/V support staff. TCCC is preparing a WIKI where information on this issue can be deposited and the experience on cost and complexity can be archived.

Reducing Non-Author Presenters

Concerns were raised that current ComSoc registration requirements encourage non-author presenters, and that this negatively impacts the quality of interactions at conferences. TCCC is requesting the ComSoc change its policy from “full-time registration per paper” to “named author as full-time registration per paper”. This change is intended to increase the ability of participants to interact with authors during a presentation, and assumes authors are better prepared for such interactions. This does not address presentation quality. There are existing rules for exceptions at the discretion of chairs to address unusual or extenuating circumstances.
Update: ComSoc has implemented this request and updated its policies.

Meetings without IEEE Involvement Offering IEEE Member Discounts

Although we think offering a discount is fine, some meetings have been asking for your IEEE member number. It is not clear this is appropriate; they probably  cannot/should not be able to verify this if they are not IEEE-involved, and is it even OK for them to ask for this information.
Update: Venues not involved with the IEEE cannot verify member numbers. There is never a reason to give out IEEE membership numbers to meetings without IEEE involvement.

Submission/Review Charges

Please note that the TCCC agrees only with submission or review charges imposed to cover direct submission processing costs.

Usage of the IEEE Name and/or Logo

Some meetings that have not qualified for, or not sought IEEE ComSoc in-cooperation or sponsorship are using IEEE Xplore as a publication service. This can be misleading, when the meeting lists “our papers are published by the IEEE”, since this appears to imply IEEE-level quality control. This is based on the use of the IEEE Conference Publishing service’s website, which states: “Conference papers must be subject to formal peer review. Conference organizers must submit a list of peer reviewers with their inquiry for publication. In addition, organizers must provide a detailed description of their intended peer review process, and the basis for acceptance of papers.” However, it is not clear who enforces or even checks such things if a meeting has failed or not even tried to obtain IEEE sponsorship/endorsement.
Update: This is currently under review by the ComSoc and IEEE.

Report of Conference Acceptance Rates

There is a concern that some meetings inflate their acceptance rates by including lesser sub-meetings in their statistics. The simplest example of this would be Infocom reporting a rate included both the conference and mini-conference accepts as a single aggregate number (not that this specific example has ever happened). TCCC suggests a resolution that all conference acceptance rates are reported only within subparts of a conference with similar deadlines, paper lengths, and quality levels. (E.g., it would be OK to aggregate the symposium of Globecom or ICC as a single number, but not to mix the main conference with mini-conferences). Reports should not include ‘second prize’ accepts, e.g., poster, presentation-only, or short-slot/short-paper accepts with the primary accepts).

Organizing Conferences

The conference ComSoc sponsorship approval procedures is now on the ComSoc website.  Additional chapters will be added in the future on marketing, finance, program development, local arrangements, and other conference management subjects.

ComSoc publishes a website on the policies and procedures for its (co-)sponsored conferences/workshops.

TCCC endorsement procedure is now on the TCCC webpage.

Conference Related Discussion Items

A discussion on the TCCC mailing list in July 2011, started on Friday, July 8th with a post on "Strange handling of papers submitted to IEEE MASS" initiated an extensive discussion on conference related issues. Key points of the discussion were:

• IEEE Xplore should be more clear about meetings with IEEE involvement and those without, esp. when use of IEEE Xplore as a publication mechanism for conference proceedings is taken as de-facto IEEE involvement in the conference.
• There should be limit and more stringent controls on TC endorsement, including
  • fewer endorsements
  • negative endorsements require Comsoc-aware override
  • endorsements require followup reports
• Regional endorsements should carry clear and explicit regional-only names

A range of other related conference issues that arose in the July 2011 discussion are summarized as follows:

• For meetings under the IEEE Computer Society, please raise concerns directly to the IEEE Computer Society, as well as the IEEE Computer Society's VP of Conferences: http://www.computer.org/portal/web/volunteercenter/excom
• TCCC has a very specific set of requirements for endorsing meetings, as agreed to on this list, and posted here http://committees.comsoc.org/tccc/conferences/endorsement.html
• The list of meetings we currently endorse is here: http://committees.comsoc.org/tccc/conferences/endorsed.html
• It may be useful to note:
  • meetings can receive Comsoc "tech cosponsorship" with the endorsement of *any* two TCs, regardless of meeting scope
  • ALL meeting applications for Comsoc involvement are forwarded to all the TCs for potential endorsement, regardless of meeting scope
  • any meeting with Comsoc endorsement that does not ALSO list TCCC endorsement was *not* endorsed by us,i.e., it did not qualify by the above criteria

We have recently proposed some changes to this process:

1. limiting the number of meetings each TC can endorse in a year
2. requiring all TCs to report on their monitoring of the meetings they endorse (as we do, as noted below)
3. allowing TCs to indicate when a meeting has a potential problem - not just that it is out of scope - in a way that requires explicit override, not just "any two TCs" that endorse it

• There are other meetings that are Comsoc sponsored or co-sponsored, which is a financial relationship that is supposed to be even more stringent than "tech cosponsorship".
• We have no control over the entirety of the Comsoc in deciding what to endorse, but we can ensure the quality of meetings we do endorse. We have specific requirements, and we check them with an appointed member of the TPC. Every time. Every meeting. Every year.

Update: To limit the number of meetings that can be endorsed blindly by TCs, it was proposed to the ComSoc to provide each TC with:

• a limited number of endorsement tokens (e.g., 3 for small, 5 for large TCs)
• the right to declare something in-sceope and "egatively endorsed" (no limits). Once a meeting gets any negative endorsement it ought to be reviewed for scope (to confirm that the TC negatively endorsing is appropriate), and the reason for reject considered by any remaining TCs that endorse - who can then withdraw endorsement.
• For each meeting that in a given year endorsed by a TC where a report isn't filed, the TC loses a token to endorse the following year.

IEEE Comsoc Conference Policies

Please see http://cms.comsoc.org/eprise/main/SiteGen/Confs_P_P/Content/Home.html

Review Confidentiality

Please see page 80 in http://www.ieee.org/documents/opsmanual.pdf