=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2869/PAPER_05
|storemode=property
|title=ConfLab: Web-based Conference Management System with Full Lifecycle Support
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2869/PAPER_05.pdf
|volume=Vol-2869
|authors=Pavel Petrovich Keyno,Alexander Yurievich Novikov
}}
==ConfLab: Web-based Conference Management System with Full Lifecycle Support==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2869/PAPER_05.pdf
ConfLab: Web-based Conference Management System with Full
Lifecycle Support
Pavel Petrovich Keynoa, Alexander Yurievich Novikova
a
Moscow Aviation Institute (National Research University), Volokolamskoe Highway 4, 125993 Moscow,
Russia
Abstract
The article describes workflow automation of scientific conferences by Conference
(Abstract) Management System software named “ConfLab” (“Conference Laboratory”). The
software provides the full lifecycle of scientific conferences organization. First phase of the
lifecycle includes applying papers process, reviewing and interacting between committee and
participants. Second phase is output documents generation including statistical spreadsheets
and publishing of the received materials in the digest by generation of the output document
fully prepared for printing. The Abstract Management Systems is the efficient way to
decrease routine processes and provide transparent interaction inside scientific community.
Keywords 1
AMS, abstract management system, conference management system, ConfLab, ConfID,
Conference Laboratory, scientific conferences, scholar journals, SaaS, Web-application.
1. Introduction
One of the major problems of the processing the applications on scientific conferences are large
amount of different routine processes. It includes structuring of submitted papers during review and
editing of output document that will be printed finally.
Most of conferences are submitting their papers and theses by unsuitable methods. The widespread
method is developing special form that receives participant information and forwards it to organizer’s
e-mail address. So, application will be stored on the common e-mail that can be accessed by
organizers. This is very inconvenient way because of all applications will be stored chaotic and some
of them can be lost deep inside of mailbox folders. Application stored in mailbox is not consist any
metadata and application statuses. At least it impossible to achieve it in proper structured order. Thus,
it’s very difficult to search demanded application by specific criteria. In other cases, there are a lot of
conferences that provide only e-mail or phone submission without any web-forms at all. It’s even
more increases routine tasks and decreases processing rate.
The questions of automation of the science workflow are well-described and solved by many
scientists in a different way. One of the famous systems of that type is EasyChair [1]. This system
become one of the first and has own Call for Papers (CTFs) directory, individual constructor of each
event and reviewing module. The major lack is limited functionality in comparison with modern
requirements of cloud solutions of the kind and absence of contemporary technological design. Some
conference systems oriented on a local market: UTILCONF [2] for Spanish-speaking market and
eConf [3] and OPSS [4] for Indonesia. In other hand, conference systems MyConfree [5] and
OpenConf [6] are open-source solutions but there are no any SaaS versions of it. The main feature of
such services should be full lifecycle support but only few services could provide it in a high quality.
For example, EDAS [7] system can also generate badges and CD-ROM content and program of the
WTEK-2021: Workshop on Technological Innovations in Education and Knowledge Dissemination, May 01, 2021, Chennai, India.
EMAIL: pavel@mati.ru (Pavel Petrovich Keyno)
ORCID: 0000-0002-1033-0260 (Pavel Petrovich Keyno)
© 2021 Copyright for this paper by its authors.
Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
CEUR Workshop Proceedings (CEUR-WS.org)
41
event. But this system doesn’t provide the digest generation. Some of the systems emphasize on the
special features. For example, authors [8] developed a document confident related system. Automatic
clustering positioning [9], assigning papers to referees [10] and evaluating of conference using
Machine Learning, [11] are positioning as the major features in the appropriate works. A detailed
overview of other systems is described in [12].
In the paper we are decided the method of full lifecycle workflow automation applicable to
scientific conferences and scholar journals. The practical side of the method has implemented in
software deployment of conference management system “ConfLab” [13] or “Conference Laboratory”.
As described above there are a lot of other similar systems and it successfully used for a long time.
But all of them do not have the full life cycle support based on modern design principles and with
additional features on each stage. We are divided lifecycle into two main stages.
First stage implies interaction inside a scientific community [14] and involves potential participant
or authors of the papers and editorial board who should review the application while submission
process continues. When the author submits the paper it saved in the database and can be reviewed
immediately by editor who can point the author to his mistakes in formal issues or even provide full
scientific article review. After such editing a reviewer can choose the action for application: accept,
decline or send it to revision.
Second stage related with creation of the output documents. We are tried hard to fully optimize
that process by generation of such documents automatically. The most important document of each
conference or journal issue is the digest of all reviewed papers or journal imprint. Such document will
be fully generated by ConfLab with proper styles and consists each article followed one by one with
all headers (subject, author’s information, keywords) and the essential text. All articles sorted by their
section in alphabetical way. Output document with minimal corrections can be sent in typography for
printing. Thus, the author no longer need to download and edit a pre-prepared template.
So, we are almost fully minimized routine tasks in reviewing and publishing as well. Automation
of scientific workflow will start with implementation of conference management systems as the key
part of evolution of the scientific communities by focusing them exclusively on content of the papers.
The portfolio of the conference sites hosted by ConfLab freely available at: http://conflab.ru. The
conferences supported both English and Russian language. It could be extended by other languages as
well. Each site hosted on different domain. So, the conferences hosted independently from each other
but powered by unified platform that allows to make data exchanging that could be used to generate
the summary statistics.
Figure 1: Example figure
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2. Project Deployment
First of all, conference host or executive editor has to create his own environment to manage the
applications from authors by the proposed system. The deployment of the system is divided into four
steps:
1) Fill the form with details of the conference or journal
Future administrator of the project has to provide full information about his journal or conference.
It includes name, description topics, date of submission, location, partners and etc. That information
can be published on demand in the public directory on the official website of ConfLab.
2) Choose the domain type
Each project will be published on the separate website that has public pages about event or journal.
Such pages can be edited by creator through the internal WYSIWYG-editor. Domain name for a
future website can be registered in local zone or in any top-level domain.
3) Choose key dates and deadlines
To provide a full lifecycle of the event we have to identify key dates of each stage. There are
following types of dates:
a. date of the beginning – when the conference will start of paper submission process;
b. submission deadline – when the conference stops paper submission and goes to paper
review;
c. reviewing deadline – when editors stops reviewing received papers and participants can’t
make changes anymore;
d. archivation date – when nobody can make changes to event or journal issue. It archives
the conference with the whole content in a public directory. The whole content of the
conference could be downloaded as archive in future.
4) Split the conference by sections and provide section names
If the administrator has a big conference with a lot of topics, it is possible to divide the event into
different sections according to the topics respectively. Responsible persons could be also delegated to
each section for its management in future. Such persons will have their own permissions to review
and moderate application flow inside the section.
Created sections can be customized according to their features and not limited with their topics.
For example, section could have a different language. Such section will be showed only for users who
choose that language in their setup options. Or it can be separated by age, location or other info. Each
section by default follows the project key dates and deadlines but it also can be reconfigured
individually. And the major feature of unique fields is based on global fieldset but also could be
customizable (see next).
After all preparations, administrator gets fully functional website based on provided information
configured from basic template. The template engine implemented in project is Smarty. So
administrator can edit theme with Smarty syntax and put particular info generated by business-logic
of the system.
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Figure 2. List of users with their roles
Automatically generated public pages include conference summary, agenda, committee contacts
and other.
3. Theses Management
3.1. User Roles
Each user of the conference has the access to the unified control panel. The permissions of the user
will be defined by his role. The system has several user roles that strongly describe actions allowed
for each user:
1) Project administrator – this status will be automatically given to creator of the project. This
role has the greatest authority for project management and includes all permissions of other roles.
Administrator can assign other administrators and section supervisors.
2) Section supervisor – the person who provide theses review and formal conformity checking.
He can accept or decline the received paper, transfer it to another section or send it to revision. All of
the fields filled by applicant can be edited by section supervisor.
3) Applicant – the person who can send his paper for reviewing. He can watch on the status of
his application and see all of the notices of section supervisor.
4) Guest – person who wish to participate in the conference as a listener.
3.2. Status History
The main part of the first stage of conference lifecycle is paper review. All of submitted
applications will be reviewed and checked for formal conformity several times. During that process
the application can have many process iterations and each iteration must be accompanied with proper
status. There are following types of statuses:
1) Accepted – the paper successfully accepted and will be published in the digest or journal;
2) In processing – the paper under review now and reviewer will provide their corrections and
notices later. The applicant can make any changes while the status is applied;
Figure 3. Application status history
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1) Incompleted – the reviewer has made some notices and corrections to the application. It can
be formal notices of the provided information or corrections related to the content of the paper;
2) Declined – the reviewer completely rejected the paper due to the gross violations or the paper
does not correspond to the subject of publication or specific rules of the event. The applicant can’t be
changed and modified anymore.
Each application consists the status history, so every related person can overlook the application
status and get a full understanding of application reviewing process. Each of statuses followed by
short comment including automatic comments provided by the system.
For example, all fields where participant made his changes will be reflected in automatic comment.
Notifications about status changing will be sent to all users by e-mail involved in application
processing. Finally, it helps applicants correct their work properly and helps supervisors from
scientific community check all received works carefully so it totally excludes applications loss.
3.3. Flexible Field Model
Various events or journals can demand different set of input fields for applications. Flexible field
model is the key feature of the ConfLab conference management system. It provides special interface
to customize a fieldset that includes: type, name and other kind of options. Full list of options is:
1) Type – option that similar to HTML-inputs and provides a proper view of the field in forms
and respective validation.
2) Label – text caption of the field displayed nearby input.
3) Description – hint that also displayed near input field.
4) Required – this option specifies that field is obligatory be filled by user. It has also third state
that specifies that field can be filled later. In that case application will be saved with “Incompleted”
status.
Figure 4. Visual field editor
1) Restrictions – specifies additional validation rules based on regular expression pattern or file
extension (in case of file field).
2) Options – specifies additional options for specific types of fields. It has JSON-array with key-
value pairs. For example, this field can specify a set of values for listbox or radiobox.
3) Sort – specifies the order of a field in the form;
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4) Spreadsheet – if true, the value of the field will be added to output spreadsheet (for example
in Excel format) generated later;
5) Borrowing Check – this option specifies value check of a field for borrowings and plagiarism
via external services.
The described model is universal and specifies the different kinds of fields for each section
particularly or for conference globally. The specified fields will be processed individually based on
their options. The model allows to describe any dataset of any conference and can be used in a very
flexible way via metamodeling nature [15]. Every time the system will build a proper algorithm of
data processing with interpreted metamodel.
Visual editor provides easy-to-use interface for making such metamodels graphically and does not
require any programming or web-developing skills. The developed metamodels has multidimensional
configuration that makes it flexible and universal with multiple ways of using.
3.4. Plagiarism Search Services Integration
Reviewer usually would like to know originality of each paper and make sure that he reviews
authentic work that has not been stolen from third-party sources. It can be very powerful tool with
having some hypothetic scale that allows to measure in observable units the scientific cost of the
paper.
The system has some arrangements of integration with an external services aimed at searching
incorrect borrowings of papers from public databases. ConfLab interacts with such system named
RuContext through the simple REST-API protocol.
Figure 5. Generated collection of theses
The script is called every 15 minutes by crontab scheduler. It sends unchecked works to external
server through API for deferred processing. It’s a very useful way to distribute the load between
several services and reduce potential delays during execution.
The script has developed using adapter pattern in proper class. It makes possible to implement of
other borrowing check services due to unified programming interface with a special set of functions
and properties. It’s enough to rewrite business-logic of the class for migration to other services. So,
any administrator can develop preferred borrowing checking service plugin or choose it from the
library of plugins developed earlier. Dataset that will be sent to borrowing check depends on
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respective option of fields (see above). It is possible to check attached files in standard text document
formats.
4. Output Processing
Most conferences finally publish all their theses and articles in the digest as result of their work.
The major lack of the process is layout of the digest or journal that usually made manually. The goal
of the conference management system is to automate this process. ConfLab will generate output
document in Microsoft Word format with the all accepted theses. Each thesis will be published
separately with proper styles and indents. Beside the theses, output document will have cover, table of
contents, subject index and more. It could also have pictures that properly putted into their places with
correct formatting if necessary. All major changes will be made during review process.
So, administrator does not need to make any changes in document. He could only put minor
corrections before it will be sent for printing to publishing services.
Statistical spreadsheet with participants and their accepted papers also can be generated by
ConfLab. As described before, each field of the thesis can be marked as exportable for spreadsheet.
So, such fields will be generated in output spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel format. Of course, it gives
unlimited opportunities for data analysis with building of analytical graphs, summary tables and so
on.
At the end of the conference committee wants to cheer best participants and award them by
memorable diplomas and certificates. Printing of diplomas is also routine process. In the system there
is functionality that allows to award user application in control panel. So, the certificate will be
generated automatically with the name of the section and participant. It can be downloaded from the
control panel in PNG, JPG, SVG or PDF format and printed by participant or organizer.
There are several types of awards: 1st place, 2nd place, 3rd place, winner, gratitude for conference
organizing and more. Administrator can create user-defined types of awards and with visual editor
choose a position of text, font and size of sign and other options.
Described principle can be used for generation other types of related documents: badges, posters,
handouts, agenda, official protocols and more.
5. ConfID: Science Portfolio Network
Conference management system ConfLab has developed for scientific events and journals and can
be used to organize a lot of events as described above. So, user achievements should be stored in one
place to accumulate the portfolio individually for each user. All achievements separated by type of
participation and level of presented work.
There are several kinds of participation types. User can be full or extramural speaker of the
conference, organizer or just guest. All actions and roles of the participation will be saved in user
portfolio [16].
Award degree is also reflected in the profile. For example, if the participant has been noted with
1st place as speaker for outstanding work it will be specially highlighted in his portfolio.
Portfolio plays unifying role to make scattered scientific communities acts together. It enforces
scientific exchange and relieves unlimited possibilities for search other colleagues with flexible search
system.
It is necessary to provide data synchronization process to accumulate a user portfolio in ConfID by
the end of lifecycle of each event. ConfLab project initializes the data transfer interface as a result of
47
which the ConfID will receive a JSON object in a special form which stores the information about the
event.
Figure 6. ConfID user profile
ConfID successfully solves also the social function. Each author and scientist could easily share
their own achievements like publication of science papers, results of participation in conference
proceedings, awards, patents, grants, etc. Moreover, all users could communicate with each other by
creating their own scientific communities and research networks.
6. Video conference service
The epidemiological situation has made serious adjustments to our life, imposing restrictions on
the holding of mass events [17]. In this regard, the format of most of the planned scientific
conferences was changed to a remote one. As a result, the organizers had to search for solutions for
the transition to the new format [18].
The services like Zoom, MS Teams and others have become widespread. However, these services
have some drawbacks. Limits on the number of participants and session duration, as is the case with
Zoom, and the unfriendly MS Teams interface [19].
It is also worth noting that the use of third-party products complicates the process of registering
users, adding tasks for moderators to check the list of participants.
The authors have implemented the online video conferencing mechanism as a separate service
integrated into the software package. Its functionality included increasing accessibility for participants
who are away from the venue. Currently, the relevance of expanding functionality in this direction has
increased like an avalanche. As a result of the analysis, the open source software BigBlueButton was
chosen, the main concept of which is that “the beginning of the conference should be as simple as
pressing the blue button”. This software is designed as a video server module, which has a positive
effect on the ability to integrate with other services like ours.
The function of recording speeches is in great demand, which will give an opportunity to access
scientific discussions to those scientific colleagues who, for some reason, could not be presented
online. In most cases, this task is solved by publishing a recording on a video hosting site, which is
not always convenient for those who want to get acquainted with the speech of only a certain speaker.
Since the real time of the presentation almost never coincides with the schedule of conferences, it is
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not possible to predict the exact time stamp. Therefore, a label management interface has been added
for the moderators of the video room. During the event, it is possible to add a time point, indicating,
for example, the beginning of the next speaker. Then, after the end of the online meeting session,
video and audio streams will cut according to the intervals, then presentation slides, marks made with
drawing tools, and the coordinates of the pointer cursor are divided into fragments. Further, different
types of data are combined for each fragment, forming a link that can be used to play the recording for
the selected speaker.
Conducting international online conferences requires precise synchronization of meeting timings.
For this, a mechanism is provided for the automatic generation of the program of events, taking into
account the time zone of the participant. Support for multiple video rooms has been implemented, as
well as viewing modes: general schedule, program by day, program by session.
7. Conclusion
Abstract management systems are the essential part of automatization of document workflow
during the whole lifecycle of such events. Authors proposed the new toolkit which provides an
automatization on each stage from applying the paper, their processing and publication.
The most important thing is to provide useful toolbox for construction event configuration that
consist the visual editor which allows to choose a number of sections and subsections, a fields with
proper type include a special file attach fields with its own options. Administrator can choose
additional properties of each field such size, file type, character counter and other. So, it provides a
flexible interface that can be customized in a various ways depended on purposes of event organizers.
Special user roles could be successfully assigned to users who should be administrators, secretaries or
other members of organizing committee. Processing of each paper has own history of changes that
allows to trace the review process from submitting to publishing. To unite scattered science
communities and individual research fellows ConfID project has developed by authors. It allows
accumulating the whole science portfolio of each scientist and sharing it with others to make an
interchange of the knowledge between each other.
Authors developed a complex software as a service system (SaaS) to automatize the workflow
with full lifecycle support and collect the whole achievements during science activities into one own
portfolio. All of it is a main part of digital transformation process according to the world-wide
tendencies.
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