Date:         Wed, 10 Jul 2002 17:23:48 +0100
From: John Bradley <john.bradley@kcl.ac.uk>
Subject:      A Report on the Conference Abstract Handling System


Folks: John U asked me to report on this, and to propose a vote for the meeting.

Abstract handling system:
=========================
Based on the model provided by Elli Mylonas, and then adding some
things of my own, I created a system to handle the submission and
reviewing of Abstracts for the 2002 conference in Tuebingen.  The
system supported:

(a) the submission by proposers of papers and automatic deposit in the archive;
(b) the work by the Program Committee (PC) Chair of assigning
reviewers to the papers;
(c) the submission of reviews by the reviewers;
(d) the presentation of papers and reviewer's comments to the PC, and
management of acceptance process;
(e) the presentation of papers and reviewer's comments to the paper
proposers; and
(f) the packaging up of accepted paper's abstracts for publication.

In addition to my efforts, the process required the time of student
assistants to convert the abstract text (in 2002 we allowed for the
submission to be in ASCII or HTML format) into an XML-based format.
The ALLC paid for this student time.

David Robey, the Program Chair for 2002 was quite happy with the
system, and the feeling within the ALLC was that it might be useful
to offer it again in the future.  I am, therefore, proposing that I
continue to support this for the Conference Chair in 2003; subject to
two conditions:

(1) that a machine to run it on be available in North America.  John
Unsworth has already kindly offered to host it on machine at UVa.
The best place to run it might depend upon where the Program Chair
lives, and the kind of Internet access s/he has.
(2) that student assistants be made available to convert the abstract
text into XML.  I suggest that we support this year ASCII, HTML and
some TEILite-like format.

                   ... john b

Question for vote at the EC meeting:
===================================
John Bradley, on behalf of ACH and with the necessary data-entry
assistance, should continue to support and develop the abstract
evaluation system for the annual conference.