Dear Authors,

Thank you again for your interest in publishing your paper in the BigSurv23 Conference Proceedings, which will be submitted for publication through IEEE Xplore and indexing.  We are looking forward to reviewing your interesting work.  Please find below some guidance to assist you as you prepare your manuscript for review.  

Also, we are pleased to announce that, in consideration of the unique nature of our Conference, the editorial committee has decided to extend the submission deadline.

Preparing Your Paper for Review
 

• Each manuscript should include an abstract of no more than 250 words, a list of comma-separated keywords, a body of the paper describing your study (with appropriate prior literature cited), and a full list of cited references at the end.
• Submitted manuscripts must be unpublished and should not be submitted elsewhere at the same time.
• Only those papers presented by the authors at BigSurv23 can be submitted for publication in the conference proceedings. If you haven’t done so, please register at www.aenu.ec/registro
• Manuscripts must be blinded for double-blind review. You should:

1. not include your names in the author list at the beginning of the paper,
2. leave out the acknowledgements section,
3. not refer to your prior work as “I” or “We” in the study.  Instead, you should cite your own work as if you were someone else (e.g., “Rodriguez and Smith [7] found” instead of “We [7] found”).  If it is not possible to refer to your prior work without clearly revealing your identity (e.g., if your current study extends a prior study you published), you can instead use “Anonymous [7] found” and then put “[7] Anonymous. Withheld for blind review.” in the references’ bibliography at the end of the paper.
   
   • Accepted papers will be unblinded when writing the camera-ready version to be included in the conference proceedings (see below).

• Your paper should be written in English and follow the official IEEE two-column format (10-point font).  Templates in Word and LaTeX (including Overleaf.com) can be found here: https://www.ieee.org/conferences/publishing/templates.html
• Your manuscript should be a maximum of 8 pages, plus an additional page only for references.  Since IEEE uses single line spacing and double columns, this is close to 20 pages double spaced as you would typically submit to a journal.
  
  • Please note that authors of accepted papers with camera-ready versions exceeding the maximum number of pages will be requested to pay an over-length fee per extra page for their papers to be submitted for publication.
• References should be formatted in the numbered IEEE style, which is different from other styles (e.g., Chicago, APA).  IEEE style uses square brackets instead of parentheses for citations in text, and references are numbered instead of listed by author and year.  For example:

Rodriguez and Smith [7] found that participants typically spent an average of 35 minutes each morning reading and responding to emails.  More recent studies [5], [10], [12] have found increases in the average time spent on this task in the last few years.

References should be numbered in the order in which they appear in the paper – the first references is [1], the second is [2], etc.  They are not ordered in alphabetical order (as is typical for many other reference styles).  A general overview of the IEEE reference style can be found here, and a complete guide is available here.

Copyright notice

• IEEE requires all authors or their employers who intend to publish in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library to provide an electronic transfer of the copyright using the IEEE Electronic Copyright Form (eCF).
• The appropriate copyright notice should appear at the bottom of the first page of each manuscript about 1 cm below the left column and should be aligned to the left with the same left margin as the column.

• • For papers in which all authors are employed by the US government, the copyright notice is: U.S. Government work not protected by U.S. copyright
  • For papers in which all authors are employed by a Crown government (UK, Canada, and Australia), the copyright notice is: 979-8-3503-4527-8/23/$31.00 ©2023 Crown
  • For papers in which all authors are employed by the European Union, the copyright notice is: 979-8-3503-4527-8/23/$31.00 ©2023 European Union
  • For all other papers the copyright notice is: 979-8-3503-4527-8/23/$31.00 ©2023 IEEE

Submitting Your Paper for Review

1. Use the IEEE PDF eXpress tool to convert your paper to an IEEE Xplore-compatible PDF and submit your paper.

1. First-time users should create and verify an IEEE PDF eXpress account at https://ieee-pdf-express.org
2. Use the Conference ID: 59479X
3. Once you have created your eXpress account, upload your manuscript for conversion.
4. You will receive by e-mail the IEEE Xplore-compatible PDF of your paper.

2. Upload the IEEE Xplore-compatible PDF to the BigSurv23 Conference Manuscript Submission Portal (https://aenu.ec/bigsurv23/submission-portal/)WITHOUT making any changes to the file or filename. The password to enter the portal is the same Conference ID mentioned above.

The deadline for submission is 23:59 Anywhere on Earth (AOE) on September 12, 2023 [also known as 11:59 UTC on September 13, 2023]. 

Manuscripts will be submitted to the IEEE CrossCheck Tool to check for plagiarism and multiple publication.

Review Process

• BigSurv23 is using a double-blind review process, so reviewers will not be aware of whose papers they are reviewing, nor will you be aware of who your reviewers are.  Please make sure to blind your paper to ensure this process is followed, as described above.
• After your paper is reviewed, you will have the opportunity to address any questions raised by the reviewers during a short rebuttal period.  This is different than the typical revise-and-resubmit process for journals:  instead of writing a new draft of your manuscript, you will be able to provide a short response to the reviewers’ questions and clarify any misunderstandings you think the reviewers had while reading your work.  This is the common practice for technical conferences published in venues such as IEEE Xplore (e.g., in many computer science and data science conferences)
• You will be notified of the final reviews written by the reviewers after they consider your rebuttals.

Final Draft of Accepted Papers (Camera-Ready Copies)

• Accepted papers will receive an opportunity to make small revisions before the camera-ready deadline.  During this period, authors should:

1. Add any necessary details that were originally removed to make the paper blind for review (e.g., authors and affiliations, funding details and other information in the acknowledgements, self-references to the literature)
2. You can make small edits to address comments raised by the reviewers.  Do not add new experiments or other details that should undergo peer review for validation.

• Accepted papers will be forwarded to IEEE for submission for publication through IEEE Xplore and indexing.  Carefully following the paper preparation guidelines described above is essential for this process.
• If accepted, you will need to complete the IEEE Copyright Form in order to publish your paper in IEEE XPlore.  More information can be found at: https://www.ieee.org/publications/rights/ecf-registration-intro.html

Dateline

1. Submission deadline: September 12, 2023
2. Rebuttal period: November 2-6, 2023
3. Expected final reviews: November 20, 2023
4. Camera-ready submissions: December 18, 2023

Additional Information
 

• Additional details about publishing conference proceedings with IEEE Xplore can be found here: https://www.ieee.org/conferences/xplore-conference-proceedings.html

If you have any questions as you prepare your manuscripts for submission, please feel free to reach out to us at aeck@oberlin.edu, Jang-Don@norc.org, skolenki@gmail.com, or alcordova@usfq.edu.ec.

We look forward to reviewing your submissions!