Instructions for Workshop and Symposium Organizers
to Manage Submissions Using ARPHA

A note on terminology: TDWG 2017 has the following tracks: 23 workshops and symposia; posters; computer demonstrations; and “other oral presentations”, which is a catch-all for presentations that don’t have a home in any of the workshops or symposia. In the Proceedings, each of these tracks will be represented by a “collection”. Therefore, if you are a workshop or symposium organizer, you are considered to be a collection editor in ARPHA.

For help: If something isn’t working as you think it should, or if you need assistance, you can email Pensoft’s technical staff by clicking “Helpdesk” on the top navigation bar. If you have suggestions for how the workflow can be improved, please record them so that you can respond when we canvass authors and editors for feedback.

  1. Please look at https://tdwg.github.io/conferences/2017/call-for-abstracts/instructions/. Being familiar with the author's perspective will help you understand the ARPHA workflow, and what is expected of you.
  2. Please make sure the submitting author included additional and relevant metadata. In particular, affiliations and email addresses for all authors should be present.
  3. When an abstract is submitted to a symposium or workshop that you are organizing, you and your co-organizers will receive an email with a link to the abstract. You will all be able to access it, but only one can have it open for editing at any given time. (The others will see a read-only version. Please do not leave the document open if you are not actively working on it). If you are working with a group of co-organizers, decide among yourselves how you will deal with abstracts as they come in and agree on a turn-around time for communicating with authors.
  4. You can also see all abstracts that have been submitted to your session in ARPHA's 'Collection editor' view https://arpha.pensoft.net/dashboard.php?&showall=1&state_type=23. On the right hand side in the dashboard you can see the status of the abstract and the collection (i.e. workshop or symposium) to which it was submitted. (Some of you are co-organizers of more than one session.) Here is a short explanation of the document statuses:
    • Draft: It has not yet been submitted by the authors or it has been returned to the authors for revision (via “Send Feedback”).
    • In pre-submission review: It is now the responsibility of you and your co-organizers to review the abstract, and either {Approve, Send feedback, or Reject}.
    • In layout: Has been approved, and is awaiting publication.
  5. If the abstract is not a good fit for your workshop/symposium, but you think it might be appropriate for a different collection, please send an email message to conference@tdwg.org with your suggestion. In consultation with the the editors of that collection (i.e. the organizers of the corresponding workshop/symposium), we will decide if it makes sense to re-assign it.
  6. If you think the abstract is better suited for a poster, please send an email message to conference@tdwg.org, and we will decide whether to re-assign it.
  7. When reviewing, you can edit the document, add comments, and email the authors if you require clarification. If you would like revisions to be made, click "Send Feedback". This will bring up a questionnaire. YOU DO NOT NEED TO ANSWER ANY OF THESE QUESTIONS. But, of course, you can. Click "Save and Proceed".
  8. This will bring up an email to the authors for you to complete as appropriate.
  9. This process (submission -> send feedback) can be repeated for as long as necessary, but keep in mind the August 15 deadline for camera-ready copy.
  10. If/when you are ready to accept the submission, click "Approve", which will bring up an email you can customize to send to the authors.