BOBCATSSS 2009

The programme of the symposium has now been published. At least at the moment it is only available in PDF format: day 1, day 2, and day 3. There are three parts; one for each day of the symposium.

We still reserve the right to make changes, but there shouldn’t be any major ones. This means that you can start planning your own conference schedule. Abstracts and closer details will be published later.

Update 2008-12-19: All full papers, workshops and posters are now listed on one page in the programme section.

Templates, new information and instructions on how to send us your full paper, poster or workshop abstract of an accepted proposal can now be found on the contributions page. The deadline is 30 October 2008. In case you encounter any problems or have questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

The registration page has also opened. The actual registration period starts on 3 November 2008. But for now there’s information about the prices and what’s included.

By the way, if you wish to receive notifications by email when new blog posts are published, you can subscribe to FeedBurner’s service.

We have now selected the full papers, posters and workshops to be presented at the symposium. Notifications of acceptance or rejection have been sent by email to the authors. The number of full papers to be presented at the conference is 43, the number of posters is 30, and there will be space for 9 workshops. Congratulations to the authors of the accepted proposals!

The notification of acceptance of abstracts will be delayed by two weeks. 15 September 2008 is the new target date by which notifications will be sent at the latest. We will let your know if your proposal has been accepted as quickly as possible, but it may take two weeks longer than originally planned for all things to be sorted out.

The creation of the conference programme and the reservation of venues forces us to make this change. We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience.

The criteria of acceptance for BOBCATSSS 2009 is quite similar to other scientific conferences: the papers, posters and workshops have to present new and interesting research to the target group of the symposium and, broadly speaking, stay within the topic area. There can be other considerations in the building of the programme as well, for example the balance of the different sub-topics and the balance of the presenters. BOBCATSSS’s main target group is students, and student contributions are favoured, everything else equal.

There are 10 reviewers in total from the University of Porto and the University of Tampere, who do the initial grading of the proposals. Two teachers review all abstracts, and each student member reviews a lesser portion.  In addition to a recommendation of acceptance on a 1 to 6 scale (e.g. must accept, probable reject), the reviewers can fill in a category (e.g. theoretical, practical), information about the value added, appropriate length, comments, and so on. Every abstract receives a grade from six reviewers.

In the end, we unfortunately cannot accept all proposals, for limits exist. It is possible that even very good abstracts have to be rejected, if, for example, two proposals have nearly the same focus.

Based on the numbers provided by the OpenConf system, we received 101 paper, workshop or poster submissions. The exact number is still a bit fuzzy, because not every submission has an attachment. And some people sent their abstracts by email, which we will add manually.

All in all, there were proposals sent from 24 different countries. Most of the countries are European, but we are happy to notice that South Africa, Morocco, Brazil, Israel and the United States are represented also.

Information literacy was the most popular sub-topic, closely followed by the topics on new technologies and on information management.

Countries from which we received submissions on a map:

Here are the numbers of submissions by country:

…and by topic:

The deadline for the submission of abstracts for BOBCATSSS 2009 has now passed. We received about 100 proposals in due time. Thanks to all contributors!

OpenConf though may still be open for a few days, until we actually start the reviewing process. We will let you know if your proposal has been accepted before the 1st of September.

As a short reminder, the deadline for the submission of abstracts is close at hand. 15 July 2008 is the last day set for the sending of proposals. Please see the contributions page for details.

Here are step-by-step instructions on how to send your abstract through the OpenConf system.

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In case you would like to get familiar with the BOBCATSSS symposium and its end results in general, you can read the full papers of the previous conference, BOBCATSSS 2008.

Posters can be found at the programme section (under the “attached files” header on individual pages), as well as workshops. And photos of the symposium have been uploaded to Flickr.

The journal Libreas has also published an article on the conference. The concept of an academic conference has a page on Wikipedia.