BOBCATSSS 2009

Happy new year on behalf of the BOBCATSSS 2009 team members as well! We are back to work. There is still much to do, especially all kinds of practical matters. Final preparations are underway.

The programme of the symposium is now available as web pages, in addition to existing PDF files: day 1, day 2, and day 3. Abstracts of the presentations and further details will be added in the near future.

There is still time to register for BOBCATSSS 2009! We are planning to close the registration on the 9th of January 2009. If you have not paid your registration fee already, please do so as quickly as possible.

As a practical note, some of the workshops and tours have been overbooked due to our registration system. Therefore we cannot guarantee a place if you were a late payer. We will offer you a chance to check out if you have been accepted before the symposium starts.

Also, more information about the keynote speakers and their topics has been added.

As of this writing, three weeks after the registration system opened, BOBCATSSS 2009 has had over 160 registrations. This means that taken on face value, about 40 percent of the available tickets have been reserved. We have already received payments from half of those who are currently registered.

Please remember that as the places are secured only after we have received your payment, we cannot guarantee a place in a workshop or a guided tour if your payment is delayed.

If you or your organisation pays by bank transfer, it is very important that the details of payment are included, so that we can know who of the all registered persons has paid.

Update 2009-12-3: Over 56 percent of the tickets have been reserved.

Update 2009-12-11: We’re now at 66 percent.

Registration to BOBCATSSS 2009 has opened. All participants, including the presenters, are required to register. You can use PayPal (faster, the preferred method, major credit cards accepted) or bank transfer to pay for your ticket or tickets. Multiple tickets can be purchased at once.

Places for workshops (see the list of workshops) and city tours will be filled on first-come, first-served basis, and only a limited amount of tickets will be made available, so be quick.

The prices for students and professionals include the conference itself, a 3-day ticket for local transportation, social events in the evenings, lunches at the university, and guided visits.

Register now, we warmly welcome you to BOBCATSSS 2009!

Update: The full programme will be made available later. Tours will be held after the conference programme has ended for the day.

Programme: Some very preliminary information about the programme of the symposium can now be found at the new programme section of the website.

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.

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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.