Documentation for the SIGCSE 2002 Paper and Reviewing Process

The SIGCSE 2002 Paper and Reviewing Process

Documentation

Table of Contents

  1. User Activities
  2. System Administration/Program Chair Activities
  3. Files
  4. Access Database


Part I: User Activities

Computer science educators are involved with SIGCSE Symposia primarily as authors and reviewers. A general description of such activities is available through the paper/reviewing home page.

The following figure provides an overview for the main user-oriented processes.

User Web-Based Interactions

Author Perspective

Authors submit papers to the Symposium. Paper submission can be done either electronically or via hardcopy. For each paper, a form is provided to enter the paper into the database. In the case of electronic submissions, a form also allows the author to review the paper as received. This latter approach is very important, as it implies that authors (not the Program Chair) can be responsible for determining that papers have been received correctly.

In addition to the expected author-based forms, another form is provided for the Program Chair in the case that a paper is received through regular mail but the author has not filled out a hardcopy-submission form.

Finally, after the reviewing process is complete, authors receive notification of the acceptance or rejection of their papers via e-mail. That e-mail also contains copies of referee ratings and comments.

Author-based Forms

Referee Perspective

Referees receive notification of which papers to review via e-mail. Referees then view electronic versions of papers through a Web-based interface, and they submit their reviews electronically through another Web-based form.

After the reviewing process is complete, referees receive via e-mail copies of reviews for the papers they reviewed.

Referee-based Forms


Part II: System Administration and Program Chair Activities

Historically, the Program Chair have followed the following rough general schedule, which is a modified version of one written by Bob Noonan, SIGCSE 1999 Program Chair. Information on performing these tasks appears later in this Part.

WHEN WHAT
early June update text of forms and scripts
early June prepare database of referees and papers
e-mail about paper submissions to SIGCSE.members list
late June e-mail to all referees in DB, inviting updates to database
e-mail to SIGCSE.MEMBERS, inviting new volunteers to become referees
Summer remove referees from database as requested
[authors submit papers]
[volunteers sign up to referee]
[previous referees update their records]
early Sept e-mail reminder to reviewers with a chance to drop out (optional)
early Sept papers arrive:
    on-line submissions recorded with Web-based submission form
    hard-copy submissions recorded separately
[Expect over 80% of the papers the last week; over 30% the last day!]
mid Sept referees are assigned for each paper
send papers to reviewers
mid Oct reviews begin to arrive (but over 70% arrive the last week)
late Oct e-mail status report on reviewing to all referees (particularly to encourage delinquent referees)
some papers sent to new (local) reviewers
early Nov analyze review scores
break papers into categories: likely accept, maybe, likely reject
read all reviews for anomalies in reviewing
mid Nov Program Committee meeting on-site
accepted papers broken into possible sessions
bring reviews of all maybe papers plus
all (accept, maybe) cover sheets and all hardcopy papers themselves
late Nov accept/reject letters (via e-mail) to all authors
(upon request, snail mail letters sent to an accepted author)
e-mail referees with reviews of papers they have reviewed
early Dec send titles/authors/sessions to Proceedings chair
Dec/Jan recruit session chairs, often from maybe authors
Feb/March make paper session transparencies;
send to registration folks for envelop stuffing

The following sections describe each of these tasks in some detail.

Preparation of Forms and Scripts

Most forms and scripts include information about the Symposium's

Updating this information through the various forms and scripts involves both bad news and good news.

Forms

The bad news is that HTML documents and forms contain Symposium information in a hard-coded form, as HTML does not allow "include" files for common information. Thus, a Symposium and/or Program Chair will need to review each HTML document, as described below to make needed changes.

Scripts

The good news is that asp scripts allow "include" files. For example,

More information on specific files may be found in Part III, later in this document.

Database Preparation

This section describes the various tables found in the Access database and then outlines how to prepare these tables for a new Symposium.

Database Overview

Paper information is stored in several Access tables:

Referee information is stored in four Access tables:

Additional Symposium information is stored in four tables:

Database preparation

To prepare the database for a new Symposium,
  1. Remove old papers from the Author and Paper tables, leaving one record with ID number 0 (This paper ID is needed for subsequent record numbering.),
  2. Delete all records from tables AcceptedPapers, RejectedTables, PaperAuthor, PaperRatings, PaperSubject, and ReviewerAssignedSubject, and
  3. Remove duplicates from the Person table by sorting by name and looking manually for multiple entries.

Remove a Referee from the Database

From time to time, a referee asks to be removed from the SIGCSE database. Potentially, this requires removing records from four database tables: Reviewer, ReviewerSubject, PaperRatings, and PaperAssignedSubject. (In most cases, only the first two of these tables are involved, as a referee is unlikely to asked to be removed immediately after completing reviews.)

Script deleteAReviewer.asp performs all these updates. To use this form, begin with the "Delete a Referee" option on the administration form dbAdmin.html. The script then asks for a last name or reviewer number. Supplying this information yields a table entry for checking. Clicking the "Delete" button then performs the operation.

Notes:

  1. When several referees have the same last name, entering a last name displays all matching candidate records, each with its own "Delete" button. Deletions can be made only one referee at a time, using the individual's "Delete" button.

  2. The deletion operation is not reversible once the "Delete" button is clicked for a specified referee. The database is not changed when an individual is displayed; the removal occurs when "Delete" is clicked.

Sending Letters to Referees

Individualized email messages may be sent to SIGCSE referees, as follows:

  1. In the scripts' directory, create a text file containing the common content of your message.

  2. Individualized content:
    At any point in the message where individualized content is to be inserted, create a new line and select and type one of the "flag strings" listed below.

    NOTE: The dollar sign MUST be in the first position of the new line and the string identifying the type of content must be typed exactly as it appears below. There can be NO SPACES in the string or between the '$' and the string identifier.

    At successive points where individualized content is to be inserted, create a new line and again insert an appropriate "flag string" on a line by itself.

    The currently available "flag strings" are:

    (A sample message text file can be found at "refereeUpdateRequest.txt", in the scripts' directory.)

  3. Send the message.

    Notes:

    1. The "Begin sending at ID number" and "Stop sending at ID number" boxes may be useful for testing purposes. For example, to send a test letter to yourself, find your referee number in the database, and send letters starting and ending with this number.
    2. To send to all reviewers, leave these fields BLANK.
    3. If for some reason the script does not finish, you can re-start the script by entering the appropriate ReviewerID number in the "Begin sending at ID number" box.

    For tracking purposes, a message displays as each email message is sent.

Unfortunately, identifying duplicate entries in the Referee table is a manual process. Sorting the table by last name may help group duplicate entries together, although this may not help when names change or are listed in several ways (e.g., duplicate records may have entries under each last name of a hyphenated name).

On the positive side, referees may be sent current reviewing information, using the $ref-profiile-data option in the letters to referees option for administration. Referees then may use the on-line form refereeRegistration.html to update their own records. This form provides a mechanism for referees to maintain their own data, without the need for intervention by the Program Chair.

Past referees send e-mail to the Program Chair if they do not wish to continue reviewing. For security, it seems best for the Program Chair to delete such referee entries manually. This task may be done using the "Delete a referee" option of the administration form dbAdmin.html.

Inevitably, as e-mail addresses change, some e-mail messages to past referees will bounce. One approach to this problem is use the web to try to locate a corrected e-mail address, change the address in the full database, and the use the letters to referees option -- designating the individual as the only recipient. Alternatively, records of those yielding bounced e-mail messages may be deleted from the database, using the "Delete a referee" option of the administration form dbAdmin.html.

Hard-Copy Submissions

Authors of hardcopy submissions are asked to complete an on-line form, paperSubmissionHardcopy.html, which will enter the paper into the database. In most cases, authors complete this work promptly, and a Program Chair need not interact further with the database when a hardcopy paper is received. (The Program Chair may choose, however, to send an e-mail note confirming receipt of the paper.)

If a hardcopy submission arrives and has not been recorded in the database, this task may be done using form paperSubmissionAdmin.html. (The form also is available through a link from the administration page, dbAdmin.html .) The paperSubmissionAdmin.html form automatically generates an acknowledgement to the author.

Program Chairs are advised to keep hardcopy submissions in paper-number order, until they are distributed to referees later in the process.

Assignment of Referees to Papers

Since information on all papers and all potential referees is available in the database, the assignment of referees to papers can be done on-line. The process typically follows two steps:

  1. referees are assigned tentatively to papers, and
  2. the assignments are reviewed.

Both the tentative assignment and the review may be done using forms and scripts accessible from successive options on the administration form dbAdmin.html.

Tentative Assignments:

To tentatively assign referees to papers, use the "Assignment of Referees to Papers" option on dbAdmin.html.

SIGCSE 1999 Program Chair, Bob Noonan, and others have suggested that the paper assignment begin with papers from categories with few referees. (There is considerably more flexibility when papers fit into subject categories with many referees.) To start, click on the "View data" option on the assignment page. This displays the number of papers and the number of referees available for each subject area. Clicking on a subject then displays all papers, which have been classified by the author as fitting in that subject area.

Clicking on a specific paper gives some information about the paper, together with a listing of all referees who have indicated some expertise in any of the paper's subject areas. (Some referees have not identified specific subjects of interest, and such undesignated referees appear at the bottom of the display.) The referees appear in increasing order of the number of reviews already assigned to them, so referees with few previously-assigned reviews appear at the top.

In addition to a referee's name, the assignment form displays the referee's institution, state, and number of previously-assigned reviews, together with a flag ("YES", "no") showing if the referee has previously been assigned to the current paper. As one might guess, Button "Add" allows a new referee to be assigned the current paper to review, while Button "Delete" removes the assignment of a current reviewer of a paper.

After assignments have been made or modified, click the "Update" or "Update and Next" button at the top of the page to make the changes in the database.

While various assignment algorithms can work quite well, some common-sense guidelines might include:

Since the assignment form includes both institution and state information, checking the guidelines during the assignment process is easy.

Reviewing Assignments:

Once assignments have been made, it may be useful to check them for adherence to the above guidelines. Also, one might want to check that reviewing has been spread out over the referees available. Both of these tasks may be accomplished with the "Review paper assignments" option on the administration form dbAdmin.html.

With the reviewing option, one first specifies an initial paper or referee to review. Buttons then allow sequential review by paper or referee (respectively).

Alternatively, to check the breadth of workload for each referee in the database, one could use the "View Database" option from dbAdmin.html, and view the "Reviewer" table. Clicking once on the numRevs will sort the referees in ascending order by the number of reviews assigned to them. Click a second time orders in descending order.

While each Program Chair will make her or his own policy decisions, it seems highly desirable for each referee to have at least 1 or 2 reviews, so no referee feels left out.

Distribution of Papers to Referees

Once referees are assigned to papers, the e-mail to referees script may be used to notify referees of their assignments via e-mail. This should handle all notification duties for the on-line papers.

For hardcopy papers, an Access query is available to generate mailing labels for the relevant referees. The labels then may be run on a standard printer. [Additional information on this is forthcoming.]

Recording of Reviews

All reviewing is done on-line, with referees using an on-line reviewer form. Scripts handle the recording of the reviews as they come in.

Tabulation of Referee Scores by Paper

Some Access queries allow the compilatin of referee statistics and ratings. More information on this subject is forthcoming.

Organization Accepted Papers Into Sessions

The organization of papers, panels, etc. into sessions is a manual process. Final session descriptions should be entered manually into the DayTime, Session, and SessionPaper tables within the database.

Once the program is entered, script program.asp produces an on-line summary of the program, together with information about individual sessions. Separate links to listings of panels, special sessions, or workshops should be inserted into the script.

Since a draft program is available on-line as soon as it is entered, a Symposium Committee might be asked for scheduling feedback before the program is announced to the community at large.

Notifying Authors of Accepted and Rejected Papers

For papers submitted electronically, notification of authors proceeds in two main steps:

  1. Within the Access database, run the MakeAcceptedPapersTable and MakeRejectedPapersTable queries. This generates new tables of accepted and rejected papers.
  2. From the Database Administration Form, exercise the links for Send Paper Acceptances to Authors and Send Paper Rejections to Authors. This sends notices to the primary author only; co-authors do not receive notification.

While this work could naturally be combined in one script, the multi-step format allows double checking of papers in each category before formal notifications are sent out.

Acceptance letters should contain information on copyright, style, A/V availability, scheduling, presentation details, the existence of a speakers' breakfast, and the need for the presenting author to register for the Symposium. The e-mail letter should indicate that a snail-mail letter can be sent to the primary author, if that would be helpful professionally.

While snail-mail acceptance letters can be sent to primary authors upon request, these letters are not sent automatically.

Sending Titles/Authors/Sessions to Proceedings Chair

Since script program.asp produces on-line versions of the program, the Proceedings Chair may view this material on-line as soon as it is entered.

Recording Session Chairs

While session chairs may be selected following many criteria, there may be some advantage in identifying those not otherwise on the program who need some status in order to get travel funds. In this regard, authors of rejected papers may be given some priority.

To record a Session Chair in the database, the individual must be registered as a referee. The person's reviewer ID then should be entered in the Session table, so this assignment is visible in the program.

Transparencies

While transparencies for sessions may be made in several ways, one approach is to utilize the individual session information available on the Web through the program.asp script. While not fancy, the output is fairly reasonable, either as is or magnified slightly with a copier. The resulting transparency should be sent to the registration folks for stuffing into the registration envelopes of Session Chairs and Panel Moderators.


Part III: Files

This part describes files created and/or used in the project. Conceptually, these files may be placed in three basic categories:

  1. Informational pages (html),
  2. html forms, and
  3. asp scripts.

At a more detailed level, the pages, forms, and scripts fit together as follows:

Category Initiating Form/Graphic Script
Information Pages index.html
call.html
2001committee.html
paperInformation.html
otherConf.html
forthcoming.html
documentation.html
Graphics Files ACM-logo.gif
symposium2001-logo.gif
userProcess.gif
Database, Test Database, and Database Viewing dbAdmin.html sigcse2001.mdb
sigcse2001tst.mdb
peek.asp
peekAndEdit.asp
peekAndEditNew.asp
peekAndReview.asp
peekAndReviewNew.asp
databasePick.asp
tabled.asp
Paper Submission and Security paperSubmission.htmlAspUser.inc
AuthorizationFailure.asp
secure1.asp
secure2.asp
updateAuthor.asp
updateAuthorHardcopy.asp
updateAuthorAdmin.asp
vbFileManagerInclude.asp
Paper Viewing authorViewing.html paperView.asp
refereeViewing.html makeFolder.asp
refereeViewingAlt.html
Referee Registration refereeRegistration.hmtlrefereeRegistrationNew.asp
refereeRegistrationUpdate.asp
refereeRegistrationAction.asp
Assignment of Referees to Papers dbAdmin.html RefAssign.asp
SubjectCount.asp
SubjPapers.asp
RefAssignCat.asp
PaperAssign.asp
UpdateReviewAssign.asp
Reviewing Assignment of Referees dbAdmin.html ReviewRefAssign.asp
CheckReviews.asp
CheckPapersReviewers.asp
CheckReviewerspapers.asp
Send Letters to Referees dbAdmin.html refMessageSender.asp
#emailRefereeRecruit.asp
Submission of Reviews reviewForm.html updateReviews.asp
View Program Sessions *program.asp *sessionPanels.asp
*sessionPapers.asp
*sessionSeminars.asp
*Program_at_a_glance.asp
*programPapers_Authors.asp
*programPapers_Titles.asp
Send Notification to Authors *dbAdmin.html *sendNotifications.asp
*sendAcceptances.asp
*sendRejections.asp

 

# indicates script currently being expanded
* indicates file/script not updated since SIGCSE 2000 and thus not currently available.

A. On-Line Information (in HTML)

Informational pages provide the SIGCSE community with a wide variety of general material. While details will vary with each Symposium, these are the informational pages found at the main SIGCSE 2001 Symposium site:

  1. index.html
  2. call.html
  3. 2001committee.html
  4. paperInformation.html
  5. otherConf.html
  6. forthcoming.html
  7. documentation.html

These pages, in turn, use the following graphics -- also located in the Symposium's home directory (unless otherwise stated):

B. HTML Forms

HTML forms provide the starting point for performing various functions such as collection of referee information and viewing of submitted papers. These forms are stored in a common, public_html directory, which may be independent from the location of the various scripts. There are six different forms:

  1. Referee Registration
  2. Author Viewing
  3. Referee Viewing
  4. Referee Report
  5. Paper Submission
  6. Database Administration

C. ASP Scripts

Scripts are files which are used to update or store new information in the database or send e-mails using information stored in the database. There are six scripts:
  1. ReviewersNotReceived.asp
  2. SendAcceptance.asp
  3. SendRejection.asp
  4. UpdateReferee.asp
  5. email2Referees.asp
  6. updateReviews.asp

A. Informational Materials

The informational pages are found on a main HTML directory. As this data will be downloaded to user's browsers on a wide variety of platforms, this main HTML directly may be placed on any type of server. (In contrast, scripts are written in asp and interact with a Microsoft Access database. This requires the scripts and database to be stored on a Windows platform.)

The various pages provide standard Symposium announcements, and this material may grow as the Symposium gets closer. The starting documents are described below. Normally, the Symposium Chair is responsible for writing and updating these documents, except that the Program Chairs maintains paperInformation.html.

index.html is the main Symposium page, giving general information and links to more detailed pages.

call.html is the on-line Call for Participation. This duplicates the Call in hardcopy form which is distributed at the previous Symposium and mailed in June to all SIGCSE members. The Call contains links to the detailed pages for papers, panels, workshops, special sessions, birds-of-a-feather sessions, faculty posters, SIGCSE's Doctoral Consortium, and ACM's Student Research Competition. For each of these areas, the Call also provides a contact person and e-mail address.

2001committee.html gives the name of all committee members, links to their home pages, and their e-mail addresses. Also, the page contains a link for each activity (e.g., papers, panels, workshops, etc.)

paperInformation.html provides complete paper-submission information, including formatting information and procedures. This page should be maintained by the Program Chair.

otherConf.html provides links to other conferences related to computer science education, including SIGCSE's European and Australian conferences.

forthcoming.html is a default page, used as a link before specific information on a topic is available. For example, when the conference's home page is first created, titles might be desired for the host city. Such titles can link to this "Forthcoming" page, until more details are available.

documentation.html is this document. It is hoped that this material provides reasonably detailed information on processes for papers, reviewing, and administration.

B.  HTML Forms

HTML forms are forms created by html files for different web based applications. Most of these forms perform two different types of error checking. The first error checking is done when the information is being entered and the second type of error checking is done after the form is submitted by the user to check if the user has entered information in all the required fields. If the user has not filled in all required fields, the form will not be submitted and the user will have to fill in the missing fields before resubmitting.

1. Referee Registration Form


File name: referee-registration.html

This form is for updating information for existing referees and registering information of new referees. Referees who wish to delete their names from the SIGCSE database need to email SIGCSE.

The form does the following error checks for the fields when data is being entered:

Field Type of Error Checking
Last Name All non-blank characters entered are alphabetic or one of the following symbols and punctuation marks: / . ' - & } or { and there are at least two allowed characters entered.
First Name All non-blank characters entered are alphabetic or one of the following symbols and punctuation marks: / . ' - & } or { and there are at least two allowed characters entered.
Department All non-blank characters entered are alphabetic or one of the following symbols and punctuation marks: / . ' - & } or { and there are at least two allowed characters entered.
Institution All non-blank characters entered are alphabetic or one of the following symbols and punctuation marks: / . ' - & } or { and there are at least two allowed characters entered.
Database Update Category None
Referee Number The number is positive
Referee Password None
Address1 All non-blank characters entered are alphabetic or numbers or one of the following symbols and punctuation marks: / . ' - & } or { and there are at least two allowed characters entered.
Address2 All non-blank characters entered are alphabetic or numbers or one of the following symbols and punctuation marks: / . ' - & } or { and there are at least two allowed characters entered.
Address3 All non-blank characters entered are alphabetic or numbers or one of the following symbols and punctuation marks: / . ' - & } or { and there are at least two allowed characters entered.
City All non-blank characters entered are alphabetic or one of the following symbols and punctuation marks: / . ' - & } or { and there are at least two allowed characters entered.
State/Province All non-blank characters entered are alphabetic or one of the following symbols and punctuation marks: / . ' - & } or { and there are at least two allowed characters entered.
Zip None
Country None
Phone Number All characters entered are non-blank, numeric or dashes (-). Also the minimum number of characters entered is 8.
Email All characters entered are non-blank, there are at least 7 characters entered and one of the characters entered is the @ symbol.
Areas of Expertise None

The form also checks that the following fields are entered before it submits:

Last Name, First Name, Department, Institution, Update Category, Address1, City, Referee Number and Referee password if the information is for database update, Zip Code and State/Province if country is Canada or US and at least one area of expertise is specified.

During the submission of the form, the form calls refereeupdate.asp script. All the fields are stored in the Person table except for the areas of expertise information which are stored in the Reviewer_Subject table.

2. Author Viewing Form

File name: author-viewing.html

Authors may view either the full or anonymous versions of their papers by entering the paper number and the password for that paper. The form does no error checking, but calls the paper-view.asp script. This script displays a paper only if the password is valid for the given paper number. If passwords are given for both versions of the paper, then the anonymous version is displayed in the browser.

3. Referee Viewing Form

File names: referee-viewing.html or referee-viewing-alt.html

Referees may view the anonymous version of a paper by entering the paper's number and password. The form checks that the paper number is a number, and the form removes initial and final white space from both the number and password.

Upon submission of a paper, referee-viewing.html calls the referee-view.asp script, which checks the user has authorization to read the paper. This form also opens a new browser window, for viewing the review-form.html. This allows a referee to read the paper in one browser window while filling out the review form in a second window.

Alternative form referee-viewing-alt.html also calls the referee-view.asp script. However, to allow referees to run their work on a wider range of browsers, this alternative script does not automatically open a second browser window for the review form.

4. Referee Report Form

File name: review-form.html

This form is for submission of referees reviews.

The form checks that the following fields are entered before it submits:

Paper Number, Paper Title, Referee Number, Level of Referee's familiarity with the topic of the paper, at least one topic of the paper is specified, each category rating and comments for each category. If the referee does not submit any comments, the form will remind the referee to fill in the boxes once. Thereafter, the form can be resubmitted without comments.

During the submission of the forms, the form calls updateReviews.asp script. Before storing the information the script first checks if the submitted review is legitimate i.e. the referee is submitting an assigned review. This check is done by checking if there is a corresponding referee and paper number pair in the Paper_Reviewer table. After checking, all the fields are stored in the Paper_Ratings table except for the hidden field reviews Received which is stored in the Paper_Reviewer table.

5. Paper Submission Form

File name:   paper-submission.html

This form is for submission of papers. Then author needs to submit their own the co-authors' information as well as the filenames of the full paper and anonymous version of the paper. The form does the following error checks for the fields when data is being entered:

Field Type of Error Checking
Primary Author Information
Last Name All non-blank characters entered are alphabetic or one of the following symbols and punctuation marks: / . ' - & } or { and there are at least two allowed characters entered.
First Name All non-blank characters entered are alphabetic or one of the following symbols and punctuation marks: / . ' - & } or { and there are at least two allowed characters entered.
Department None
Institution None
Address1 All non-blank characters entered are alphabetic or numbers or one of the following symbols and punctuation marks: / . ' - & } or {.
Address2 All non-blank characters entered are alphabetic or numbers or one of the following symbols and punctuation marks: / . ' - & } or {.
Address3 All non-blank characters entered are alphabetic or numbers or one of the following symbols and punctuation marks: / . ' - & } or {.
City All non-blank characters entered are alphabetic or one of the following symbols and punctuation marks: / . ' - & } or {.
State/Province All non-blank characters entered are alphabetic or one of the following symbols and punctuation marks: / . ' - & } or {.
Zip None
Country None
Email All characters entered are non-blank, there are at least 7 characters entered and one of the characters entered is the @ symbol.
Co-Authors Information
Last Name None
First Name None
Department None
Institution None
Email All characters entered are non-blank, there are at least 7 characters entered and one of the characters entered is the @ symbol.
Paper Information
Title None
Filename for the full paper It must end in .htm or .html
Filename for the anonymous version of the paper It must end in .htm or .html

The form also checks that the following fields are entered before it submits:

For primary author:
Last Name, First Name, Department, Institution, Address1, City, E-mail address, Zip Code and State/Province if country is Canada or US.
At least one Focus of the paper is specified, Title and Type of paper, Filenames for the full version and anonymous version of the paper.
The form also checks if the Filenames for the figures and other supplementary material end with .gif or .jpeg.

Relation to scripts is forthcoming.

6. Database Administration Form

File name: db-admin.html

This form organizes several administration tasks by providing a common interface for several scripts. Each database task requires a password, but the form does no error checking.

C.  ASP Scripts

Scripts are visual basic programs which are used to perform two main function: sending e-mails and extracting data from forms. For scripts which send e-mails, the script extracts information such as the email addresses from a table in the database. Scripts which get data from forms, store the information filled in the form fields in appropriate tables in the database.

1. ReviewsNotReceived.asp

This script sends email to assigned reviewers who have not submitted their reviews. The script extracts email address, paper number, title and password information from ReviewsNotReceived table. ReviewsNotReceived table has to be updated by executing MakeReviewsNotReceivedTable query before sending emails.

2. SendAcceptance.asp

This script sends emails to all the primary authors of accepted papers. The script extracts email address and paper title information from Accepted_Paper table. Accepted_Papers table has to be created by executing MakeAcceptedPapersTable query therefore this query has to be executed before sending emails.

*** The above and SendRejection scripts might also be used to send ratings and comments to papers primary authors.

3. SendRejection.asp

This script sends emails to all the primary authors of rejected papers. The script extracts email address and paper title information from Rejected_Paper table. Rejected_Papers table has to be created by executing MakeAcceptedPapersTable query therefore this query has to be executed before sending emails.

4. UpdateReferee.asp Script

This script is used to store the information from Referees Registration Form in appropriate tables. For new referees, the script just add an entry in the tables. In case of an update, the script checks that the personId and password match before updating the person record.

5. email2Referees.asp

This script is used to send e-mails to all the referees listed in the original database. The e-mails invite the referees to be referees again for SIGCSE 2000, and ask them to review their information stored in the database. They can update it by filling the Referee Registration Form with their referee number and password, or if they decide not to be referee again, they can send e-mail to the program chair. The script extracts the e-mail address of every referee from the Person table first, and if there is an valid e-mail address for the referee, extracts all of his/her other information also, and includes them in the message.

6. updateReviews.asp

This script is used to store the information retrieved from Referee Review Form into Paper_Ratings table and Reviewing_Subject table. It first checks if the pair of personId and paperId the referee submitted matches any entry in the Paper_Reviewer table, if not, that means the referee has no authorization to review this paper, and a failure warning page is given back to the referee. If the check passes, go on to retrieve all the ratings and comments, and store them in the appropriate fields in the Paper_Ratings table, and store the categories of the paper to Reviewing_Subject table.


Part IV: Access Database

    A. Tables
    B. Queries
    C. Reports

A. Tables

The tables in the database can be divided to three groups according to their primary use:
  1. Tables used for collecting information of referees and authors, and receiving papers.

  2. Tables used for assigning papers to referees, receiving reviews, and reminding referee to submit their reviews.

  3. Tables used for announcing acceptance and rejection, and scheduling for the conference.

These tables are described in detail below:

Person Table :

Reviewer_Subject Table :

Paper Table :

Paper_Author Table :

Paper_Subject Table :

Subject Table :

Reviewer Table :

Paper_Reviewer Table :

Paper_Ratings Table :

Reviewing_Subject Table :

ReviewsNotReceived Table :

Accepted_Papers Table :

Rejected_Papers Table :

DayTime Table :

Session Table :

SessionPaper Table :


B. Queries

The queries in the database can be divided to three groups according to their different functions.

  1. Queries for Maintaining the Database and for Completing the Reviewing process:

    * submitted in all queries implies that the paper is not withdrawn

  2. Queries for Generating Reports for the Committee:

  3. Queries For Analyzing the Review Variability:

    • Overall
    • Within categories
    • Between individuals and groups
The following descriptions outline the purpose of each query, the process used to execute the query, and what other work is needed within this process.

Check for duplicates of referees or authors

Check for duplicates of paper

Check for duplicate reviews of papers

Display papers with <3 or <4 reviews

Display all withdrawn papers

Display all submitted papers

Display all submitted papers primary author

Display all authors of all submitted papers

Display the subjects of all submitted papers

Creates Accepted_Papers table

Creates Rejected_Papers table

Creates ReviewsNotReceived table

Display referees confidential comments for all papers

Display primary authors of all regular papers submitted

Display primary authors of all expository papers submitted

Display all authors of all regular papers submitted

Display all authors of all expository papers submitted

Display regular papers submitted

Display expository papers submitted

Display the subjects of each regular paper submitted

Display the subjects of each expository paper submitted

Display review results by score and average of overall score

Display review results by score within categories

Display review results with lowest overall score dropped

Display review results with lowest weighted score dropped


C. Reports

Forthcoming!


This document is available on the World Wide Web as

http://www.cs.grinnell.edu/~sigcse/2000/documentation.html

created July 9, 1999
last revised July 14, 1999 by Henry M. Walker (walker@cs.grinnell.edu)
with Weichao Ma (ma@ac.grin.edu)
and Dorene Mboya (mboya@math.grin.edu)