NABET’s Open Conference System
W. R. Eddins, York College of Pennsylvania
Marlene Burkhardt, Juniata College
ABSTRACT
The Northeastern Association of Business, Economics, and Technology (NABET) has had a web presence for three
years now (www.nabet.us). We use this web presence to support our annual conference and the Journal of NABET.
Recently, we moved toward providing online support for author submission of conference articles and workshops.
The Open Conference System (OCS) is the open source vehicle that implements the software support for this effort.
This paper describes the OCS, its history and applications, and our experience with the OCS. Since many of our
colleagues have experienced difficulty using the OCS, we present a brief overview of two tasks that authors need to
understand using the OCS including creating a profile, and submitting a paper.
INTRODUCTION
Up to now, NABET (www.nabet.us) has employed
web technology for the support of our annual
conference in a media broadcast fashion. That is,
once a conference is completed and articles
published, colleagues can navigate to our web site
using a browser, click on the Conference link in the
left margin of the home page, and select an annual
proceeding to read in the right margin of the
Conference page. We currently have six years of
conference proceedings online. The online articles
are either papers or workshops.
We desired to make our publication process less
onerous in two primary areas. One, we wished to
have a central repository of articles that editors can
access while creating the final version of a
proceeding. In the past, authors submitted papers to
be published via email to one of our editors. As a
result, the papers were maintained in several of our
editors email spaces. Two, we desired to have an
automated clerk, so to speak, to keep track of where
papers were in the submission and review processes.
That is, we desired to have emails generated by the
system when decisions were made, for instance,
whether to accept or deny a paper or workshop. In
addition, we hoped that our turnaround time (from
the date of the conference to the publishing of the
articles online). Time will tell whether it takes less
time to complete the process from the conference
until publication.
employed some of our senior students during the
spring semester of 2010. They reviewed several
candidate systems and evaluated them for our
purposes. As we suspected, it turned out that the
OCS was the best candidate for NABET.
Our students then installed the OCS on several test
platforms. Then, they installed it on our host systems
at www.nabet.us. Since the OCS is very powerful,
and has evolved over time, we knew that it would be
difficult for some of our colleagues to use. Finally,
we had our students create several help files
including creating a profile, submitting a paper, and
reviewing a paper.
ABOUT THE OCS
BACKGROUND
The OCS is the product of the Public Knowledge
Project (PKP) which was founded by John Willinsky
in 1998. The About page tells one that the PKP “is
dedicated to improving the scholarly and public
quality of research” and that their mission is “to
expand the realm of public education by improving
social science's contribution to public knowledge, in
the belief that such a contribution is critical to
academic freedom, the public use of reason, and
deliberative forms of democracy” (Public Knowledge
Project 2010). In addition to the OCS, the PKP has
produced other open source products such as the
Open Journal System, Open Monograph Press, and
the Open Harvester Systems. For more information
on the history and development of the products
created by the PKP, the interested reader should
check out Willinsky’s article (Willinsky 2005).
To assist us in the search, evaluation, and installation
of an online conference management system, we
The open access initiative espoused by the PKP is
catching on in the world of academic publishing. For
instance, Geser reports on forty projects that promote
open education and open access publishing programs
(Geser 2007). Many reasons for the growth of the
open access initiative can be contemplated.
Certainly, at the top of the list is the list is the rising
cost of publishing and the cost to libraries of
purchasing journals from a “commercially dominated
market” (Pyati 2007). Finally, scholars should
understand that open access journals and articles
supported by open source software hosted on
inexpensive web sites possibly has more advantages
than publishing in traditional journals. For instance,
Eysenbach reports that articles published on open
access websites have a higher impact in the scientific
community, that the articles are recognized faster by
peer researchers, that they are cited more often, and
that they are accelerating the pace of research
(Eysenbach 2006).
To create a user profile, open the NABET website
(www.nabet.us), click on the Conference link in the
left margin. On the Conference page is a link which
is currently labeled ‘Submit/Read Paper.’ That link
takes the author to NABET’s OCS. For the sake of
brevity, this article includes no screen shots.
However, a PowerPoint presentation accompanies
this article. It has a few screen shots, and, more
importantly, helpful links to online videos authored
by members of the PKP.
At the OCS Log In screen, there is a link labeled ‘Not
a user? Create an account with this site.’ Clicking on
that link takes the author to the Account page where
the author should click on ‘NABET.’ Next, select a
conference by clicking on ‘NABET 2010.’ The
author can enter information required as described
above as well as other information to help NABET
better support the author and the conference.
DISCUSSION
Since the purpose of this article and the PowerPoint
presentation given during the conference is to
improve the usage of NABET’s OCS, the discussion
will describe two processes that authors need to
understand to use the website. Those processes are
creating a user profile and submitting an article.
Authors are required to create a user profile in order
to submit an article for review by the editors of the
conference. A profile is a collection of digital
information about an author. The collection includes
personal information, keywords about the article, and
roles that the author might wish to play during the
conference such as reader, author, or reviewer.
However, authors only need enter four personal facts:
name, user identifier, a password, and a valid email
address. The reader should understand that none of
this information will be used by NABET for any
purpose other than supporting the conference. There
is a privacy statement on NABET’s website that
makes this clear. NABET’s editors will review the
article for appropriateness to our mission and for
formatting only. Our mission and style guidelines
also appear on our website. Once the article is
accepted, then it will be open to anyone who comes
to our website when the conference proceedings are
published on our website.
Once an author is logged in, then she can upload an
article and supporting documents. There are five
steps in the submission process.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Start
Enter metadata
Upload submission
Upload supplementary files
Confirmation
The Start process requires that the author affirm that
the article has not been submitted to another
publisher and that the article is in the correct format.
The copyright statement on this page clearly states
that the author retains copyright, that the author may
enter into agreement with another publisher, and that
they may post or share their article. In fact, we
encourage the author to attempt to publish elsewhere
and to share their research. To go to the next step in
the submission process, the author should click on the
button labeled ‘Save and continue.’
Step 2 in the submission process, allows the author to
enter important information about the article such as
title and abstract. Since the author should be logged
in, information about the author is automatically
filled in by OCS. Also, information about another
author can be entered during step 2. Finally, the
author is encouraged to enter the submission type,
indexing information, and supporting agencies such
as college name. The author should click ‘Save and
continue’ to go to the next step.
Step 3 gives the author a ‘Browse’ button where she
can go to the location on her local computer’s file
system to begin the process to upload the article.
Once the article has been located using the ‘Browse’
button, be careful to click on the ‘Upload’ button. To
go to the final process, click ‘Save and continue.’
Finally, step 4 allows the author to upload
supplementary files such as data sets, and PowerPoint
presentations. Step 5 gives the author summary file
information about the article and supplementary
materials. If the author is satisfied, then she can click
‘Finish Submission’ or ‘Cancel’ to abort the process.
CONCLUSIONS
Granted that the processes to create a user profile and
submit a paper may appear to be difficult at first,
there are several advantages to learning NABET’s
OCS. Advantages that accrue to the author include
publication in an open access website once the article
has been accepted and published. Also, attending the
conference should give the author input from faculty
members who have similar research interests leading
to a better article.
NABET hopes to achieve advantages from the use of
OCS as well. First, our website offers a central
repository which is superior to our editor’s email
repositories. Also, OCS assists with the clerical tasks
associated with the review process such as generating
email messages, scheduling and timing reviews. In
the future, the OCS will assist us by providing
automatic indexing for retrieval by peers of the
articles submitted by authors.
REFERENCES
Eysenbach G (2006) Citation advantage of open
access articles. PLoS Biol 4(5): e157. Accessed on
Wednesday, November 03, 2010 and downloaded
from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC
1550699/bin/jmir_v8i2e8_app1.pdf.
Geser, G. (Ed.) (2007) Open Educational Practices
and Resources, OLCOS Roadmap 2012. Salzburg
Austria: Salzburg Research Edumedia Research
Group. Retrieved August 24, 2007 from:
http://www.olcos.org/cms/upload/docs/olcos_roadma
p.pdf.
Pyati, A. (October 2007). A critical theory of open
access: Libraries and electronic publishing. First
Monday, Volume 12 Number 10. Accessed on
Wednesday,
November
03,
2010
from
http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.ph
p/fm/article/viewArticle/1970/1845.
Public Knowledge Project (2010). The Home Page.
Accessed Thursday, October 28, 2010 from
http://pkp.sfu.ca/.
Willinsky, J. (2005) Open Journal Systems: An
example of open source software for journal
management and publishing. Library Hi Tech, Vol.
23 Issue: 4, pp.504 – 519.
Dr. William R. Eddins is a Professor of Information Systems in the Department of Business Administration at
York College of Pennsylvania. His research interests include cognitive issues in learning, assessment of computer
literacy, and development of databases and web-based systems.
Dr. Marlene E. Burkhardt is a Professor of Business in the Accounting, Business, and Economics Department at
Juniata College. Her research interests include technology in the workplace, social networks, cyber marketing, and
managing new technologies.