Setting up final submissions

You can use the Final Submissions hub to collect edits and/or new content from your authors. This can include major pieces of information such as final papers or the ability to allow authors to make small changes such as correcting spelling errors. The final submissions feature in Ex Ordo allows you to:

Collect draft versions of their work
Request a copyright transfer
Ask authors to explain what they changed in response to reviewer feedback
Ask authors for new information about themselves
Ask authors for additional information about the submission
Upload papers

Administrators can configure these settings by clicking on the Submissions drop-down menu at the top of the website and opening the Final Submissions hub.

Important note!

If opened, authors can always edit their submission title, abstract content and some author details including their names, emails and affiliations.

Step 1: Important Dates

This step allows you to choose when the final submissions hub will be open and close. These are hard deadlines. Authors cannot submit new content or edit existing content before and after these dates.

Admins can edit content before and after these dates, if needed. Admins can also change these dates at anytime.

Step 2: Questions Tab

A: Ask Authors for Source files

This setting allows you to collect source files, if needed.

B: Comment on Reviewer Feedback

This option will create a text box that allows authors to explain changes they made in response to reviewer feedback. If enabled, the system generates a text box for each reviewer comment that allows authors to type in comments on what they have changed. This is particularly useful where their acceptance was conditional upon them acting on reviewer feedback.

C: Re-Ordering Authors

If set to Yes, authors can modify the order that they are listed in on a submission. If set to no, authors change the order that authors appear on a submission. Conference administrators can always change the author order, regardless of this setting.

Step 3: Copyright disclaimer

You may also want to ask the author to transfer the copyright over to you so that you can publish their work in conference materials. You can choose to ask them to do this in two ways:

Download a document, sign it, scan it and upload it
Tick a check box accepting terms and conditions.

If you are an IEEE conference, check out this article for more information on IEEE copyright transfers: Getting copyright from accepted submissions

Using the copyright step for CPD credits:

You can use the copyright step to collect information you need to issue CPD credits to an author who has been accepted. Admins upload the CPD form where the copyright document would have been uploaded. The authors can then download this form, scan it and upload it back into the system. Admins can then bulk download all the forms in the Conference hub > Uploaded Files tab.

Step 4: Author Questions

In the Author Question tab, you have the option to add additional questions you need your authors to answer about themselves (e.g., phone numbers, CVs, LinkedIn profiles). These questions will be asked of every author on every submission. You can make each question optional or mandatory, depending on your requirements.

You will also see questions that were added at the initial submissions stage. You can choose to keep these enabled which would allow authors to change their answers. You can disable them if you do not want authors to change their answers now.

You can choose what type of questions to ask your authors, listed below:

Answer: A short answer
Explain: A paragraph answer (you can set a word limit)
Choose: Drop-down style question
Agree: A checkbox to agree with a statement
File Upload: An upload of a file

More information about adding these fields can be found here.

Step 5: Additional Information

As in the previous step, this is an optional configuration where you can request extra information about the submission (e.g. ethics questions or references).

You can choose what type of questions to add, listed below:

Answer: A short answer
Explain: A paragraph answer (you can set a word limit)
Choose: Drop-down style question
Agree: A checkbox to agree with a statement
File Upload: An upload of a file

The options available here are the same as in the Author Question step. As mentioned before, all questions that were added during the initial submission stage will be visible in the Final Submission workflow. If enabled, authors can change their responses to questions added during the initial submissions stage. These questions can be disabled now if you do not want authors to change their original responses.

Step 6: File Formats - Upload Papers

You may need to collect a file from accepted authors such as a paper. If enabled, all authors will be required to upload a file to complete this workflow.

It may be important for you to share some formatting guidelines with your authors (e.g., do not include page numbers, use double-spacing, etc.). We have instructions here on how to use the simple text editor to share file formatting guidelines with authors.

If you have purchased the Ex Ordo book and want the file uploads to appear in it, you must collect PDFs. We cannot build a book using Word document.

Step 7: Guide for Authors

Finally, as with the initial submission process, guidance text will be displayed to the accepted authors when they begin the process of uploading their final drafts. You should include any relevant information, especially deadlines and any file formatting instructions.

You can also use the the formatting options in the Ex Ordo text editor.