Do I need topics?

The system allocates submissions to reviewers based on their common topics. If the topics are configured in the system then all the authors are required to choose their topics, otherwise their submission will be marked as pending. If a submission is 'pending' this means that one or more of the steps in the submission workflow have not been completed. For this reason the Topics cannot be left blank.

Currently, it is not possible to delete or skip the Topics step, it will always be there, but we can adjust system to suit all conference organisers.

If the system is configured in a way that there is no topic list (perhaps the conference does not have any topics), you can 'avoid' the Topic step by clicking in a check box in order to go to the next step. It might look like this in the system:

In this case we 'avoided' fill out the Topics. Authors will however still be required to select this option to complete their submission.