...

The ORSC develops a Call for Expressions of Interest (EoI) for hosting the next conference yet to be selected (generally, OR Conferences are selected two years out). The EoI call should include instructions and expectations for the EoI including a schedule for the next steps and a link to this document. This call should be distributed to appropriate communication channels. The ORSC should actively recruit potential hosts.

November

Call for Proposals and Fellowship Call Released - Program Committee with support from

...

ORSC

The CfP should have a very broad distribution. The OR SC ORSC maintains a directory of listservs, groups, and social media venues to target.  The The directory is in the form of a table so that lists can be checked off as they are notified to prevent or minimise minimize duplication. Effort should also be given to finding extra mailing lists that are relevant to any theme the conference might have and geographic location; these should also be targeted. Encourage recipients to rebroadcast the call to lists that seem to have been neglected.

Keynote Speakers Identified - Program Committee in collaboration with Host Organizing Committee with approval from OR SCORSC

In general, the earlier that keynote speakers (generally for both opening and closing) are identified and secured the better particularly if the Program Committee OR PC is looking at high profile speakers. The Program Committee OR PC should work closely with the Host Organizing Committee OR HOC on confirming the budget available for bringing the speakers to OR and for providing a small honorarium; it is not uncommon for OR to bring in international speakers so the budget should be able to account for that.

Launch Sponsorship Campaign - Host Organizing Committee

Once the CfP is released, a sponsorship campaign can also be launched (having the theme set within the CfP can make approaching potential sponsors easier). The Host Organizing Committee OR HOC should consider previous sponsors as well as local contacts including local or regional universities and business.

December

Identify and Invite Reviewers - Program Committee

Reviewers should be identified and invited for the incoming proposals. The Program and Track Chairs should be able to call on the previous year's list as a starting point, and all members of the Steering Committee ORSC should be invited to contribute. In recent years, each proposal in the general paper track has been allocated three reviewers and each reviewer has been allocated four to six reviews.  This has been the subject of discussion as some reviewers felt that they did not get an adequate "feel" for the relative quality of submissions. Reviewers can be loaded into ConfTool and managed there.

Open ConfTool for Submissions -

...

ORSC

Ideally ConfTool (or whatever conference submission system is in use) will be open and ready when the CfP is released, but it is common to have it open a bit after the CfP.

Review submitted

...

EoIs -

...

ORSC

The OR SC ORSC should review the submitted EoI’s EoIs in order to select candidates to invite to do a full bid. The criteria for selection may vary from year to year primarily because of geographic considerations. This can be done through a discussion on the monthly call or through an online vote. Successful EoI’s EoIs should be given at least six weeks to prepare a full bid.

January

Submission Closes and Reviews Begin - Program Committee

Once submissions close (usually with a week-long extension from the original date), the program Program and track Track chairs should assign reviewers to each submission. Program chairs Chairs may decide what level of review different tracks get; for example, submissions to the general track may get three reviews but posters only two. This is up to the Program CommitteeOR PC. Make clear to reviewers what the deadline for reviews will be. In general, reviewers have been given about a month.

Workshops will need to have a faster track since it is important these are included in the registration process, therefore reviews for these are often distributed amongst the ORSC, OR PC, and OR HOC for timeliness.

Venue Selected for Conference Events - Host Organizing Committee

Because the costs for the conference dinner and other venues for social events often figure substantially into the registration costs, these should be selected and budgeted for well prior to the opening of registration. We recommend that the OR HOC use use https://www.diglib.org/dlf-events/dlf-social-event-checklist/ as as a set of guidelines for social events; in particular pay close attention to accessibility, a range of food options, and availability of non-alcoholic drinks at all events.

February

Select Workshops - Program Committee with Host Organizing Committee

Because there are often a limited number of rooms for workshops and a limited number of slots available, it is useful to include a workshop selection step in the registration process. This means that workshops have to be reviewed and selected earlier than the remainder of the papers. Arrange with successful workshop organisers organizers to get appropriate details for the descriptive page if that was not included in the submission.

Selected workshops should then be passed on to the Host Organizing Committee OR HOC to include in the registration process.

Select Fellowship Recipients - Subcommittee of the Open Repositories Steering Committee

The subcommittee for OR Fellowships should be ready to contact the fellowship recipients by the time Registration opens. This also allows time for recipients to make appropriate travel plans, apply for visas, etc. The Host Organizing Institution may need to provide additional support in the form of purchasing plane tickets, making hotel reservations, and supplying any documentation for visas.

Registration opens - Host Organizing Committee

Once workshops have been selected, the Host Organizing Committee OR HOC should open registration. It will be important to have other logistics such as hotel blocks and travel recommendations set up prior to opening registration since many people may make all of these arrangements at the same time.

In the past, two registration fees have generally been offered - an "early bird" fee, with an associated deadline, and a higher fee for later bookings. It is up to the Host Organizing Committee OR HOC how they might want to manage the registration fees, including early bird or student fees. In addition, some Hosts have separated the cost of the conference dinner from the registration fee in order to better understand how many people will attend the dinner. There are pros and cons to having a separate cost for the dinner, and the Host Organizing Committee OR HOC is welcome to speak to the OR SC ORSC about this and how this has been managed in the past.

The website booking process must use https.

The registration form should have a checkbox "I agree to be contacted about future OR conferences"''. Names and email addresses of registrants who mark "yes" will be forwarded to the OR SC ORSC after the conference to be added to the open-repositories Google group.

March

Develop Rough Schedule for Program - Program Committee and Host Organizing Committee

It is useful to rough out a program schedule while reviews are being completed so that the Program Committee OR PC has a clear sense of how many submissions can be accepted in each track. This will require working with the Host Organizing Committee OR HOC to understand the number of simultaneous tracks that are possible, space for the poster session, etc. Also, the Program Chairs should understand how much time will need to be blocked out for the opening session and keynote, the Ideas Challenge, and the closing session and keynote (the three standard plenary sessions for OR).

Reviews complete, submissions selected, and notifications issued - Program Committee

Once reviews are complete, the Program Committee OR PC works to identify which submissions should be accepted into the program, which submissions might be designated to a different track from the original submission (for example, a paper might be accepted as a poster), and which should be rejected. Often the Track Chairs can make the acceptance decisions within their tracks and will bring edge cases to the broader Program CommitteeOR PC. The Program Chairs have final authority over acceptances and rejections. Once these are finalized, notifications should be sent using ConfTool. The Program Committee OR PC should allow time to hear back from submitters whose submissions were designated to a different track whether they accept the track change.

Permissions to Record - Program Committee

If any sessions, including the keynotes, are going to be recorded and posted in the OR YouTube Channel, the program committee should collect the appropriate permissions from speakers.

Program Schedule Complete - Program Committee

Now that the decisions about content have been made, attention should be turned to fleshing out the detail details of the program schedule. This should be posted on the website as soon as practical. . Early information about the conference structure and content may be essential to potential attendees seeking funding from their institution. A six week lead time or better is desirable.

Once the timetable is published, an email should be sent to the lists advertising the fact and encouraging people to register. If not already done, now is a good time to identify and recruit session chairs for the conference.

Arrangements Made for

...

Fellowship Awardees - Host Organizing Committee and

...

Fellowship Subcommittee

Once registration opens and scholarship fellowship recipients have been selected, arrangements should be made for the free registrations, and, for the fellowship awardee, travel arrangements. This is particularly critical if the awardees have to apply for visas to attend the conference.

Selection of Full Bid for Conference Hosting - OR SCORSC

Once all bids have been submitted, the OR SC ORSC should review each bid carefully for the criteria required (see above) with close attention to the budget, logistics, and experience. In areas that need further clarification, the OR SC ORSC should seek clarity from the bidder. Once the OR SC ORSC has satisfied their questions on the bids, they should vote on which bid should be awarded the conference. The successful and unsuccessful bids should be notified. The successful bid should be given time to prepare a “Save this Date” website before a public announcement is made. However, it is critical to make the Save the Date announcement as soon as possible ideally in time for this year’s conference so that those dates are on people’s calendars, and other conferences are planned around them. All bids should be saved in the knowledge-base.

April

Prepping of Keynote Speakers - Program Committee

It is important that the Program Chairs schedule a call with the keynote speakers (either separately or together) to check in about logistics, needs for their presentations, and to spend a little time orienting them to the Open Repositories OR community and its general ethos. This is to ensure that the keynote speakers pitch their talks to the right audience.

Management and Planning of the Ideas Challenge - Program Committee

Much of the work around the Ideas Challenge happens at the conference. However, planning should start early. Considerations include whether there is a theme for the Challenge or if sponsorship is sought for the reception (if any) or for prizes. The success of the Ideas Challenge is often dependent on an enthusiastic and appealing campaign just prior to and during the conference; it is important to gather a group who can carry that campaign forward.

May

Planning for Opening and Closing Sessions - Program Committee, Host Organizing Committee, and

...

ORSC Chairs

The opening session generally contain quite a few segments including (but not limited to and not in any particular order):

a
• A welcome from the
OR SC
• ORSC Chair, the Host, and the Program Chairs;
a
• A welcome from someone such as a Provost or University Librarian at the Host Institution,
a
• A review of the Code of Conduct;
an
• An introduction of the
Program Committee, Host Organizing Committee
• OR PC, OR HOC, and the
Steering Committee
• ORSC;
an
• An overview of the number of submissions to the program and acceptances;
• An overview of the demographics of the registrants;
• Introduction to fellowship recipients;
• Thanks to sponsors;
• Substantial changes to the program (for example, new tracks or changes to tracks);
• Ideas Challenge;
• Introduction of the keynote speaker; and
• The keynote itself and questions.

This needs to be well planned in order to not go over the time allotted to the session and allow sufficient time for the keynote speaker. The Program Chairs should clearly communicate to the keynote speaker the time allotted to them.

The closing session also contains a number of segments including (but not limited to and not in any particular order):

• The introduction of the keynote speaker;
• The keynote itself and questions;
• Award of prizes for the best poster (if offered);
• Award of prizes for the Ideas Challenge;
• Thanks to sponsors;
• Introduction of the next OR location (usually done by the Host
Organizing Committee
• Chairs or their representatives of the next year's conference);
• Closing comments from the various chairs; and
• Thanks to key parties.

Similarly this session will need to be well timed so that the conference ends on time.

Preparation for Conference - Host Organizing Committee and Program Committee

The OR HOC should prepare the program for printing and for online. Please note that there was a mixed reaction to an online only program used in a recent OR. Prepare inclusion of sponsorship materials in conference packs, etc. if necessary.  An   An app like Sched can be a useful way to provide an online and social experience for the conference.

It is important that provision be made for collecting conference presentations in a digital form to add to the conference web site (and eventually, a repository of all OR presentations).  In , YouTube, and Zenodo repository).  In the past, session Chairs have sometimes been asked to collect these from their group. However it is done, an effort should be made to get as many as possible: they form a valuable resource.

The Host Organizing Committee OR HOC should be ensuring that all speakers are registered so that any potential gaps in the program are identified very early on.

Typically there can be a lot of sponsor management during this period particularly if there will be exhibit spaces for sponsors.

Members of the Host Organizing Committee, Program Committee, OR SCOR HOC, OR PC, ORSC, and those who will be staffing the conference should be familiar with the Code of Conduct, Anti-Harassment Policy, and the protocol for managing reports of violations.

June

Hold Conference - Program Committee, Host Organizing Committee, and OR SCORSC

All groups should be prepared for last minute hiccups during the conference and have clear communication channels for these/ . Slack is often used to communicate during the conference for this purpose.

Debrief Meeting - Program Committee, Host Organizing Committee, and OR SCORSC

Generally the lunch immediately following the closing keynote is dedicated to a debrief amongst all of the organizers on lessons learned. This also includes the chair(s) Chairs of the following year’s host organizing committeeOR HOC. A conference call with a de-brief as the main agenda topic should be arranged with organizers soon after the conference ends if a face-to-face meeting cannot be scheduled.

...

Attendee Survey - Host Organizing Committee with input from the

...

ORSC

The OR HOC should distribute a survey electronically to all delegates attendees at conference close. The questions should be based on previous years’ surveys (for trending) as well as feature any new questions relevant to that event. The returns from the delegate attendee survey should be collated and sent to the OR SC ORSC within a month of the conference close so that the information derived from the returns can be used to influence the way that the next conference is organisedorganized. The OR SC ORSC can provide the previous year’s survey.

July

Website Wrap-Up - Host Organizing Committee

Rather than let the conference website go moribund, it is appreciated if it can be updated post-conference to reflect some of the highlights and trivia from the event and to add presentations (or links to presentations in a repository) from the program.

Also, past conference website websites have been archived in the Internet Archive; once the website is finalized (including with links to presentations), work with the OR SC ORSC to get this added via an Archive It account or the IA's general crawl.

Content - Host Organizing Committee and Program Committee

Presenters should have provided session Chairs (or otherwise supplied) an electronic version of their presentation.  These   These need to be collated and stored safely. Some organisers organizers have retrospectively linked them from the website's conference programme. At the time of writing, the Steering Committee is looking for a way to host these materials centrally year-on-yearprogram. All presentations are deposited into the OR Zenodo repository: https://zenodo.org/communities/openrepos.

Social Media Accounts - Host Organizing Committee with ORSC

At the end of the conference, social media accounts (Twitter and Facebook) should be passed off to the next Host Organizing CommitteeOR HOC.

Accounting - Host Organizing Committee with OR Finance Subcommittee and CLIR

In due course, the OR SC ORSC will expect a set of summary accounting reports for the conference, preferably under the same headings as were used in the initial bid.  This   This will allow easy comparison of the two. The total sponsorship sponsorship income should be specifically shown in the final accounts. If, as is usual, the conference made a small profit when everything is taken into account, the organizers will need to agree with OR SC ORSC how and when to transfer the surplus into the OR contingency fund.

Knowledge-base - Host Organizing Committee and Program Committee

As soon as practical following the conference, the knowledge-base in the wiki needs updating with the conference documents for the information of subsequent organizers and potential organizers.  In   In practice, many of these documents may have been added "along the way" but now will be a good time to check that everything is there. If Google docs or other tools were used outside the wiki, download and transfer the required information to the wiki; if there is additional information that may be useful, add those as well. Documents to be included in the knowledge base can be found in Appendix DE.

Review Steering Committee Membership -

...

ORSC

In the month after the conference, the permanent members of the SC ORSC should review the membership. Membership is generally kept at 1412-16 permanent 13 standing members with an addition of the Program and Host Committee Chairs rotating on and off each year. The current membership policy can be found at: https://wiki.duraspacelyrasis.org/display/or11/Membership+Policy+2015.

Appendix A: Open Repositories Code of Conduct

...