[OSGeo-Conf] Re: FOSS4G 2012 Timeline and Academic Track

Tue Jan 31 03:09:25 EST 2012

Dear mr Xianfeng Song,

Thank you for reacting to my earlier email. Let me remind you that
originally, I was asked to "strengthen the Academic Track" following up on
a MoU between OSGEO and the ICA. The idea was not to take over all
organisation of the AT, but to let most things be worked on (as usual) by
the LOC and just act as a sort of 'special issue overview group'  to make
sure there would be enough quality for a special ISI journal issue in the
coming years. In the mean time we have a preliminary OK from Transactions
of GIS editor John Wilson for a special issue running for several years.
So the Scientific Committee would act as editors for this special issue.
And the original idea was also to have the AT CfP and selection done
enough early to have the Special Issue available at the conference itself
(as is the case with the special issue TGIS has every year at the ESRI
User Conference). We realized that this would not be possible in 2012, but
it is what we aim for in future years. And in 2012 we already want the
special issue papers selected BEFORE the conference.

Thus, there would be no need for chairs of the sessions to judge quality
based on, and during, oral/poster presentation. We think that you can not
judge the quality of a paper based on its presented version, it should be
properly peer reviewed based on its actual written contents.

But our planned time-line for the special issue came into problems,
because of the various delays and the lack of communication. I must admit
that I thought a week or so ago that the whole conference would not
materialise, as nothing seemed to happen on the Beijing end. Now,
fortunately that fear seems misplaced, with the time-line sent in the
email from mr Gao Ang. However, his planned time-line for things like
publishing the website and the Call for Papers might be OK for the general
conference, but way to late to have any realistic hope for enough
high-quality academic papers to fill a TGIS issue before the conference.

With all this in mind I decided to send my latest email (30 januari) to
the LOC; and yes, it is a bit invasive (some might say rude, sorry for
that), but I felt that this was needed to clarify if we can organize the
Academic Track the way we envisaged.

So I would urgently ask you and the rest of the LOC to decide in their
upcoming meeting:
- Do you feel comfortable in having the Scientific Committee as it stands
now (mrs Coetzee, mrs Mitasova, mr Moreno, myself, and including, as I
sincerely hope, mr Xianfeng Song) take up organization of the CfP and
paper selection for the Academic Track? It would mean we would follow our
own time-line for this, and we would sent a CfP for the AT out quickly,
ahead of the general FOSS4G CfP.

Let me assure you that I will not feel in the least offended if you decide
that this line of action does not fit your current conference set-up. I
would be perfectly OK with having the LOC take up te organisation
themselves along the lines they have already planned. We can then take the
initiative of the special issue running for several years to 2013 and
further.

I hope this clarifies my earlier email, please feel free to provide
further questions or comments.

Yours truly,

--
Barend Köbben
Senior Lecturer, ITC - University of Twente,
Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation
PO Box 217, 7500AE Enschede (The Netherlands)
+31-(0)53 4874 253

On 31-01-12 05:31, "xianfeng song" <song.osgeo at gmail.com> wrote:

>Dear Barend,
>
>Thank you for your efforts. We are glad to hear that Helena Mitasova,
>Coetzee Serena and Rafael Moreno have agreed to be in the Scientific
>Committee.
>
>Is it too early for the final (revised) papers deadline (September 1)
>and Final determination of journal contents (September 7)? Journal
>worthiness will be judged based on the quality of paper submitted and
>also presentation and comments/suggestions received during oral/poster
>presentation. Academic Session chairs will be asked to recommend both
>oral and poster papers after their hearing the presentations at
>FOSS4G2012, I think.
>
>The authors shortlisted for special issue may be informed by 30 Sept,
>they will have to submit their final manuscripts and undergo peer
>review process as per policy of respective journals. The planned
>schedule for review process for special issue is to be completed by
>Nov/Dec 2012. For special issue of TGIS, is it for scientific
>committee to take care of its peer review process? If so, final
>determination of journal contents in TGIS could be easy and move fast
>as you suggested.
>
>In many cases, the papers recommended by a conference to be published
>in a journal still take time to be reviewed by the journal's own
>refereeing system, and even might not be accepted sometime. The
>authors might feel not good if their paper were unfortunately rejected
>by the journal, but we have announced their names formally in a global
>conference. So, a conference announcement (10-15 Sep -- Journal
>content will be known and announced at the conference) might not be
>necessary, or just suitable for a journal we can guarantee or manage.
>
>Supposed special Issues of
>1) Transaction of GIS (Innovative applications using FOSS4G?)
>2) Chinese Journal of Geoinformatics or Arid land geography (FOSS4G
>applications in China)
>3) International Journal of Geoinformatics (FOSS4G uses cases in Asia)
>4) IEEE Proceedings (geo-tech related, contacting by Zhou)
>5) or OSGeo Journal
>
>Best regards,
>Song
>
>P.S.
>I also forward this email to LOC as there will be a meeting for
>Beijing team soon.
>
>
>
>On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 7:23 AM, Moreno, Rafael
><Rafael.Moreno at ucdenver.edu> wrote:
>> Barend,
>> Good time line.
>>
>> Just a comment. Final revised papers September 1 is OK.
>>
>> After this deadline I suggest to have ONE MORE paper resubmission
>>deadline BEFORE the deadline established by the journal.
>>
>> This year the FINAL REVISED papers still needed a substantial amount of
>>work to have them in publishable form (deficient literature review;
>>methods clarity; language; style; journal format; ect...). Because we
>>left the final revised papers submission to be the same as the deadline
>>for submission to the journal, authors had a difficult time doing the
>>necessary revisions.
>>
>> Rafael
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________________
>> Rafael Moreno, Ph.D.
>> Department of Geography and Environmental Studies
>> University of Colorado Denver
>> Campus Box 172
>> 1200 Larimer Street NC 3524
>> Denver, CO 173364
>> Phone: 303-352-3762
>> Fax 303-556-6197
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Barend Köbben [mailto:kobben at itc.nl]
>> Sent: Monday, January 30, 2012 4:00 AM
>> To: Gao Ang; xianfeng song
>> Cc: Helena Mitasova; Coetzee Serena; Moreno, Rafael;
>>board at lists.osgeo.org; conference_dev at lists.osgeo.org
>> Subject: FOSS4G 2012 Timeline and Academic Track
>>
>> Dear mr Gao Ang, XianFeng Song and others of the LOC,
>>
>> Thank you very much for the update on the FOSS4G 2012 Beijing
>>conference.
>> I was happy to see the detailed timeline and the first draft of the
>>website.
>>
>> As you might remember, I am the responsible person for setting up the
>>Academic Track Publication Outlet for this year's and the future FOSS4G
>>conferences. We have now secured the Transactions in GIS journal for
>>this and I am happy to say that the following people have volunteered to
>>be part of the Scientific Committee: mrs Helena Mitasova, mrs Serena
>>Coetzee and mr Rafael Moreno.
>>
>> I am hoping that mr XianFeng Song, the LOC member listed as responsible
>>for the Academic Track, is willing to also join the Scientific
>>Committee...?
>>
>> I am writing mainly because I would like your support in starting up,
>>for the Academic Track ONLY, the Call for Papers quickly now, ahead of
>>the schedule you propose. In your milestones there is a 31 March - 30
>>April slot for submissions. This is fine for abstracts of technical and
>>business papers, but too limited for full scientific papers.
>>
>> In the original timeline for the 2012 Academic Track that I proposed
>>earlier, the first CfP was planned for February 1. I would really want
>>to meet that deadline, as otherwise the authors will not have sufficient
>>time to prepare a journal-worthy paper. Past experience also tells us we
>>need sufficient time for the revision and final editing stage. The
>>(slightly
>> changed) timeline for the Academic Track would then be:
>>
>>
>>
>> * 1st preliminary Call for Papers (basically dates and subject matter):
>>1 February
>>
>>
>> * Detailed CfP (with procedures and detailed requirements): 1 March
>>
>>
>> * Full paper deadline: June 1
>>
>>
>> * Reviewing decisions: July 1
>>  => Note that here we would need to decide on acceptance of papers for
>>presentation at the conference and for inclusion in the Journal.
>>Depending on the numbers of sessions/slots the LOC will reserve for an
>>academic track, this might not be the same (i.e. some papers may be
>>deemed good enough to present, but not in the top 8-10 that fit  in a
>>journal issue).
>>
>>
>> * Final (revised) papers deadline: September 1
>>
>>
>> * Final determination of journal contents: September 7
>>
>>
>> * Conference (10-15 Sep -- Journal content will be known and announced
>>at the conference)
>>
>>
>> * publication of special issue: ASAP
>>
>>
>>
>> Again, to be clear, this would only be for the Academic Track, all your
>>other milestones would not be influenced by this.
>>
>> I would really appreciate if the LOC could can let me know, rather
>>quickly, if they agree with this setup. I realise it might seem that I
>>am pushing a bit, but I sincerely think that it is necessary to move
>>ahead quickly on this. We have the opportunity now for a serious and
>>worthwhile outlet for the Academic Track (TGIS is an ISI-indexed
>>journal) and it would be a shame to let that opportunity go by.
>>
>> Yours truly,
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Barend Köbben
>> Senior Lecturer, ITC - University of Twente, Faculty of Geo-Information
>>Science and Earth Observation PO Box 217, 7500AE Enschede (The
>>Netherlands)
>> +31-(0)53 4874 253
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 24-01-12 03:20, "Gao Ang" <tomgaoang at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>Board,
>>>
>>>Thank you all very much for your care and advices about FOSS4G 2012.
>>>The preparation is going smoothly here. After contacting all LoC
>>>members, I represent them to give the summaries about our progress
>>>here.
>>>
>>>The venue of FOSS4G 2012 is the Beijing Conference Center. The
>>>conference date is arranged as follows.
>>>9th, Sept. (afternoon) - desk registry (one day after openstreetmap
>>>meeting closing in Tokyo) 10th11th Sept  Workshops 12th15th Sept 
>>>Tutorial/Technical/Academy Section 16th, Sept  Code Sprint
>>>
>>>The milestone is proposed as follows. It is about one month late if
>>>comparing with 2011 events. But it can be recovered very soon in
>>>Chinese way.
>>>1) Web-site release 29th Feb 2012 (can be early, after spring festival)
>>>2) Announcement of Chinese Sponsors 1st March 2012
>>>3) Release of Prospectus for Sponsors 15th March 2012
>>>4) Early Bird Registration Start 15th March 2012 to 15 June 2012
>>>3) Call for Abstracts: Start 31 March 2012 - Close 30th April 2012
>>>4) Call for Workshop and tutorials 31 March 2012 - Close 30th April
>>>2012
>>>5) Voting for Technical Session Abstract 1 May 2012 - 15th May 2012
>>>6) Abstract acceptance 31 May 2012
>>>7) Workshop acceptance 31 May 2012
>>>8) Call for Full papers for Academic Session 31 May 2012 with deadline
>>>1st July 2012
>>>9) Announcement of Keynote Speakers 1st July 2012
>>>9) Release Conference Program 10th July 2012
>>>10) Issue for support letters for Visa commence 10th July 2012 onwards.
>>>      Visa will be issued in 4 working days at Chinese Embassy or
>>>Consulate
>>>       in resident countries.
>>>
>>>Now we are preparing the brochure so that we can contact foreign
>>>sponsors with it. For local sponsors, we have contacted Chinese Academy
>>>of Sciences, Supmap GIS and so on. Prof. Song who is now in Japan, had
>>>a full discussion with Prof. Raghvan, collecting a lot of experiences
>>>about past events. We also welcome you for your valuable suggestions.
>>>("Prof. Song" <song.osgeo at gmail.com>, "Xiong Jie"
>>><xiongjie666 at gmail.com> and I <tomgaoang at gmail.com> will follow the
>>>mail lists and response to the suggestions.)
>>>
>>>Best wishes,
>>>Gao
>>>_______________________________________________
>>>Board mailing list
>>>Board at lists.osgeo.org
>>>http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/board
>>
>>
>> Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC)
>>University of Twente Chamber of Commerce: 501305360000
>>
>> E-mail disclaimer
>> The information in this e-mail, including any attachments, is intended
>>for the addressee only. If you are not the intended recipient, you are
>>hereby notified that any disclosure, copying, distribution or action in
>>relation to the content of this information is strictly prohibited. If
>>you have received this e-mail by mistake, please delete the message and
>>any attachment and inform the sender by return e-mail. ITC accepts no
>>liability for any error or omission in the message content or for damage
>>of any kind that may arise as a result of e-mail transmission.

Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC)
University of Twente
Chamber of Commerce: 501305360000

E-mail disclaimer
The information in this e-mail, including any attachments, is intended for the addressee only. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any disclosure, copying, distribution or action in relation to the content of this information is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail by mistake, please delete the message and any attachment and inform the sender by return e-mail. ITC accepts no liability for any error or omission in the message content or for damage of any kind that may arise as a result of e-mail transmission.