Automating the management of scientific conferences using information mining techniques

Conference management systems, which help organizers in carrying out tasks in the workflow, of scientific events are widely used in the academic world. In this paper we focus on tasks where methods from the domain of information retrieval, information management and information organization can assist the organizer, the program committee members and the participants. We present a method for the creation of an improved review process by better matching the reviewers expertise with the paper topics, which can to increase the quality of the conference. Furthermore the conference participants benefit from better access to the wealth of information accumulated throughout a conference series. The Conference organizers profit from the reduced workload because of the partial automating of tedious tasks, such as the review assignment, the compilation of the conference program and the creation of poster setup plans. We report on case studies from a small-sized (around 200 participants), a medium-sized (around 400 participants) as well as a large (more than 700 participants) conference in the computer science as well as the medical domains.