We welcome proposals for special tracks, and to support the below information attempts to give an overview of how it works and the opportunities from chairing such a track.

Special Tracks assist the conference and community in many ways whilst at the same time offering those involved in the tracks a ‘win-win situation’ whereby they can raise their own academic profile within their field and the conference field and community. A dedicated topic session at the physical event (thus likely more intensive in-depth presentation and discussions), plus a dedicated section in the indexed proceedings book to point their networks and communities towards post-event are offered.

The initiative of offering special tracks supports the conference mission through bringing in dedicated topic groups towards strengthening topics within the community as well as enriching the in-conference discussions innate to the physical event.

The Special Track is run as a mini conference under the conference umbrella. Each track has its own chair and committee to be able to review/ accept/ reject the track submissions. The chair and committee ensure that each submission is treated fairly and equal such that each is subjected to unbiased blinded reviewing by a minimum of three peer reviewers and checked in the EAI system for plagiarism via the tool supplied.

By running with dedicated Special Tracks, the reviewing of the ‘main’ tracks is helped as with each  dedicated track conducting its own reviews within the track, thus with topic experts having high and associated competencies to the topics as within the network. This offers higher quality reviewing of the topics that may otherwise be in a ‘main’ track of wider scope without such expert reviewers. In the ‘main’ tracks the Technical Program Committee (TPC) co-chairs appoint reviewers, selecting from the list they have with best competence matching to the submitted topic. Because of the numbers of submissions and reviewers (minimum of three per submitted text) and the potential lack of detail in reviewer profiles this can lead to quality issues, there must be diligent quality checking, which takes a lot of extra time. Special Tracks that are self-contained contribute to helping raise the quality of accepted papers and disburdening of the ‘main’ tracks reviewing process and management.

A person decides to propose a special track topic in their vocational academic field as chair. In doing so they commit to running and managing the track as a self-contained entity. They create and submit a topic text with suitable title as a call for papers (CFP) alongside their image and short bio towards creation of a dedicated Special Track web page. In doing this, they should have a network of peers that they have approached to be in the Special Track committee. If their track proposal text is accepted by the event management, then the web team create a page for the track at the conference URL. Examples can be explored at prior conference edition sites e.g., see https://artsit.eai-conferences.org/2024/ menu “For Authors / Calls”.

The track personnel should be proactive in attracting submissions of texts. This can be within their specific networks, social media, and blogs etc., but also wider towards attracting from global potential contributors that will also enhance and enrich their existing networks. There are numerous ways to do this and online resources are many to find such academics and their contact information to approach. For example, journals, books, conferences and more list contributors who can be invited. Social Media activity can also reap submissions. EAI marketing contribute by their dissemination of information of the event and all innate special tracks by dedicated posters that the chair and committee can similarly distribute proactively.

It is timely here to mention that from experience it can be shared that often the percentile of contributors’ uptake vs the number of invitations sent out can be disappointing, but this is an element of the chair’s role towards populating the track with suitable submissions. Even if those invited do not agree to submit for the special track, they may agree to act as a reviewer for the track or for the conference, thus, as well as inviting a text submission, invites should also ask if the contact will review, and the names should be listed and shared as appropriate with the conference event management as well as in-track.

Following the review phase, authors of submissions are informed of the decision of the special track committee and management of ‘accept’ or ‘non-accept’. All are thanked for their contribution and authors of accepted papers are instructed to work forward towards sending Camera Ready versions of their texts as final conference papers.

Gratis registration deal for the Special Track Chair: a single 100% discount is granted if the Special Track receives either ten collected submissions (and more) or at least six or more accepted (registered) papers. This can be allocated as he/she wishes. Additionally, as the budget allows, should the Special Track (chair) have less than six accepted papers or less than ten submissions in total, EAI can provide adjusted discount codes in the range of 25% to 50%. Six accepted papers are the minimum number for a dedicated event session and proceedings book section.

Deadlines are determined by Special Track chairs, but they should closely align to the main track deadlines.

The EAI Confy system for conference management is used by the track chair and TPC.

Each special track is announced in the event program as a dedicated topic session.

The proceedings book is published by Springer as indexed in their LNICST series.

Special Track proposals Submission deadline: 1 April 2025

Please email your Special Track proposals to the Steering Committee Chair: Anthony L. Brooks – [email protected] and keep in the loop EAI ArtsIT Conference Manager: Veronika Kissova – [email protected].

The special track proposal should include:

• Special Track title
• A short description of the Special Track
• Name, email address, and affiliation for special track organizers
• Scope and Topics

After Special Track proposals are approved, Special Track Chairs will be asked to deliver their photo, and short Bio and to identify a few TPC members/reviewers for your track. This will help streamline the review process when the time comes. Please provide 5–10 TPC members, including their names, affiliations, and email addresses.

All registered papers will be submitted for publishing by Springer – LNICST series and made available through SpringerLink Digital Library: ArtsIT Conference Proceedings.

Proceedings will be submitted for inclusion in leading indexing services, such as Web of Science, Compendex, Scopus, DBLP, EU Digital Library, Google Scholar, IO-Port, MathSciNet, Inspec, and Zentralblatt MATH.

Available Journals

All accepted authors are eligible to submit an extended version in a fast track of:

• EAI Endorsed Transactions on Creative Technologies
• EAI Endorsed Transactions on AI and Robotics

By paying an additional $150, authors can publish their articles in the EAI Endorsed Transactions journal selected by the conference (Scopus and Ei-indexed):

• EAI Endorsed Transactions on Internet of Things (Scopus)

The article’s publication is subject to the following requirements:  

• It must be an extended version of the conference paper with a different title and abstract. In general, 30% of new content must be added.
• The article will be processed once the conference proceedings have been published.
• The article will be processed using the fast-track option.

Once the conference proceedings are published, the corresponding author should contact us at [email protected] with the details of their article to begin processing.

Additional publication opportunities:
– EAI Transactions series (Open Access)
– EAI/Springer Innovations in Communications and Computing Book Series
(titles in this series are indexed in Ei Compendex, Web of Science & Scopus)

Papers should be submitted through EAI ‘Confy+‘ system, and have to comply with the Springer format (see Author’s kit section).

– Regular papers should be up to 12-20 pages in length.
– Short papers should be 6-11 pages in length.

All conference papers undergo a thorough peer review process prior to the final decision and publication. This process is facilitated by experts in the Technical Program Committee during a dedicated conference period. Standard peer review is enhanced by EAI Community Review which allows EAI members to bid to review specific papers. All review assignments are ultimately decided by the responsible Technical Program Committee Members while the Technical Program Committee Chair is responsible for the final acceptance selection. You can learn more about Community Review here.

Paper submission

Papers should be submitted through EAI ‘Confy+‘ system, and have to comply with the Springer format (see Author’s kit section below).

How do I submit a paper in Confy?

1. Go to Confy+ website
2. Login or sign up as new user
3. Select your desired Track
4. Click the ‘Submit Paper’ link within the track and follow the instructions

Alternatively, go to home page of Confy+ and click on “Open conferences”.

Submission guidelines

– Papers should be in English.
– Double-Blind Review. Papers have to be submitted anonymously.
– Previously published work may not be submitted, nor may the work be concurrently submitted to any other conference or journal.
   Such papers will be rejected without review.
– The paper submissions must follow the Springer formatting guidelines (see Author’s kit section below).
– Authors are required to adhere to the Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement.

Papers must be formatted using the Springer LNICST Authors’ Kit.

Instructions and templates are available from Springer’s LNICST homepage:

• LaTeX2e Proceedings Templates (zip)
• Microsoft Word Proceedings Templates (zip)

Please make sure that your paper adheres to the format as specified in the instructions and templates.

When uploading the camera-ready copy of your paper, please be sure to upload both:

• a PDF copy of your paper formatted according to the above templates, and
• an archive file (e.g. zip, tar.gz) containing the both a PDF copy of your paper and LaTeX or Word source material prepared according to the above guidelines.

*As per new EU accessibility requirements, going forward, all figures, illustrations, tables, and images ought to have descriptive text accompanying them. Please refer to the document below, which will assist you in crafting Alternative Text (Alt Text). 

Download HERE.