- 1. Get invite to EquinOCS
- 2. Get access to EquinOCS
- 3. Configure your Project
- 4. Initiate Call-for Papers
- 5. Invite Bidders (Project Members, Reviewers)
- 6. Assign reviewers to the submitted papers
- 7. Receive reviewers recommendation
- 8. Decide and Notify authors of decisions made on articles
- 9. Get final versions of accepted paper
- 10. Create the proceedings volume
1. Get invite to EquinOCS
When creating a new project in the EquinOCS system, Project Organizers will be invited to participate in the project.
Thus, all Project Organizers will receive corresponding invitations by email. Below you can see an example of an email.
In this case, confirmation or rejection is required.
After confirmation, the name of this Project Organizers will be displayed on the Project home page.
2. Get access to EquinOCS
Via following the link in your invitation mail, the EquinOCS Login page will be opened in your browser. Click on the button “Enter Service”.
Please note: The button “Submit now” is exclusive for submissions, and will guide you directly to the paper submission process. Click the button “Enter service”.
- If you already have an account at EquinOCS you will be asked to Login. After Login you will be guided to the start page where you can 3. Configure your Project
- If you do not yet have an account at EquinOCS, please follow the registration process. Once your Account has been created an email will be sent to the address you’ve stated in the registration process. Please follow the instructions in this mail to activate your account and start to 3. Configure your Project
3. Configure your Project
You can reach the configuration section of the Project by clicking on the navigation tab on the left side of you screen
The configuration window of the Project consists of the following items.
3.1 General data
In this section you can change the basic information about the Project, such as Acronym, Name, Public Service Page (URL), External Service Page (URL) and Description.
3.2 Style
In this section you can define the Project logo as shown in the image below.
The logo is displayed on the Project list page.
3.3 Configuration
In this section you can find several subsections such as Submission, Bidding, Assignment, Reviewing and Discussion. Each of the subsections contains the corresponding settings.
In the "Submission" section you can find all the settings related to the paper submission process. Here you can:
- enable or disable the papers submission (New Papers, New Versions of Submitted Papers (e.g. Revised Versions), Final Versions of Accepted Papers), abstract-only submission, complemental archive submission,
- define paper categories,
- view the Licence to publish agreement text(s), the names of the volume editors, etc.
NB: The volume editors are the ones whose names are to appear on the cover of the proceedings and in the header of the Licence to publish agreement. It is essential that they are correct.
In the "Bidding" section, you can enable or disable the bidding process and decide whether to shuffle the papers for the bidding table or not.
In the "Assignment" section, you can set the minimum number of reviewers per paper.
In the "Reviewing" section, you can select the type of review (i.e. open, triple-blind, double-blind, or single-blind) and allow or block reviewing for papers where a decision has already been made. .
In the "Discussion" section, you can select one of the discussion modes, i.e. open to all members, open to deciders and reviewers, closed - visible for all members, closed - visible for deciders and determine who can participate in paper discussions.
3.4 Roles and members
This section lists all non-author users grouped by roles. In addition to the default list of roles you can create the custom ones.
3.5 Email Outbox
Here you can find all Emails that were triggered by you via specific actions (e.g. “6. Assign reviewers to the submitted papers” or “8. Notify authors of decisions made on articles”) and have been automatically sent by EquinOCS.
4. Initiate Call-for Papers
Once the Project is fully configured, you are ready for the paper submission. To do this, click on the button “Yes” on the item “Allow Submission of New Papers”.
The system automatically generates the link to the Project page. It is displayed in the Project configuration item “Public Service Page”. You can use this link to invite the authors to the paper submission process.
Using this link, authors can easily access the Project submission page and submit their papers.
5. Invite Bidders (PC members, Reviewers)
You can invite bidders (Project Members, Reviewers) or other Project participants in the ''Roles&Member'' section. It contains a list of default roles such as PC Chair, PC Member and Reviewers. You can also add custom roles if needed.
Select the role you need and click the ''Invite'' button.
To invite the single user you should enter the first name, last name and email address, but only this last field is required.
When the invitation has been sent, the user is displayed in the list of invited users. You can cancel the invitation if need be.
To invite a group of uses you can use the tab “Invite multiple users”.
The system will show you a link to share with your colleagues: https://equinocs.springernature.com/serviceinvite/1000a758-e0a6-47df-a8ed-4b326798bcd2
By accepting this invitation, they will become users with a specific role.
6. Assign reviewers to the submitted papers
The assignment of reviewers to the submitted papers is done via the ''Assign'' window.
You can choose between manual and automatic assignment.
Within manual assignment, you manually select the required number of reviewers for each paper. The bid results and the number of already assigned papers are displayed for each reviewer.
Within automatic assignment, the system will ask you for the preferences, and then it will show the result of automatic assignments.
You can see details, apply or re-run assignments for all or only some of the papers (using the lock function).
After that, you can see the result of your work and decide whether to notify all reviewers of all papers, all reviewers of only some papers, or only selected reviewers.
NB: Until users are notified about assignments, they will not be able to submit their reviews.
During the notification process, you can send additional comments or instructions to the reviewers.
After the assignment, you can still make changes, such as the cancellation of already assigned reviewers or adding additional reviewers.
Each submitted review automatically triggers the notification email to Project Organizers.
The notification is displayed in the special ''Notifications'' window.
Moreover, all notifications are displayed in the window ''Received and Sent Emails''.
Decisions are made in the appropriate ''Decide'' section.
In this window, you can see all the articles and their details, see how many reviews have been submitted, and if necessary, remind reviewers of unsent reviews.
8. Decide and Notify authors of decisions made on articles
After reviewing the reports, you can proceed to making decisions on papers. You can make one of the following decisions: Accept, Revise or Reject. After making the decision, it is necessary to notify the authors. Until this is done, the decision can be changed.
You can notify the authors of one selected paper.
As an alternative, you can do the bulk notification.
After sending the notification to the authors, the result of actions is immediately displayed on the web page.
The decisions are displayed in the "View Papers" window.
9. Get final versions of accepted paper
The note about the Final Version of the paper is visible in 2 different windows: ''View Papers'' and ''Produce''.
In the ‘’View Papers’’ window, the padlock icons in the ''Status'' column depicts that the paper has been uploaded.
In the ‘’Produce’’ window contains the detailed information about accepted papers.
Here you can check whether the final version of the paper and the source archive have been uploaded and whether the Licence to Publish form has been accepted for the paper. If this has not been carried out, you can send a reminder.
10. Create the proceedings volume
You can create the export zip file in the ''Produce'' window.
To do this, select the ‘‘Proceedings’’ tab. The button “Start Proceedings Production” starts the generation.
Pay attention to the notification: If you proceed, all final versions of complete papers will be collected for the proceedings production. Complete papers are those for which a final upload including the source archive and signed Licence To Publish exists. Any changes to the papers in the previous stages of paper submission will then not be reflected in the upcoming proceedings volumes preparation. You would have to re-start from scratch in order to integrate such changes. Make sure that the final upload of the accepted papers is complete (including the source archive and Licence To Publish) before starting the proceedings production.
After the completion of the generation, you will see the following window.
To complete the proceedings volume preparation, you need to follow several steps:
- divide papers by volume (if there is more than one),
- organize table of contents,
- enter correct abbreviation, title, subtitle and volume number (if applicable)
- manage the program committee.
You can arrange papers by volume (if there are several of them), organize the table of contents in the "Organize Papers" section. To do this, you can create new volumes and topical parts and move articles between them by dragging them. You can also rename existing volumes and topical parts.
On the “Edit Volume” web page, you can:
- check and modify the volume parameters such as: abbreviation, title, subtitle and volume number (if VM is not needed, leave 0 in the corresponding tab),
- upload the preface (as a PDF file or as text in a text box) ,
- add the names of the volume editors by selecting them from already existing users (if volume editors are not registered in the system, they must be added in advance in the "Conference Members" section).
In the "Manage Committees" section, you can organize information about Project committees. Information about some of the registered users (Project Organizers, Project Members and Reviewers) will already be in this section. If the user is not registered in the system, then first you need to add his or her data to the section "Project members", after which you can add the name of this person to the appropriate group.
In the section "Project members" you can check and change information about existing users, as well as add information about new, previously unregistered users.
Please note that the sequence of the steps described above is not important. They can be performed in any order. The user can return to any step at any moment by selection of the appropriate menu button.
After all the steps have been completed, a proceedings zip file can be generated using the "Generate Files" button you can also download it.
As a result of generation, we will have 2 files: PDF and Zip.
The proceedings may be downloaded in either of following two formats:
- PDF format: Typically used for intermediate checks only.
- Zip format: This contains all of the files as required for the publication of the proceedings.
Alternatively, you can copy the link and share it with interested parties, for example, the corresponding Springer Editor.
link examples:
Alternatively, all proceedings may be automatically transferred to Springer’s FTP server. However, this functionality is usually used for volumes to be published in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS), Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNAI), Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing (LNBIP), Communications in Computer and Information Science (CCIS) and IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology (IFIP AICT), formerly known as the IFIP Series. In this case, all the proceedings materials are automatically sent to the Springer server and a notification is sent to: lncs@springer.com.
In case any new documents have been accepted and need to be included in the volume, the system cannot add them to the already created volumes, as explained earlier. So, you need to delete the already existing volumes and start the procedure of creating anew.
To do this, select the "Delete volumes and restart" option. In this case, all information about the volumes will be lost, and you will need to repeat all the steps one more time. You will see a corresponding notification.
There is no other way to add new papers to existing volumes.