The Conference will include Special Sessions on highly specialised topic areas, within the topics of the Conference. The formulation of the topic areas (titles) should be specific, rather than simply duplicating the broad subjects of the main conference tracks.

Special Sessions will normally include 6 papers from different institutions and organisations coming from different countries. Also a good balance regarding country contributions should be assured. The session can be organised in several parts, if more than 6 high quality papers are accepted in one special session.

Special Sessions are organised by the initiative of one or more individuals, who must adhere to the following procedure:

Proposals submission

Composition of the Special Session, considering final accepted papers, cannot contain more than 25% of papers from the same institution.

Proposals should be submitted by email to the Conference Secretariat (conferences@praiseworthyprize.com). The proposal should include :

• The Conference's Name to which submitting the Special Session.

• The description of the Special Session, including its track area and prospective title (at least 150 words).

• Name of organiser(s) and short biography.

Special Session Approval

The Steering Committee will approve the proposal. Details of accepted Special Sessions and organisers, and the corresponding Call for Special Session Papers will be posted on this website.

When accepted, a special session will be included in the conference automated submission system, and the corresponding access codes will be provided to its organiser(s).

Special Session Organisation

Approval Special Session Organisers must:

• Immediately contact potential contributors (at least 5) before paper submission deadline, invite them to submit and provide the Special Session Chairs with their names and prospective paper titles.

• Contact potential reviewers and provide the Special Session Chairs with their contact information. Organisers are responsible to manage the review process complying with the quality standards of the Conference (minimum 3 reviewers for each paper).

• Coordinate reviewers so that all reviews are completed within the review deadlines.

• Submit to the Special Session Chairs the draft of session organisation (with names of co-chairs) within a week of receiving the list of camera ready registered papers.

Deadlines for submission / acceptance notification / camera-ready version are the same as for regular papers.

Special Sessions not fulfilling these requirements may be cancelled and the accepted papers moved to regular conference sessions of the corresponding track.

Organisers of scheduled Special Sessions commit themselves to register for and attend the conference. For each Special Session, one free registration will be offered to the organiser or distributed among all the organisers at their own decision. In any case, the general rules about maximum number of papers associated with a registration will apply.