SMC

A guide for the organization of
Sound & Music Computing Conference
and Summer School

Feb. 2011

Sound & Music Computing is an international conference organized yearly in Europe, that aims at promoting exchanges around topics related to sound and music computing, and to give them an international dimension. Sound & Music Computing is organised under the auspices of AFIM - Association Française d'Informatique Musicale http://www.afim-asso.org AIMI - Associazione di Informatica Musicale Italiana http://www.aimi-musica.org DEGEM - Deutsche Gesellschaft für Elektroakustische Musik http://www.degem.de/ HACI - Hellenic Association of Music Informatics SITEMU - Sociedad(e) Ibérica de TEcnología MUsical http://smcnetwork.org/sitemu The present document is intended to provide guidelines to the SMC conference organizers.

1  General shape and orientation

SMC stands for Sound and Music Computing. Each word of this name is significant: the conference is intended to promote knowledge about sound, to foster artistic and creation issues in computer music and to explore computing problems that are specific to sound and music.

1.1  The Conference

The SMC conference is intended to be a small conference, accessible and affordable both to organizers (in terms of organization complexity and financial burden) and to participants. It has the ambition to foster a high level scientific quality while developing a unique approach, compared to existing conferences in the sound and music domains. SMC is not a general computer music conference but focuses yearly on specific fields of the domain, with a clear interdisciplinary orientation, with the constant concern of preserving the right balance between science, technology, music (including musicology) and computing. It also encourages communication with other scientific domains when they share similar or connected concerns, in view of the mutual benefit of exchanging different approaches.

1.2  The Summer School

The Sound and Music Computing summer school promotes interdisciplinary education and research in the field of Sound and Music Computing. It is aimed at graduate students working on their Master or PhD thesis, but it is also open to any person carrying out research in this field.

2  General rules

2.1  The conference

1. The name of the conference is: Sound and Music Computing Conference ( SMC).
   
   
2. SMC  will be organized at spring or early summer [april to july ].
   
   
3. SMC official language is english.
   
   
4. The SMC conference aims at providing a high quality scientific level to a wide open audience. It is thus recommended to keep registration fees affordable and to be vigilant with the review process.
   
   
   
5. The call for submissions is defined in agreement with the SMC steering committee. It must be submitted to the steering committee at least 9 months before the conference.
   
   
6. A maximum length of 10 pages may be imposed on papers. However, reviewers will be instructed to weigh the contribution of a paper relative to its length. Papers longer than 8 pages must make a very significant contribution to be accepted. Authors must also be informed of this policy.
   
   
7. The list of the conference topics includes those of the previous SMC conference. The organizer is free to extend the list or to highlight a specific topic.
   
   
8. The organizer is free to decide its policy concerning music events (calling for music in the call for submissions, joining existing music events, inviting composers and/or performers).
   
   
9. The organizer will make the SMC Proceedings available free of charge to each delegate at the beginning of the conference. In case these proceedings are provided in an electronic format, the organizer must include a document equivalent to a printed version, in a platform-independent format (typically as a PDF file). Page numbers and ISBN must be provided for the procedings.
   
   
   
10. The recommended conference duration is 3 days. Parallel presentations must be avoided.
    
    
11. The recommended time slot allocation for the papers presentation is between 20 and 30 minutes ( including 5 mn for questions).
    
    
12. The organizer undertakes on publishing a web site dedicated to the SMC on the Internet.
    
    
13. The organizer will receive a mailing list for the conference announcement. This list must be maintained and sent back to the steering committee after the conference.
    
    
14. Some of the SMC articles may be selected to be published in a scholarly journal . The organizer will take part to the coordination of these papers review and selection, and to the publication of the journal special issue.
    
    

2.2  The Summer School

1. The name of the summer school is: Sound and Music Computing Summer School ( SMC Summer School).
   
   
2. SMC Summer School will be organized jointly to the SMC Conference.
   
   
3. The official language is english.
   
   
4. It is recommended to keep registration fees affordable.
   
   
5. The organizer is free to decide its policy concerning the courses content and orientation, provided that it integrates artistic, scientific, and engineering skills.
   
   
6. The recommended summer school duration is 5 days.
   
   
7. The organizer undertakes on publishing a web site dedicated to the SMC Summer School on the Internet.
   
   
8. The call for application is defined in agreement with the SMC steering committee. It must be submitted to the steering committee at least 9 months before the summer school.
   
   

3  The Conference Review Process

The review process must be based on full papers. Papers should be solid, self-contained contributions to a research program. They will be rigorously peer-reviewed and evaluated on the basis of originality, significance of the contribution to the field, quality of research, quality of writing and contribution to conference program diversity. They must contain clear statements of contribution relative to closely-related work and of the significance of this contribution. Papers will be published in the main conference proceedings. They will be presented by the author(s) at the conference. At least one of the authors must have paid the conference fee in order to have the paper presented and published. The organizer undertakes on setting up a reading panel and a selection committee. The reading panel includes the members of the steering committee. The reviewers (at least three per paper) express their evaluation of:

• originality,
  
  
• significance of the contribution to the field,
  
  
• quality of research,
  
  
• quality of writing,
  
  
• contribution to the conference program.
  
  

The reviewers provide comments to the selection committee to motivate their scores, as well as indications for improvement to the authors. They will be instructed to weigh the contribution of a paper relative to its length. Papers longer than 8 pages must make a very significant contribution to be accepted. The organizer must increase the reviewers awareness of the scientific quality issue and of their contribution to this quality, notably with detailed motivated comments. The organizer will preserve a minimum of 2 months for the review process i.e. between the deadline for submission and the notification of selected papers. The organizer must inform the reviewers of the final decision concerning the papers they reviewed.

4   SMC web site

The SMC web site must comply to the following rules:

1. It must include a link to the SMC conference portail (http://www.smc-conference.org).
   
   
2. The home page must include the following:
   Sound & Music Computing is supervised jointly by several European countries. The countries currently involved are:
   
   

   France	[AFIM - Association Française d'Informatique Musicale]
   Italy	[AIMI - Associazione Italiana di Informatica Musicale]
   Germany	[DEGEM - Deutsche Gesellschaft für Elektroakustische Musik]
   Greece	[HACI - Hellenic Association of Music Informatics]
   Portugal and Spain	[SITEMU - Sociedad(e) Ibérica de TEcnología MUsical]

   
   with the corresponding links:
   http://www.afim-asso.org/
   http://www.aimi-musica.org/
   http://www.degem.de/
   http://smcnetwork.org/sitemu
   
   
3. In addition and when organized in France, the home page must also include:
   SMC is supported by the DMDTS (Direction de la Musique, de la Danse, du Théatre et des Spectacles)
   with the corresponding link:
   http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/min/index-min.htm
   
   
4. The Conference section must include a link to the previous SMC conferences.
   
   
5. The Summer School section must include a link to the previous SMC summer schools.
   
   
6. The Summer School home page must include the following:
   The Sound & Music Computing Summer School originates from the S2S² EU project and from the SMC Network. It is now supervised by the SMC Conference Steering Committee.
   
   

The SMC web site must be submitted to the steering committee before the first call for submissions is issued. After the conference:

1. The papers must be published online in PDF format.
   
   
2. The whole web site (including source code, graphic resources and associated documents) must be sent to the steering committee in its latest version for public archiving on the SMC portail.
   
   
3. If the organizer cannot maintain the SMC web site any more, he must inform the steering committee.
   
   

5  Application file

Applicants for SMC organization must provide an application file and send it to the steering committee. Before submitting an application file, it is strongly recommended to applicants to attend at least one of the SMC Conferenc, to meet and to discuss with the steering committee members. The application file must include:

1. Conferences and concert organizers.
   
   
2. Summer School organizers and team.
   
   
3. Motivations.
   
   
4. Summer School course orientation and content.
   
   
5. Local context description.
   
   
6. Proposed dates and duration.
   
   
7. General SMC setup.
   
   
8. Budget
   
   
9. Main deadlines schedule (call for papers, submissions, applications, notifications, camera ready submissions, program).
   
   
10. Promotional aspects description (documents, dissemination, announcements, dates, ...).
    
    
11. Access to the conference and summer school place and accommodation possibilities.
    
    

6  Recommendations

• Conference management system:
  For the submission and review process, there is an existing free peer-review conference management system named OpenConf. It is available from http://www.openconf.org/. Use of this system is recommended.
  
  
  
• Previous conferences:
  All the web sites of the previous SMC conferences are available from the SMC main site: http://www.smc-conference.net/. You can refer to these archives to see how the previous conferences have been organized (topics, scheduling, committee...)
  
  
  
• Scheduling:
  The earlier you announce the conference, the better for its success. Have the conference web site ready for the first call for contributions. Post this call early, between october and november, when the main of the computer music conferences season is over, and don't hesitate to post reminders. When preparing the scheduling, typical timing for the various deadlines are available from the previous conferences web site however, be aware that the deadlines are rarely met and be ready for extensions.
  
  
  
• Success tips:
  Make the conference widely visible. Post the announcement to mailing lists but also to journals like Computer Music Journal.
  Apart the scientific quality of the presentations, what may attract people is also to meet, discuss and exchange with other researchers. Don't forget to reserve time and to plan events for that. Informal events (like a visit, a diner...) are often more efficient than planned discussions.
  Don't hesitate to promote local resources, especially when they're unique to the conference area.
  
  

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These guidelines are also available for download.