2019 International Conference Reviewer Information

International Conference Review Information

 Thank you for serving as a policy area co-chair or reviewer for the 2019 APPAM International Conference in Barcelona, Spain  The Johns Hopkins University - University Pompeu Fabra (JHU-UPF) Public Policy Center will co-host the conference which will include 60 sessions and three plenaries. Attendees can also enjoy receptions and generous lunch schedules for optimal networking opportunities.

In your roles you will be asked to, among other things, review the quality of proposals submitted for inclusion at the conference.  The submission types include:

• Single Research Papers– these will be reviewed and either matched with 3-4 other papers to be presented as a cohesive panel, selected to be presented as a poster, or rejected.
   
• Panels– these are fully formed sessions complete with 4-5 individual papers, plus a chair that will lead the session.  These may be accepted or rejected.
   
• Roundtables– these are full formed sessions that include 2-4 speakers plus a moderator.  These are formed around a single topic and are discussion-based rather than tied to particular papers. These may be accepted or rejected.
   
• Posters– these are simply research papers that are submitted to be presented in a poster format.  They can either be accepted or rejected. They cannot be added to panels.

You will work closely together to complete these reviews.  More details on your specific roles are included below.  If you have any questions on the responsibilities or resources listed below, please don't hesitate to contact Tristanne Staudt at tstaudt@appam.org.

Chair/Co-Chair Information

Responsibilities

• On February 19^th, each of you will receive an email from Tristanne Staudt with the final submission numbers for your policy area, a spreadsheet of the submissions, a ‘session budget’, and the names and contact information for any other reviewers on your team.  The session budget is simply the number of submissions that you may recommend be presented at the conference.  This budget is determined by the number of submissions in your policy area compared to the overall number of submission for the conference.  For example, if Education submissions are 20% of all submissions, then Education sessions will account for 20% of the overall sessions at the conference. 
   
• You will work with your fellow policy area co-chair to establish a review strategy.  As long as all submissions are reviewed by at least one person, you may assign submissions however you’d like.  For example, some teams may choose to have all members review all submissions while others will break the submissions up evenly among all reviewers.  You are welcome to establish this strategy prior to receiving your final submission count. If you wish to have the review split evenly among your team members, please let me know and I can have that reflected in the system.
   
• You will then communicate your strategy with your review team and let them know which submissions they will be responsible for reviewing.  In addition to these assignments, you will also want to set a review deadline.  We recommend setting a deadline at least one week in advance of the final deadline (March 15) so that you and your fellow co-chair have time to create your recommendations.
   
• Review will take place in our online abstract system, Confex.  When the review period begins, you and your reviewers will receive a personalized link to your assigned submissions.  You will be asked to score the submissions on four criteria (Policy significance of the topic, Clarity of purpose, Overall quality; and Relevance to the conference theme), recommend if the submission is accepted or rejected, and to leave comments if you’d like.
   
• Once all submissions have been reviewed, please let Tristanne Staudt know and she can provide you with a summary sheet of the scored submissions including any comments that were made.  You and your co-chair will be asked to establish a set of recommendations from these submissions.  Your recommendations will likely include a mix of fully submitted sessions (panels or roundtables) and panels that you will create using the single paper submissions.  I will provide you with a form to fill out with your recommendations.  All recommendations must be submitted to Tristanne Staudt, tstaudt@appam.org, by the final review deadline of March 15. 

Resources

• Reviewer Instructions - This document will give step-by-step instructions for completing the review of individual submissions within the abstract system.  
   
• Final Review Instructions with Session Budget - This document will give detailed instructions for analyzing the scored submissions and using them to create the list of sessions that will be recommended for inclusion at the conference. 
   
• Committee Chair Forms - This set of forms will be used to create new sessions for the conference, alter fully submitted sessions, rank recommendations in order of preference, and rank poster recommendations.