Computational Intelligence - February 2014 - 11

ensure that our sponsored conferences
offer delegates an experience worth the
travel, including: a stimulating environment to present their work and interact
with their peers; quality keynote/
invited talks and panel debates, inviting
locations that are easily accessible and a
strong social program.
Our main conferences: the IEEE
International Conference on Fuzzy Systems (FUZZ-IEEE); the IEEE Congress
on Evolutionary Computation (IEEE
CEC) and the International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN, cosponsored conference) are co-located
every second year under the IEEE World
Congress on Computational Intelligence
(IEEE WCCI). IEEE WCCI thus serves
the larger CI community, the next WCCI
being held in Beijing, China in July 2014,
http://www.ieee-wcci2014.org/. Such
large events provide vast networking
opportunities for our delegates. Further,
IEEE WCCI provides opportunities for
cross-fertilization across all three conferences, supported by additional hybrid
keynotes and hybrid special sessions.
Our other major sponsored conference, the IEEE Symposium Series on
Computational Intelligence (IEEE SSCI),
provides a single fully sponsored event
which supports smaller workshops and
symposiums seeking to establish or reestablish themselves as independent IEEE
events. The next event, IEEE SSCI 2014
is to be held in Dec 2014 in Orlando,
Florida, USA, http://www.ieee-ssci.org/.
The 2014 event will be the first of our
move to an annual, rather than a biannual
event. Other upcoming and equally
important, but smaller IEEE CIS sponsored events include: IEEE CIVEMSA
(May 2014, Canada)-co-sponsored
event, IEEE CIFEr (March 2014, UK);
IEEE CIBCB (May, 2014), IEEE CIG
(Aug 2014, Germany) and IEEE CISDA
(Dec 2014, Vietnam). More information
about these conferences may be found
at http://cis.ieee.org/upcomingconferences.html.
Technically Co-Sponsored
Conferences

Technically co-sponsored conferences
are conferences where IEEE CIS par-

ticipates as a sponsor solely for the
technical aspects of the conference. As
such, IEEE CIS is concerned with the
technical soundness of such events. All
technically co-sponsored conferences
are required to re-apply for such technical co-sponsorship for each individual event. All applicants, whether seeking IEEE publication through IEEE
Xplore or not are required to provide
sufficient information so that the technical soundness of the event may be
evaluated. Evaluation of technical
soundness is based on evaluation of
recent events as well as the planned
event. A listing of technically co-sponsored conferences in 2013 may be
found at our website: http://cis.ieee.
org/upcoming-conferences.html.
Technical Quality

A technically sound review process is
already in place in our sponsored conferences. All General Chairs will continue to be responsible, together with
their Program Chairs, to ensure this
practice continues and ensuring that all
papers receive a minimum of three relevant reviews, as well as involving a
timely review process and a process
ensuring that conflict of interest papers
(chair papers) are handled independent
of the relevant chairs. Our technically
co-sponsored conferences will be
encouraged to follow a similar thorough review process.
A challenge, however, still remains
for the reviewers and Program Chairs
alike, in identifying overlap between
authors' previous work and current submissions. Although software is available,
enabling such checks to be processed,
and currently applied across all IEEE
CIS journals, the feasibility of applying
such software and checking the results
for the many submissions across our
major conferences is currently not feasible. However, a solution needs to be
found and it will be one of the challenges that the IEEE CIS Conference
Committee will address in 2014.
Acceptance rates are very much a hot
topic. Unlike many other non-IEEE
conferences, all IEEE conference publications can only produce one type of

paper publication i.e., a full paper,
whether the paper is presented as an oral
or poster publication. As such, acceptance rates reflect both oral and poster
publications. However, the overall acceptance rates are still too high and it is
important that we focus on reducing
acceptance rates, especially in our larger
conferences. The IEEE CIS Conference
Committee will address this issue, considering acceptance rates for our conference portfolios and presenting future
General Chairs with recommended
acceptance rate ranges, based on the type
and size of the particular conference and
its location. The goal is to ensure that
each conference is enabled so as to present a high quality technical content.
Although deadlines may be thought
of as a more indirect technical quality
measure, it is important that IEEE CIS
conferences present the very latest
results. Further, that the time from submission to publication of an author's
work be reduced. Thus, the earlier deadlines that have been practised for many
years to enable paper proceedings to be
produced can now be changed, providing a shorter more realistic schedule.
However, to achieve such a time frame,
the practice of extending deadlines
needs to stop. As VP Conferences my
intention is to phase out deadline extensions over the next 2 years.
Technical Presentations
and Solutions

Traditionally most IEEE CIS conferences
have focussed on a combination of oral
and poster presentations. All papers are, as
stated, full papers, and this split is the
decision of the General Chair with the
support of the Program Chair. Unfortunately, many delegates skip attending
poster presentations and many poster presenters can feel like second class presenters. Further, attendance to technical sessions can also often be very varied and
sometimes somewhat disappointing for
the presenter. It is time to rethink how
our high quality papers and their presenters can be given a better presentation
environment, together with a more stimulating environment for their listeners.
Such a change starts with embracing

February 2014 | Ieee ComputatIonal IntellIgenCe magazIne

http://www.cis.ieee http://www.ieee-wcci2014.org/ http://www.ieee-ssci.org/ http://cis.ieee.org/upcoming

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Computational Intelligence - February 2014