Minitrack Chairs’ Responsibilities

With guidance from Track Chairs, Minitrack Chairs oversee minitracks within the 10 tracks at each HICSS conference. Minitracks are organized in three full days of parallel paper presentation sessions. Each session may have up to 4 papers.

Minitrack proposals are selected based on individual track’s strategy. If your minitrack is chosen for the upcoming conference, your responsibilities include:

  • Mid February – Early June: Advertise your minitrack to solicit manuscripts.
  • Mid February – Early June: Recruit reviewers for submissions received by your minitrack.
  • Mid June – July 1: Review manuscripts and determine if they should be assigned to reviewers or desk rejected.
  • Mid June – July 1: Assign manuscripts to reviewers. Each manuscript should be reviewed by at least 4 qualified people who are actively working in the topics dealt with in the paper.
  • July 10: (Minitrack Chair – Primary Contact) Identify desk-rejected papers and notify authors of those papers by email.
  • Mid June – Late July: Review papers.
  • Mid June – Late July: (Minitrack Chair – Primary Contact) Monitor the progress of the reviews and prompt reviewers who are late
  • August 1: (Minitrack Chair – Primary Contact) Make sure that reviewers enter their reviews into HICSS paper submission/review system
  • August 2 – August 12: (Minitrack Chair – Primary Contact) Summarize reviews from reviewers and provide constructive feedback to authors
  • August 2 – August 12: Identify papers that should be accepted, accepted with mandatory changes, and rejected
  • September 4 – September 8: Review A-M papers and make recommendations on whether or not they should be accepted
  • October 7: Provide presentation order of accepted papers and nominate the paper  in your minitrack for the Best Paper Awards. The nomination should be given by the person in charge of reviews. Since Track Chairs handle the reviews of minitrack chairs’ papers, they are responsible for nominating minitrack chairs’ papers. Minitrack Chairs can only nominate papers that they handle the reviews. They can’t nominate their own paper for the best paper award. 
  • October 31: Provide an introduction to your minitrack. The introduction must be formatted according to the Final Format Specifications. It should not be merely an overview of abstracts of papers in your minitrack, but should introduce the reader to the important issues that exist in the research area.
  • First day of the conference: Attend the pre-paper session meetings with your Track Chair(s) and authors in your minitrack
  • During the conference: Oversee and manage your minitrack presentations

We encourage you to work with an Editor-in-Chief of a professional society periodical to use your accepted papers as the basis of a special issue of the publication. Such an arrangement encourages quality submission and requires good refereeing standards. Enter into such agreements as soon as possible.