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Due to ongoing uncertainty about future travel caused by COVID-19, ICSOC’2020 is monitoring the situation and will consider adequate arrangements for the presentations of accepted papers as the situation evolves. We will update this information on a regular basis.
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Submission deadlines have been extended to accommodate the different extension requests.
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In an attempt to maximize the chances of having ICSOC 2020 happening physically in Dubai, the organizing committee has agreed to postpone the event to December 14-17, 2020. The committee will continue monitoring the situation and will advise if any further information is received about the situation. We naturally keep the online option if it is necessary.
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ICSOC 2020 will feature Special Sessions which may address one or more Tracks, but they should be organized under unified themes. Special Sessions are intended to allow projects or any other group of authors to present their own work. These can include one invited speaker, besides papers. Organizers of special sessions are responsible for defining the full contents of their session. It is not expected that open calls for papers are launched for Special Sessions, in order to attract authors or presenters. It is though up to the organizers to decide on this item.


Important dates
Special session proposals submission Deadline: May 10, 2020
Acceptance Notifications: May 31, 2020
Submissions deadlines for the Sessions: August 24, 2020


Special Session Proposals Submission

Special session proposals shall be submitted to special session Co-chairs, and should include the following information:
- Session title
- Name, affiliation, postal, and e-mail addresses of each (proposed) session chair
- A brief (1-page) CV of each (proposed) session chair, highlighting prior experience in organizing similar sessions/workshops
- A brief description of the topic of the session and its relevance to the conference (not exceeding 500 words), including the type of the session (research related to ongoing projects, or, project proposals/visions)
- Related Areas in the main conference research track
- Proposed duration of the session (short (1.5-3 hours) or long (3-6 hours))
- A list of likely session organizing members
- An estimate of the number of submissions that will be attracted on the basis of sessions/workshops held in previous years or any other information
- Plans for Invited Talks, if any
- Any further information deemed relevant, e.g. previous session/workshops held on similar themes



Accepted Sessions

For the accepted sessions, the organizers will be responsible for the following:
- Constituting the session organizing members
- Advertising the session
- Managing submissions and reviews of the papers. The session organizers can use ICSOC conftool or one of the available conference management systems, such as EasyChair. The session organizers should send the details of the accepted papers to the conference organizers for publication. Note that Springer requires that the sessions maintain a reasonable acceptance rate.
- Ensuring that at least one author of each accepted paper attends to present the paper. This may require announcing regulations that stipulate this as a pre-requisite for the publication of the paper in the proceedings.

Sessions may be held as a short (1.5-3 hours) or for a long (3-6hours) session. This may depend on the co-chairs preferences and/or the number of the accepted papers. At least one author for each accepted paper in the session should need to register for the conference program.
All the accepted sessions should assume the schedule and format in the main conference, e.g., for Camera Ready submission, Authors egistration, etc. Please check:
https://icsoc2020.connect.rs/call-for-research-industry-papers/

Every session should manage a minimum of 5 accepted papers. Sessions not managing the minimum number of accepted papers will be suggested to join together or cancel.

Special Sessions/Area Co-Chairs
Tetsuya Yoshida, Nara Women University, Japan, tyoshida@cc.nara-wu.ac.jp
Brahim Medjahed, University of Michigan, USA, brahim@umich.edu