Guidelines For Papers

The guidelines below are for papers being submitted for peer review. Authors of papers that have been accepted should consult the camera-ready paper guidelines instead.


1. Carefully consider the paper review criteria

Peer reviewers will be asked to evaluate papers based on the following criteria and weightings:

  • Relevance: Appropriateness/fit for the conference theme and target audience (10%)
  • Aims and organization: Clarity of aims/objectives, and organisation/sequencing of sections and content (10%)
  • Presentation: Adherence to IEEE conference and TALE style guidelines, and overall standard of presentation (10%)
  • Readability: How easy the paper is to read and understand in terms of language and writing style (10%)
  • References: Adequacy and suitability of literature references (10%)
  • Originality: The degree to which the paper makes a new and innovative contribution to research and/or practice (20%)
  • Scholarly Quality: Level of methodological and/or theoretical rigor and of reflective depth exhibited in the paper (30%)


2. Prepare the paper using the TALE 2020 Paper Template

TALE 2020 Paper Template (including guidelines)

IMPORTANT:

  • IEEE conference templates contain guidance text for composing and formatting conference papers. Please ensure that all template text is removed from your conference paper prior to submission. Failure to remove template text from your paper may result in your paper not being published.
  • Use of any other IEEE templates is not acceptable as there are subtle differences between those templates and the conference template that will affect the consistency in appearance of papers published in the proceedings.
  • Do not change the paper size (A4) or margins in the template.
  • The headers and footers must remain empty. (They should not contain page numbers or anything else!)
  • Formatting of the paper must be done using the pre-defined MS-Word styles in the template, rather than manually. The paper must use all the predefined font styles, sizes etc. as per the template.
  • Basic examples of citations and references are included in the template. For more comprehensive information on citations and references, see this guide. Note that where are conflicts between the template and the guide, the template prevails.

Page lengths must fall within the ranges listed below:

  • Full paper: 6 – 8 pages
  • Short paper: 4 – 6 pages
  • Work-in-progress paper: 2 – 4 pages


3. Prepare the paper for double-blind review

The TALE 2020 peer review process will be double blind. Peer reviewers will not be made aware of the identities of authors, and authors will not see the reviewers’ identities. For this reason, author names and institutions must NOT be included in the version of the manuscript submitted for review. Only the final, camera-ready version should contain author and affiliation information.

Tips for ensuring double-blind review compliance:

  • Remove any identifying information, including author names, from file names and ensure document properties are also anonymised.
  • Ensure the paper itself does not contain any personally identifiable information (i.e., name, affiliation, email address, phone numbers, IEEE member number, etc.)
  • Block out or obscure any affiliation-related identifiers that appear within figures in the paper.
  • Cite papers published by the Author in the text as follows: “[Anonymous, 2007]”.
  • Use the third person to refer to work the Authors have previously undertaken. For example, replace any phrases like “as we have shown before” with “… has been shown before [Anonymous, 2007]”.
  • Do not eliminate essential self-references or other references, but limit self-references only to papers that are relevant for those reviewing the paper being submitted.
  • Reference list entries needing to be anonymised should be presented as follows: “[Anonymous 2007] Details omitted for double-blind reviewing.”
  • Remove any and all references to/mentions of funding sources.
  • Do not include acknowledgments.


4. Submit the paper

Once your paper is ready, save it in PDF format and submit it via the conference’s online submission system (ConfTool).
Submissions cannot be accepted via email.