What is WCMT

This project aims at the development of a PHP-MySQL based tool for the management of scientific conferences and congresses. The organisers of the conference (represented by the convenor) sets up a number of sessions, where different scientific topics are discussed. The responsability of each session is delegated to a session organiser. Reviewers must ensure the quality of the papers submitted to the conference.

The Web Conference Management Tool (WCMT) is a groupware tool which allows conference participants to register and to log in to submit their papers. Papers uploaded on the website and they are then assigned to the different sessions, according to their relevance. The session organiser assigns reviewers to each paper. The reviewers fill in their reviews, thanks to the WCMT, and the final evaluation is left to the session organiser. In the meantime, the papers' authors can verify the state of advancement of the review. When the review is ready, they can read the anonymous comments and revise the paper as requested.

Finally, a module for the payment of the conference registration is being prepared.

The software is already been used in two international conferences (iEMSs 2002 http://www.iemss.org/iemss2002 and Modsim2003 http://mssanz.cres.anu.edu.au/modsim2003) and it can be viewed at http://www.iemss.org/wcmt.

The software is written using PHP 4.0 and it relies on MySQL 3.23. It uses an apache webserver.

The code can be downloaded using the SourceForge CVS server at cvs.wcmt.sourceforge.net. Project info is available at http://sourceforge.net/projects/wcmt/.

Andrea Rizzoli