How To Submit A Paper To APEC

Important Announcement!

The APEC 2005 Digest Submission site is now open!

Please review the instructions below and when you are ready,
click here to submit your paper to APEC 2005.

Getting Started

Have you ever wanted to present a paper at APEC but didn't know where to start? This page can help through the process of choosing a topic, writing it up and submitting to the APEC 2005 Program Committee. Take heart, the process is not difficult and you don't need to be a world-class research professor to present your work at APEC!

Choosing A Topic

This is often the biggest hurdle. Yet the best APEC papers come from individual experience. The best APEC papers:

• Describe a problem or challenge or lack of information that you encountered
  
  
• Describe how others have tackled this problem or challenge in the past
  
  
• Describe how you solved the problem, overcame the challenge or developed the needed information and
  
  
• Describe the benefits and drawbacks of your solution compared to what others have done

That's it! That's all there is to picking a topic. The problem might have been a circuit problem - finding a way to build a circuit that offers advantages no other existing solution offers. The challenge could even be getting a grasp on an area of interest. APEC welcomes survey papers that review existing and previous works on provides a summary that can be used as a reference for others. The challenge might be finding information about a new market or finding a new manufacturing process.

APEC servers the entire power electronics community - design, sales and marketing, manufacturing and quality, applications - for any power electronic system, circuit, component or service. Just because your idea for topic is not a detailed circuit design, don't be afraid to submit it to APEC! For a list of the areas in which APEC seeks papers, see the APEC 2005 Call For Papers.

And if your topic is too big to fit a seven page paper that will be presented in 20 minutes, consider submitting a proposal for a three hour Professional Education Seminar.

Preparing The Abstract And Digest

To submit your work to APEC, you will need three things:

• Contact And Author Information
• An Abstract
• The Digest
• An Presentation Topic Category

Contact And Author Information

Corresponding Author

The Corresponding Author is the person APEC should contact with questions, notices or reminders. We will need the person's name, mailing address, telephone number and email address. This information must be supplied when the digest is submitted.

Author Listing

APEC has a preferred style for listing the name(s) and affiliation(s) of the author(s) of a paper. This listing in used for publishing the APEC Conference Program both in print and on the Web. We also ask that you use this style in your published manuscript. The style is best described by examples.

Please note that APEC does not use titles like "Dr." or "Prof." in the author names.

Abstract

The abstract is a short description of the content of your paper. It should say as simply and directly as possible:

• The purpose of the paper, such as presenting a new solution to a problem, a new survey of a current topic or information on a new technology or market development
• The approach taken to solve the problem or how the information was gathered
• The one or two key benefits of this approach or new insights from the gathered information

The abstract should be kept to no more than 100 words. It is mainly used by the Program Chair to assign a paper to the proper reviewers.

The abstract will be typed directly into the digest submission Web site. It will not be submitted as a separate document (One less document to manage!)

Digest

The digest is the key to submitting a paper to APEC. The digest is a three to five page document that gives a summary of what your final paper would be.

APEC reviewers are looking for papers that have a practical and applied focus. They look for papers that are understandable, show evidence of real results and that thew work will be done in time for getting the manuscript complete in time for the printer. Here are some things that make digests more attractive to APEC reviewers:

• Clear and understandable. This means good writing, spell checked and reasonable grammar. The reviewers are not going to grade your digest like my 10th grade English teacher, Mrs. Ruby, but they don't want to have to struggle to understand the words.
  
  
• Be correct and accurate. Check that your explanations make sense and that your conclusions don't violate the laws of physics.
• Readable also applies to the format and appearance. Use a common typeface such as Arial, Helvetica or Times Roman in an easily readable size, like 11 or 12 points. Make sure paragraphs are indented or have space between them. Use reasonable margins, like 1 inch for top, bottom and sides. Be gentle in your use of color. Visual appeal is important. If a digest is harsh to the eyes of the reader, they will, perhaps unfairly, discount the content.
  
  
• Evidence that the work is complete or nearly complete. Graphs and charts of results are welcomed. If appropriate, photos of experimental set-ups and experimental results (oscilloscope wave forms and tables of data) always get good ratings from reviewers. Many reviewers do not consider simulation results as real evidence that a circuit is, or will, work.
  
  
• References, if appropriate. This shows that you took some time to look around and see what other people have done. Reviewers are often annoyed by a digest that presents work as new and original when the reviewer knows that the same idea has been presented 27 times before. Also, if your list of references is only from one organization, the reviewers will assume that the digest came from that organization and also that little effort was put into the literature search.
• Digests should stay within the five page limit, including all equations, charts, figures, photographs and references. Overly long digests annoy reviewers.

DO NOT put the names of any of the authors anywhere in the digest! The review process is intended to be blind. That is, the reviewers are not supposed to know who submitted the digest so that they can be as unbiased as possible.

Once your digest is complete, it is a good idea to ask a colleague to proof-read it. Ask them to comment on the accuracy and the readability. When you are satisfied, you must convert your digest into Adobe Acrobat format (PDF).

Select The Appropriate Presentation Topic Category

To allow the matching of a digest to the proper reviewers, each author is to choose one Presentation Topic Category for their digest. Please review carefully the APEC Presentation Topic Categories and choose the one that most closely describes the topic of your proposed paper. To download the list in Adobe Acrobat PDF, click here.

Submitting The Digest

For APEC, all digest submission is done electronically. This is why the digest must be in PDF format. In addition, PDF offers the advantages of a consistent look no matter how it is viewed, usable on any platform and so far, viruses cannot be transmitted through a PDF file.

The basic process for submitting your digest to APEC is:

• Follow a link from the APEC Web pages to the digest submission Web site
  
  
• Create an account on the submission Web site
  
  
• Follow the submission process. This will require you to enter the title, corresponding author contact information, author names and affiliations, enter your abstract and choose a technical area for your paper. When all this is complete, the submission Web site will prompt you to upload your digest.
  
  
• The submission Web site will also prompt you to sign up to review digests. Please accept this invitation if you can. It is a great way to learn about the latest work and typically only requires about four to five hours of your time.

Click here for the APEC 2005 Digest Submission page.

What Happens Now?

As the digests are submitted, the Program Chair examines each one. They make sure the technical area chosen by the author is appropriate. Then the Program Chair assigns reviewers (typically five) to the digest and notifies the reviewers that they have been assigned a digest.

The reviewers read the digest and go to the APEC Review Web site. There they will answer questions about the digest. For an example if Acrobat format of the questions reviewers answer about each digest, click here.

Behind the scenes, a numerical score is generated for each digest. The Program Chair compiles the scores and sorts them into three batches:

• Automatically accepted - All reviewers of the digest gave it a uniformly high score.
• For the Program Committee to decide - These digests have average scores or scores that vary widely
• Automatically declined - All reviewers gave the digest uniformly low scores.

The Program Chair brings this information to the Program Committee meeting, which will be held Sunday, October 10, 2004 at the site of the conference (Hilton Hotel, Austin, Texas). All reviewers and APEC Committee members are invited to this meeting. In this meeting, the Program Committee:

• Reviews the undecided papers
• Selects those that it believes should be included in the next APEC
• Decides which should be in the Presentation Sessions and which should be in the Dialogue Sessions
• Sorts the papers into sessions and chooses Session Chairs

APEC tries to accept any digest that the Program Committee says is worth being included. We try very hard to limit the acceptance rated based on space limitations. In recent years, this has meant expanding the number of sessions in parallel to as many as seven. When that was not enough, we adopted Dialogue Sessions so that we could accept every worthwhile paper.

So what are the chances your digest will be accepted? In recent years, APEC has accepted about 50% of the submitted digests.

Many authors also ask "Why was my paper scheduled for a Dialogue Session?" The Program Committee looks at each digest and decides whether a paper is of broad interest or will be of interest to fewer of the APEC attendees. If a paper is deemed to be of interest to the majority of attendees, it will be scheduled for a Presentation Session. If the Program Committee believes that a paper will appeal to a smaller number of attendees, it will be scheduled for a Dialogue Session. The advantage to a Dialogue Session is that their is more opportunity for the author and those interested in the paper to talk and discuss in more detail.

Also at the Program Committee meeting, the Professional Education Seminar Chair presents a proposed seminar program. The Committee reviews the proposals and makes recommendations. The Rap Session Chair also presents a proposal for a Rap Session program and gets feedback from the Program Committee.

After the Program Committee meeting, the Program Chair works with the Conference Management to send notification to the Corresponding Authors to let them know if their digest was accepted or declined. This notification is sent by email.

My Digest Was Accepted, Now What?

If your digest was accepted, congratulations! There are now three main things to do:

• Prepare and submit your final paper for the APEC Proceedings
• Prepare your presentation
• Show up at the conference and present your paper

All authors, whether for the Presentation or Dialogue Sessions, must prepare a paper to be published in the Conference Proceedings. There is a required format of the manuscript, details will be available in the Author's Kit, which will be available from the Author's Page. When you submit your manuscript to the printer, you will also be required to:

• Sign over the copyright to the paper to the IEEE. This copyright does not prevent you from using your work in other or derivative works, you just can't publish the same paper you submit to APEC with a non-IEEE publication.
• Sign a form stating that you are complying with the export control laws of the country in which you live and
• Register for the conference at the appropriate rate. Yes, APEC authors are required submit a paid registration in order to have their paper published.

It is also required that you appear at APEC and present your paper in person. For the Presentation Sessions, you are required to present your paper orally in English. For the Dialogue Sessions, you are required to put up a display of your paper and be present at your display during the Dialogue Session.

Not showing up to present your paper is a very bad thing! If you absolutely cannot make it to APEC, you may send a person to present on your behalf. However, APEC audiences, while they like substitute speakers better than a no-show, generally do not care for substitute speakers. The problem is that the substitute rarely can present the material as well as the original author - and even more rarely can intelligently answer questions the audience may have.