Topic: How to activate the electronic IEEE copyright form for submissions

We want to publish the accepted papers of our conference in an IEEE Journal and for this reason need the ownership rights of intellectual property transferred to "The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)".

Is there any possibility to manage the transfer automatically?

With ConfTool Pro you have the option to use the electronic IEEE copyright form, if applicable for your conference. Authors are directed from ConfTool to the electronic form and the status of this process will be stored automatically.

To set the required parameters please go to:
Overview => Settings => Main Settings for Paper and Abstract Submission

In the section "Electronic Copyright Form?" you are able to choose the IEEE copyright form. Please note that an IEEE "Publication Title" and the "Art Source Code" are required. You have to apply for these codes at the IEEE Copyright Support Team (the e-mail address is available in the same section). Also please submit the "POST URL" of your ConfTool Installation and the "Update URL" to the IEEE copyright form team . After receipt of the "Publication Title" and the "Art Source Code" please enter these data into the required fields (see Image 1).

To make the IEEE electronic copyright form available to your authors, the following settings have to be made:
  • In “Conference Phases and Deadlines” you have to enable the corresponding module and set a start and end date. To do so, please go to:
    Overview => Settings => Conference Phases and Deadlines
    ... and scroll down to the section titled “Electronic Copyright Form Confirmation” (see Image 2).
  • For each submission type or conference track respectively the copyright form needs to be activated. Please go to:
    Overview => Settings => Manage Submission Types / Conference Tracks
    ... and choose a conference track or type of submission. To edit the track or submission type click on the corresponding button. Scroll to the section titled “Settings for the Submissions Form of this Type or Track”. There, the box “Electronic Copyright Form” needs to be checked (see Image 3).
  • To make the link to the copyright form available to your authors, their submissions need to have an acceptance status that identifies them to be presented (like “Accepted”).

If all the required settings have been done, authors are able to access the form for their accepted submission using the link “Electronic Copyright Form” (see contribution ID 2144 on Image 4).

By clicking on “Electronic Copyright Form” and pressing the button on the bottom right on the next page (see Image 5), authors are directed to the form which has to be used to submit contribution details to the IEEE and thus commence the signing process (see Image 6).  After completing the form, they will receive a confirmation from IEEE and the submission will be marked in ConfTool as signed.

If you want to let authors sign a standard electronic copyright form with the results being saved in your ConfTool database without any connection to IEEE, please take a look at this entry:
How to let authors sign an electronic copyright form

Troubleshooting:

Unfortunately, the setup of the “Update URL” by the IEEE support does not always work.
Therefore, it is useful to synchronize the ConfTool database directly with the IEEE copyright system from time to time.
To perform such an update, please go to this page:
Overview => Submissions and Reviews => Update IEEE Copyright Information

If the number of articles signed in ConfTool does not match the number signed according to IEEE, click on the button „Update IEEE Copyright Data Now“ to read the IEEE copyright information from the IEEE database and update it for all the submissions in your ConfTool installation.
The script will also check whether authors have changed the submission title when compared to their entries at IEEE.