Criteria for Technical Co-Sponsorship by the Signal Processing Society

The criteria for technical co-sponsorship falls into six broad categories: 1) personnel, 2) publicity and history, 3) topical, 4) logistics, 5) outreach, and 6) Proceedings. In this document “conference” is used to broadly refer to conferences and workshops.

1. Personnel
   1. Familiarity with key conference organizers (including but not limited to the chair and technical program chair), including their research visibility, their volunteer record in the SPS, and their past experience in conference organization. Organizers should submit IEEE-style biographies with the proposal for co-sponsorship.
   2. Participation of a few TC members in the conference TPC. This is a suggestion rather than a requirement; a TPC with many individuals who meet the criteria in the previous bullet but are not current TC members would be viewed favorably.
2. Publicity and History
   1. Quality and completeness of Call for Papers and web page.
   2. Existence of the web page and conference program on the web, for a period of at least five years, so that a record of past conferences is publicly maintained. This is especially critical for workshops.
   3. Organizers should submit the conference history of co-sponsorships, attendance, and prior programs.
3. Topical
   1. The conference topic must be a good match to the TC’s interests and will be gauged by the interest shown by TC members during the discussion.
   2. The theme and focus of the conference will be considered, as to whether it fills a topical niche with respect to other events. For workshops, well focused events on emerging topics are preferable to small conferences about a broad variety of topics.
4. Logistics
   1. The conference should not have time conflicts with other SPS conferences nor with relevant non-SPS conferences.
   2. An argument for the reasonableness of general as well as student registration fees should be made, with special emphasis on student registrations; a small discount for students is unlikely to encourage student participation.
5. Outreach
   1. The TC will consider what opportunities are provided by the conference to forge links with other societies, both within and outside of the IEEE.
   2. The opportunities to go to under-served areas and to reach hard-to-reach audiences will be considered positively.
6. Proceedings
   1. IEEE will not purchase proceedings of a conference until after it is held three times. After the conference has been held for the third time, the Proceedings can be purchased for the fourth conference and the previous years can then be backfilled. Once the Proceedings have been purchased, IEEE will not break the cycle. So it is better to insure high quality of the proceedings over time before having them published on IEEEXplore.