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From an author's perspective, START V2 is very user-friendly. There is no complicated, multi-phase registration process to endure. Rather, the submission form is the registration procedure. START's submit form includes all the necessary fields for creating an "author account". When an author submits a paper/abstract, START responds with two confirmations: one in the browser interface, and another via email. The author gets a secret URI (containing a password) which is used to update the submission. The initial submission need only consist of the vital registration information, for example, the author names, the title of the submission, a contact email address, etc. Or, it can contain a short summary of the submission, along with the "vital information". Or, it can contain a full-paper submission, along with the summary and "vital information". Depending on your instructions, you can phase the submission procedure as you wish - and then, within these guidelines, the authors can continue to refine submissions up to the deadline. When an author makes an update, this does not result in creating a "new submission"; rather, it just refines the currently logged submission. If new data is entered, or if a new submission manuscript is submitted, it just over-writes the corresponding old information. Meanwhile, the author's access to START is totally secure. The URI/password the author receives is used expressly to manage a single submission - and the password cannot be used for any other purpose in START. This makes the entire system a lot more secure. The authentication mechanisms for authors and reviewers are totally orthogonal. This type of submission procedure has an added side benefit: the submission form can be "exposed" on the world-wide-web. It does not have to "hide behind" additional registration software. This is very useful for publicizing your conference. If your submission page is "exposed" on the web, then it will get archived by the major search engines. Your conference publicity will turn up in more places. You will end up getting submissions from people all over the world, some of whom you've never heard of. Most other conference systems "gate" their submission page behind a registration procedure; i.e., first an author needs to fill in a lot of data about himself, and then he can "enter" the registration page. This technique eliminates the additional publicity value of having an exposed submit page. It also has the more subtle downside of creating an unnecessary "barrier of entry" to the conference. As a "regular participant" in conferences, you may find it hard to believe that this kind of thing makes a difference. However, after five years of experience with START, we have discovered that it does make a small difference in the number of submissions received. Simply put, if a potential author can click directly to your submission page, he/she is more likely to submit to your conference. In fact, the entire design of START is based on small insights like this one. START's user base is very helpful in this regard: the "look and feel" of every feature is due to input from our users. In fact, most of the features in START were created to satisfy various "wish-list" requests of specific users. This process continues. Our users continue to suggest new functions - and these suggestions ultimately become part of START V2.
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