Aditional Materials

Guide for Successful Submission

Technical notes are brief descriptions of:

new research directions
new research findings
new technologies
new practices
tightly argued essays or opinion pieces

They are short (2 page) papers and as such should NOT contain detailed methodology, although this should be available in references. Relevant background information should be included as citations but full literature reviews are not expected. The material presented must be of archival quality and must be adequately explained in the two page format.

Technical notes describe the context, contribution, content and consequences of the work with the majority of the technical note describing the content.

The context section should address:

what is being done, the type of users and the technology being used
the perspective of the author (researcher, developer, user, manager, etc.)
the perspective of the audience (researcher, developer, user, manager, etc.)

The contribution section should describe the relationship of this work to existing work and should include:

a small amount of background
lessons learned
the innovations in this work

The main section is the content that contains the message you have for the audience. This should include:

your claim
your description of methods or rationale supporting your argument
the justification to support your claim

The consequences section of the technical notes should point out the direction that should now be taken given your work. This should include:

actions to be taken
future work to be done and directions in which to proceed.
This section is a critical one in your description as technical notes should be used to inspire new work in the community.

In order to have a successful submission, avoid the following mistakes:

Making claims that are unsupported by the results of the work presented.
Presenting too much background and having insufficient space to thoroughly present the content section.
Presenting work that is in progress and therefore, has no conclusion or outcome at the present. This type of work should be reserved for late breaking submissions.
Submitting work that is too complicated or detailed to describe adequately in a two page technical note.
Failure to show the innovativeness or originality of this particular work.
Failure to develop consequences of the work that are meaningful to the community at large, not to just this particular study or product.

FAQs

Since this is the first year for the category of technical notes, we don't have any frequently asked questions. But we do have some anticipated questions.

1. How do I know if I should submit a technical note or a late breaking submission?

A: Technical notes are for completed work or fully developed ideas. Late breaking submissions should be used for work that is completed the first part of the year. There is no reason that portions of the same projects can't be submitted in different forms. You may have a technical note that specifies a new direction for work. You may find that in January you have enough of the research done for a late breaking submission tied to your original technical note.

2. If I don't have time to write the full 8 page paper, would it be appropriate for me to submit a technical note?

A: It depends. If what you have to present can be adequately described or argued in 2 pages, fine. Otherwise, you'll most likely spend time writing a technical note that will not be accepted for presentation.

3. Why are we having this submission category?

A: The short paper category has grown tremendously over the past few years. Many of the submissions we were receiving in the short paper category were not late breaking but were of a scope that the limited format was adequate to describe them. This is an attempt to create two categories: those that are truly late breaking and to have a later deadline to accommodate them and those submissions that are of an archival quality but do not need the scope of a full paper to present the content.