Author / Paper Preparation

Significant change to the paper submission procedure for 2021

The review process is not double-blind. Authors must prepare and submit only a publish-ready version of the manuscript.


Part I: General Information

Procedure

The ASRU 2021 paper submission and review process is being conducted in a manner similar to previous workshops:

  • Authors who wish to participate in the conference will create documents consisting of a complete description of their ideas and applicable research results in a maximum of 6 pages of content and figures, plus up to 2 pages containing only references.
  • Authors will create a publish-ready manuscript in PDF format for submission.
  • Submit the paper and copyright form electronically. This paper submission must be submitted in final, publishable form before the submission deadline listed below.
  • Check the ASRU 2021 website for the status of your paper.
  • Paper submissions will be reviewed by experts selected by the conference committee for their demonstrated knowledge of particular topics. The progress and results of the review process will be posted on this website, and authors will also be notified of the review results by email.
  • Prepare an online presentation following the guidelines which will be included in this document.

The review process is being conducted entirely online. To make the review process easy for the reviewers, and to assure that the paper submissions will be readable through the online review system, we ask that authors submit paper documents that are formatted according to the Paper Kit instructions included here.

Requirements

Papers may be no longer than 6 pages of content and figures, plus up to 2 pages containing only references, including all text, figures, and references.

The deadline for submitting new papers is June 25, 2021 at 23:59:59 AoE (Anywhere on Earth). After this date/time, no new submissions will be accepted. Revisions to existing submissions will be allowed until July 2, 2021 at 23:59:59 AoE (Anywhere on Earth)

Accepted papers MUST be presented at the conference by one of the authors, or, if none of the authors are able to attend, by a qualified surrogate. The presenter MUST register for the conference at one of the non-student rates offered, and MUST register before the deadline given for author registration. Failure to register before the deadline will result in automatic withdrawal of your paper from the conference proceedings and program. A single registration may cover up to four (4) papers.

Deadlines and Important Dates

Schedule

The deadline for submitting new papers is June 25, 2021 at 23:59:59 AoE (Anywhere on Earth). After this date/time, no new submissions will be accepted. Revisions to existing submissions will be allowed until July 2, 2021 at 23:59:59 AoE (Anywhere on Earth)

Regular & Challenge paper submission (Abstract):June 25, 2021
Regular & Challenge paper submission (Final Paper):July 2, 2021
Papers review returned:August 18, 2021
Authors response due:August 25, 2021
Papers acceptance notification:September 10, 2021
Registration opens:September 13, 2021
Author registration due:October 8, 2021
Early registration due:October 15, 2021
Demo submission due:October 15, 2021
Demo selection notification:October 29, 2021
ASRU Workshop:December 13-17, 2021 (Monday to Friday)

Correspondence

Please make sure to put the conference name (ASRU 2021) and the paper number that is assigned to you on all correspondence.

Additional questions regarding submission of papers should be directed to the following address:

ASRU 2021
Conference Management Services, Inc.
2711 Pierre Place
College Station, TX 77845, USA
(979) 846-6800
(979) 846-6900 [fax]
asru2021@cmsworkshops.com

Part II: Preparation of the Paper

Document Formatting

Use the following guidelines when preparing your document:

LENGTH: You are allowed a total of 6 pages of content and figures, plus up to 2 pages containing only references for your document. This is the maximum number of pages that will be accepted, including all figures, tables, and references. Any documents that exceed the 6-page content & figure limit, or which have content other than references on page 7 & 8, will be rejected.

LANGUAGE: All submissions must be in English.

MARGINS: Documents should be formatted for standard letter-size (8-1/2" by 11" or 216mm by 279mm) paper A4-size is also acceptable. Any text or other material outside the margins specified below will not be accepted:

  • All text and figures must be contained in a 178 mm x 229 mm (7 inch x 9 inch) image area.
  • The left margin must be 19 mm (0.75 inch).
  • The top margin must be 25 mm (1.0 inch), except for the title page where it must be 35 mm (1.375 inches).
  • Text should appear in two columns, each 86 mm (3.39 inch) wide with 6 mm (0.24 inch) space between columns.
  • On the first page, the top 50 mm (2") of both columns is reserved for the title, author(s), and affiliation(s). These items should be centered across both columns, starting at 35 mm (1.375 inches) from the top of the page.
  • The paper abstract should appear at the top of the left-hand column of text, about 12 mm (0.5") below the title area and no more than 80 mm (3.125") in length. Leave 12 mm (0.5") of space between the end of the abstract and the beginning of the main text.

TYPE:

Face: To achieve the best viewing experience for the review process and conference proceedings, we strongly encourage authors to use Times-Roman or Computer Modern fonts. If a font face is used that is not recognized by the submission system, your submission will not be reproduced correctly.

Size: Use a font size that is no smaller than 9 points throughout the paper, including figure captions. In 9-point type font, capital letters are 2 mm high. For 9-point type font, there should be no more than 3.2 lines/cm (8 lines/inch) vertically. This is a minimum spacing; 2.75 lines/cm (7 lines/inch) will make the submission much more readable. Larger type sizes require correspondingly larger vertical spacing.

TITLE: The paper title must appear in boldface letters and should be in ALL CAPITALS. Do not use LaTeX math notation ($x_y$) in the title; the title must be representable in the Unicode character set. Also try to avoid uncommon acronyms in the title.

AUTHOR LIST: The authors' name(s) and affiliation(s) appear below the title in capital and lower case letters. Submissions with multiple authors and affiliations may require two or more lines for this information. The order of the authors on the document should exactly match in number and order the authors typed into the online submission form.

ABSTRACT: Each paper should contain an abstract of approximately 100 to 150 words that appears at the beginning of the document. Use the same text that is submitted electronically along with the author contact information.

INDEX TERMS (KEYWORDS): Enter up to 5 keywords separated by commas.

BODY: Major headings appear in boldface CAPITAL letters, centered in the column. Subheadings appear in capital and lower case, either underlined or in boldface. They start at the left margin of the column on a separate line. Sub-subheadings are discouraged, but if they must be used, they should appear in capital and lower case, and start at the left margin on a separate line. They may be underlined or in italics.

REFERENCES: List and number all references at the end of the document. The references can be numbered in alphabetical order or in order of appearance in the paper. When referring to them in the text, type the corresponding reference number in square brackets as shown at the end of this sentence [1]. The end of the document should include a list of references containing information similar to the following example:

[1] D. E. Ingalls, "Image Processing for Experts," IEEE Trans. ASSP, vol. ASSP-36, pp. 1932-1948, 1988.

ILLUSTRATIONS & COLOR: Illustrations must appear within the designated margins. They may span the two columns. If possible, position illustrations at the top of columns, rather than in the middle or at the bottom. Caption and number every illustration. All halftone illustrations must be clear in black and white. Since the printed proceedings will be produced in black and white, be sure that your images are acceptable when printed in black and white (the electronic and IEEE Xplore proceedings will retain the colors in your document).

PAGE NUMBERS: Do not put page numbers on your document. Appropriate page numbers will be added to accepted papers when the conference proceedings are assembled.

Templates

The following style files and templates are available for users of LaTeX and Microsoft Word:

We recommend that you use the Word file or LaTeX files to produce your document, since they have been set up to meet the formatting guidelines listed above. When using these files, double-check the paper size in your page setup to make sure you are using the letter-size paper layout (8.5" X 11") or A4 paper layout (210mm X 297mm). The LaTeX environment files specify suitable margins, page layout, text, and a bibliography style.

In particular, with LaTeX, there are cases where the top-margin of the resulting PDF file does not meet the specified parameters. In this case, you may need to add a \topmargin=0mm command just after the \begin{document} command in your .tex file. The spacing of the top margin is not critical, as the page contents will be adjusted on the proceedings. The critical dimensions are the actual width and height of the page content.


Part III: Submission and Review of the Paper

The review process will be performed from the electronic submission of your paper. To ensure that your document is compatible with the review system, please adhere to the following compatibility requirements:

File Format

The 'IEEE Requirements for PDF Documents' MUST be followed EXACTLY. The conference is required to ensure that documents follow this specification. The requirements are enumerated in:

Papers must be submitted in either PostScript (PS) or Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF) format.

PDF files:

  • must not have Adobe Document Protection or Document Security enabled,
  • must have either 'US Letter' or 'A4' sized pages,
  • must be in first-page-first order, and
  • must have ALL FONTS embedded and subset.

ALL FONTS MUST be embedded in the PDF file. There is no guarantee that the viewers of the paper (reviewers and those who view the proceedings after publication) have the same fonts used in the document. If fonts are not embedded in the submission, you will be contacted by CMS and asked to submit a file that has all fonts embedded. Please refer to your PDF or PS file generation utility's user guide to find out how to embed all fonts.

Information for LaTeX users

Generating a PostScript file is straightforward for all LaTeX packages we are aware of. When preparing the paper under LaTeX, it is preferable to use scalable fonts such as Type I, Computer Modern. However, quite good results can be obtained with the fonts defined in the style file recommended above (spconf.sty).

PDF files with Postscript Type 3 fonts are highly discouraged. PDF and PostScript files utilizing Type 3 fonts are typically produced by the LaTeX system and are lower-resolution bitmapped versions of the letters and figures. It is possible to perform a few simple changes to the configuration or command-line to produce files that use PostScript Type 1 fonts, which are a vector representation of the letters and figures.

For most installations of LaTeX, you can cause dvips to output Type 1 fonts instead of Type 3 fonts by including -Ppdf option to dvips. The resulting PDF file will reference the Type 1 Computer Modern fonts, rather than embedding the bitmapped Type 3 versions, which cause problems with printers.

You may also need to tell dvips to force letter sized paper with the option: -t letter.

Some LaTeX installations also include pdflatex, which produces acceptable PDF files as well.

File Size Limit

Authors will be permitted to submit a document file up to 5 MB (megabytes) in size. To request an exception, contact the paper submission technical support at: asru2021@cmsworkshops.com.

File Name

The filename of the document file should contain only ASCII characters, followed by the appropriate extension (.ps or .pdf). For example, "advanced_coding.ps" or "advanced_coding.pdf". The paper submission process will append the filename with a unique identifier when it is stored on our system, so multiple submissions with the same file name will not overwrite each other and will be distinguishable.

Electronic Paper Submission

When you have your manuscript PDF ready, gather the following information before entering the submission system:

  • Manuscript file in PDF format
  • Affiliation, email address, and mailing address for each author
  • Paper title
  • Text file containing paper abstract text, in ASCII text format (for copying and pasting into web page form)

To submit your documents and author information, go to the 'Paper Submission' link on the ASRU 2021 homepage:

https://asru2021.org/

The submission system will present an entry form to allow you to enter the paper title, abstract text, review category, and author contact information.

ALL authors must be entered in the online form, and must appear in the online form in the same order in which the authors appear on the PDF.

After you submit this information, the system will display a page with the data that you entered so that you may verify its accuracy. If you need to change the data to fix a mistake, you may use the back button on your browser to return to the information entry form. Once you approve of the data that you have entered, you may choose your document file for upload at the bottom of the verification page. When you click on the button labeled 'Continue' at the bottom of this page, the page will check the filename extension to make sure it matches the submission criteria, then your browser will upload your file to our server. Depending on the size of your file and your internet connection speed, this upload may take a few minutes. At the end of a successful upload, you will see a confirmation page displaying the paper number that is assigned to you, and and email message will be sent to the authors' email addresses to confirm that the file has been uploaded. If you do not see the confirmation page after uploading your file, we may not have successfully received your file upload. If you encounter trouble, contact the paper submission support at: asru2021@cmsworkshops.com.

IEEE Copyright Transfer Form

All submissions must have an IEEE Electronic Copyright form submitted before the manuscript is allowed to be delivered to reviewers. If the submission is not accepted, the copyright transfer form becomes null and void.

The electronic copyright form is digitally linked to your submission; if you revise/update your paper's title or author list, the copyright form will still apply. There is no need to submit a new copyright form.

The confirmation page that is displayed after uploading your final, camera-ready document file will also have a link to the IEEE Electronic Copyright Form (eCF) system. That system will guide you through a series of questions to determine the type of copyright form required for your manuscript and will electronically record your signature. You will have the opportunity to download a PDF version of your electronically-signed copyright form, and both the IEEE eCF system and the ASRU 2021 system will send you a confirmation of the receipt of the properly signed form.

Online Review Process

Your submitted paper will be visually inspected by our submission system staff to assure that the document is readable and meets all formatting requirements to be included in a visually pleasing and consistent proceedings publication for ASRU 2021. If our submission inspectors encounter errors with your submitted file, they will contact you to resolve the issue. If your paper passes inspection, it will be entered into the review process. A committee of reviewers selected by the conference committee will review your manuscript document and rate it according to quality, relevance, and correctness. After the review finishes, the authors are invited by the Technical Program Committee (TPC) to view the reviews of their paper and to optionally submit a rebuttal to reviews. The TPC will consider the rebuttal when making final decisions. The result of the technical committee's decision will be communicated to the submitting authors by email.

Monitor Your Submission Status

After you submit your document, you may monitor the status of your paper as it progresses through the submission and review process by using the Paper Status website available at:

https://asru2021.org/

Notification of Acceptance

Authors will be notified of paper acceptance or non-acceptance by email as close as possible to the published author notification date.

The notification email will include comments from the reviewers. The conference cannot guarantee that all of the reviewers will provide the level of comment desired by you. However, reviewers are encouraged to submit as detailed comments as possible.

Because of the short amount of time between paper acceptance decisions and the beginning of the publication process, ASRU 2021 is not able to allow for a two-way discourse between the authors and the reviewers of a paper. If there appears to be a logistical error in the reviewer comments, such as the reviewer commenting on the wrong paper, etc., please contact ASRU 2021 at asru2021@cmsworkshops.com.

Required Author Registration

Be sure that at least one author registers to attend the conference using the online registration system available through the conference website. Each paper must have at least one author registered, with the payment received by the author registration deadline (see above) to avoid being withdrawn from the conference.

Copyright Issues for Web Publication

If you plan to publish a copy of an accepted paper on the Internet by any means, you MUST display the following IEEE copyright notice on the first page that displays IEEE published (and copyrighted) material:

Copyright 2021 IEEE. Published in the 2021 IEEE Automatic Speech Recognition and Understanding Workshop (ASRU) (ASRU 2021), scheduled for 14-18 December 2021 in Cartagena, Colombia. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works, must be obtained from the IEEE. Contact: Manager, Copyrights and Permissions / IEEE Service Center / 445 Hoes Lane / P.O. Box 1331 / Piscataway, NJ 08855-1331, USA. Telephone: + Intl. 908-562-3966.

If you post an electronic version of an accepted paper, you must provide the IEEE with the electronic address (URL, FTP address, etc.) of the posting.

Rebuttal Guide

The authors’ rebuttal is addressed to the Chairs only. Reviewers will not see it and will not be able to change their review reports.

  • The goal of the rebuttal is to inform the Chairs of major misunderstandings or incorrect statements in the review reports. The rebuttal should focus only on major critiques. Since the length for rebuttal is limited, it is important that the authors group reviewer comments into a few major categories; prioritize and focus on addressing major concerns, and also condense the response down to the essentials.
  • Do not add new results; do not promise to expand your paper to address all the questions raised by the reviewers, as you will not be able to change your article substantially. These promises are likely not to be taken seriously.
  • Keep your rebuttal polite! Being confrontational does not bring any added value to the paper and the review process. However, if you feel you have received a review that was not courteous, or made false or unsubstantiated arguments, you should point this out.

Part IV: Preparation of the Presentation

Presentation instructions will be added here later.
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