Conference Guidelines

Membership of the Steering Committee

Membership of the Steering Committee for the annual Austronesian and Papuan Languages and Linguistics (APLL) conference is decided at a business meeting held each year in conjunction with the APLL conference. The Steering Committee for the upcoming year usually includes at least one member of the Steering Committee and at least one member of the Local Organising Committee of the current year plus representatives of the Local Organising Committee for the following conference.

Conference planning: determining whether to hold the APLL conference in a given year; accepting bids from potential conference venues; deciding on a venue for the conference. The APLL community acknowledges the value of holding the conference in Europe, since this balances the relatively larger number of Austronesian/Papuan events held in the Pacific area.
Appointing a Programme Committee and a Chair of the Programme Committee.
Overseeing the APLL website.
Abstract management: deciding on dates for opening and closing the call for papers and for notification of acceptance of abstracts; deciding whether to allow late submission of abstracts. Some or all of these tasks may be delegated to the Chair of the Programme Committee or to a subgroup of the Programme Committee.
Advising the local committee on budget issues; ensuring that if there are surplus funds in a particular year, those funds are made available to the Local Organizing Committee for the conference in the following year.
In the event that a submitter appeals a decision to reject an abstract, the Steering Committee is responsible for judging whether the review process has been fair, and for re-reviewing the abstract if necessary.

The Programme Committee is responsible for reviewing abstracts and deciding on acceptances. Abstract acceptance decisions may be delegated to a subcommittee of the Programme Committee. Decisions must also involve consultation with the Local Organizing Committee on the number of slots available for presentations.
The reviewing process is double-blind. Programme Committee members are expected to notify the Chair immediately about any conflicts of interest with the papers they are assigned to review.
Members of the Programme Committee should treat abstracts as confidential, and should not share abstracts or their reviews with others except with the permission of the Chair. They are expected to act fairly and impartially in abstract reviewing, and are expected not to submit reviews with an inappropriate tone or containing ad hominem attacks.
The Chair is responsible for sending out conference announcements and managing the EasyChair abstract submission site. The Chair monitors the submitted reviews during the reviewing process, flagging up any problematic cases and referring them to a representative member of the Steering Committee for a decision on whether to suppress the review and/or commission an additional review.
The Chair has primary responsibility for updating and maintaining the APLL website.

Deciding on the structure of the conference, including number of sessions and whether to hold parallel sessions. The Chair of the Programme Committee should be notified as to the number of papers that can be accepted under the constraints of this structure.
Conference event arrangements. The Local Organising Committee manages the book of abstracts, rooms, chairs for sessions, conference dinner, and registration.
Budget management. The Local Organising Committee applies for external funding, collects conference fees, and organizes catering for the conference. Often, local universities are asked to contribute to the conference budget (for example, conferences held at SOAS solicited a contribution of about £200 each from Edinburgh, Oxford, Surrey, and York).
Invited speaker(s). The Local Organising Committee is responsible for selecting and underwriting travel and subsistence expenses for invited speakers.
Local publicity for the conference, including creating a local website for the conference. The conference website should include information about childcare services and venue accessibility.
Reporting at the Business Meeting about the number of abstracts submitted and accepted, and the number of registered conference attendees.
Updating the Conference Organization document and passing it to the Local Organising Committee for the following year.

The conference is publicised by the Chair of the Programme Committee in the following venues:

The APLL website
Social media: Facebook, Twitter
Mailing lists: Linguist List, AN-Lang, LAGB, Lingtyp, RNLD, CELP, Endangered Languages, Papuan list

The Local Organizing Committee is encouraged to publicise the conference in all suitable local venues.