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Open Source Conference Management Software?

Posted by Cliff on from the tools-of-the-trade dept.

Jack Tanner asks: "Is there such a thing as a high-quality Open Source conference management software in active development? I'm helping run a web site for an academic conference, and it seems like there's no good software to organize the meeting and facilitate peer review. The state of the FLOSS art is seems to be that there's a reasonably modern LAMP application called Open Conference Systems, but the developers have announced that it's discontinued. There are also several apps that are claim to be open source, but aren't, once one reads the license. At the same time, large academic conferences play musical chairs switching from one half-baked free or commercial service to another every year, or write their own apps from scratch, repeating the same errors and wasting hard-earned grants. What's a conference organizer on a budget to do?" "While no software will do all of these, the ideal application should:
  • accept submission of abstracts and papers
  • accept feedback on abstracts and papers from peer reviewers and automatically distribute it to authors
  • keep a list of conference registrants (authors and non-authors)
  • facilitate sending e-mail and snail mail announcements to registrants (all, only authors, only non-authors, only presenters, etc.)
  • facilitate creation of the conference program (scheduling with separate concurrent tracks)

15 comments

  1. managing Open Source conferences by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny
    high-quality Open Source conference management software

    Are we talking something that manages to manage open source conferences? You'll need some kind of automation that keeps Stallman in place then.



    ... back to farming puddings ...

  2. Public Knowledge Project (PKP) Conference Software by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative

    http://pkp.sfu.ca/ocs/

    There you go. They also make the premiere open-source academic journal workflow and publishing system (http://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs/)

  3. Don't write your own by 77Punker · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Since it's open-source, take that discontinued project and make your own out of it. If it's good, you'll have something good to start from. Add the features you require and contact the original authors and see if you can take over their website.

  4. CMS by pjay_dml · · Score: 3, Informative

    Use a content managment system, that has modular extensions, such as Mambo, XOOPS, Drupal, or the like.

    I don't know of a particular module out there, that would fulfill your requierements, but I do know that a combination of modules would definetly achieve it.

    You can always create your own module, by extending an existing. I believe this will be your best bet.

  5. Re:Public Knowledge Project (PKP) Conference Softw by croddy · · Score: 1

    that link is in the summary, dude.

  6. Apparently this is news. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So sayeth the Google News Results...

  7. Pentabarf by datenkeller · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Check out Pentabarf. It is the Software that was used to organise the Chaos Communication Congress and the upcoming What The Hack conference. I don't know if the software fullfills all your needs but it might be worth a look. Btw. the project page is in german only, right now, so you may want to access it with some mean of translation.

    --
    Security, Podcasting and the Truth (aka my personal opinion)
  8. Continue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    http://continue.cs.brown.edu/

    It is supposed to be pretty good

    1. Re:Continue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm Jay McCarthy, the maintainer of the Continue system.

      Our system is primarily geared towards managing the process of deciding what papers to accept. It is designed to organize this process and enforce rules about conflict of interest and such.

      We are interested in extending the software depending on use. If anyone has questions, feel free to email the address on the site.

      Jay McCarthy
      http://continue.cs.brown.edu/

  9. Indico by motte_fra · · Score: 1

    http://indico.cern.ch/ published under GPL

  10. Try this by geminidomino · · Score: 1

    Just take a look at http://www.opensourcecms.com/ and see if any of those fit what you like.

  11. Cyberchair by johndv · · Score: 1

    Have you looked at cyberchair? (at http://borbala.com/cyberchair/)

  12. What's wrong with OCS? by blisspix · · Score: 1

    I've just started evaluating OCS for a conference myself, and I am confident that it will cover all of the program functions (submitting abstracts, routing for review, posting the program and schedules). I wouldn't use it for registration, but there are many many other systems for that.

    Is there anything specific that you want conference software to do that OCS won't?