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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)

3 of 15 comments (clear)

  1. 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/)

  2. 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.

  3. Continue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

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

    It is supposed to be pretty good