To delegate conference submissions effectively, you need to assign the task to a trusted co-author or research assistant, provide them with all finalized documents and metadata, and ensure they understand the specific portal requirements. Handing off this administrative task allows you to focus on your actual research, but it requires careful coordination to avoid missing strict deadlines or violating formatting guidelines.
Here is a step-by-step guide to smoothly delegating your next academic conference submission.
1. Select the Right Delegate
Choose someone closely involved with the project, such as a co-author, graduate student, or a dedicated research administrator. In most conference portals (like EasyChair, Softconf, or Microsoft CMT), the person who uploads the paper is automatically designated as the corresponding author or primary contact. Make sure your delegate is highly organized and available to monitor email updates from the organizing committee regarding peer review feedback or acceptance.
2. Prepare a Complete Submission Package
Never hand off a fragmented project. Create a single, shared folder containing everything required by the Call for Papers (CFP). Your delegate will need:
- The final manuscript: Provide both blinded (anonymized) and unblinded PDF versions if the conference requires double-blind peer review.
- Submission metadata: A separate document containing the final title, abstract, and selected keywords to copy and paste into the portal.
- Co-author details: Full names, institutional affiliations, contact emails, and ORCID iDs for all contributors.
- Perfected references: Before handing over the final draft, ensure your bibliography is flawless; tools like WisPaper's TrueCite automatically find and verify citations, eliminating hallucinated references and ensuring your delegate doesn't have to fix APA or MLA formatting errors at the last minute.
3. Manage Portal Credentials
Decide whether the delegate will submit the paper under their own account or yours. If they use their own account, they must explicitly list you and the other contributors as co-authors during the upload process so the paper is linked to your profiles. If they need to submit on your behalf using your credentials, use a secure password manager to share access to the submission portal rather than sending passwords over email.
4. Set Clear Deadlines and Check-ins
Academic conferences are notorious for unforgiving deadlines. Set an internal deadline for your delegate that is at least 48 hours before the official cutoff. This buffer protects your team against unexpected portal crashes, time zone confusion, or missing supplementary files. Once the paper is successfully uploaded, ask your delegate to download the final system-generated PDF and forward you the official confirmation email along with the submission ID for your records.
