Requirements for in-cooperation

In-cooperation status is a formal agreement between an event and ACM/SIGHPC. That means your event must advertise its relationship with SIGHPC on all event materials, such as the call-for-papers, event website, advertisements, proceedings, etc.

If you would like SIGHPC in-cooperation status for a technical meeting, you will need to meet the ACM guidelines and submit the appropriate paperwork. The first step is to review the information here and make sure your event meets the requirements.

ACM imposes a set of standard requirements for in-cooperation meetings. SIGHPC adds a few more to ensure that our members' needs are met. It may seem like a long list, but many of the items actually help your event:

1. A written proposal must be submitted to SIGHPC by one of the organizers, at least 4 weeks before you plan to send out your call-for-papers.

2. If your meeting last year was in cooperation with SIGHPC, you still need to submit an updated version of your proposal. ACM requires that approval be requested separately each year.

3. The proposer must be a SIGHPC member.

4. The meeting's subject area must be relevant to a reasonably large subset of the SIGHPC community, without being excessively broad (e.g., conferences covering many aspects of computing are unlikely to be approved).

5. The meeting cannot be sponsored by a for-profit organization, although some forms of corporate funding are allowed (see below for a discussion of sponsorship).

6. The documentary output (proceedings, report, etc.) of the meeting must be made available to SIGHPC members. This is normally done by uploading papers to the ACM Digital Library, but you may propose special arrangements if that is problematical. Note that ACM is not the "publisher" for the proceedings (see below for a discussion of publishers). Rather, the conference organizers must obtain written permission from the publisher for ACM to distribute the materials through the ACM Digital Library.

7. The meeting's dates must not conflict with the annual SIGHPC SC conference.

8. The Program Committee chair and members must be identified prior to contacting SIGHPC.

9. The meeting must be of high quality, as evidenced by the reputation of the meeting organizers, the paper selection process they plan to follow, the likely ratio of submitted to accepted papers, etc.

10. If there are registration costs, they must be reasonable and SIGHPC members must receive a registration discount equivalent to any "member" discount offered.

11. After the proposal has been approved by the SIGHPC Executive Committee, additional paperwork must be completed for ACM.

12. All paperwork must approved prior to issuing the call-for-papers.

13. The call-for-papers must state that the meeting is "in cooperation with SIGHPC."

14. The meeting's call-for-papers must be submitted to the SIGHPC Executive Committee for distribution to the SIGHPC members-only maillist.

15. The SIGHPC logo and the words "In cooperation with" must be included on the meeting's website and any printed materials.

16. Gather statistics on committees, reviewers, authors, and speakers (number who are male/female/other, number who are US-based vs outside US, and number who are academic/industrial/other)

17. Within 90 days after your event, submit the follow-up report about the event. This report should include diversity statistics as outlined in Demographic reporting requirements for events affiliated with SIGHPC. We'll include that information in the CONNECT e-Newsletter. Photos are always welcome.

18. Within 120 days after your event, you must upload your proceedings, report, or other documentary output into the ACM Digital Library.

19. The workshop proceedings must contain at least six full-papers (6 pages or more). Furthermore, the workshop acceptance rate must be kept at a reasonable level.

What Sponsorship Means

Not-for-profit organizations like ACM interpret the word "sponsor" very narrowly. The sponsor of an event has legal and financial responsibility, including liability if someone is injured during the event. For most HPC workshops and conferences, a host university or government agency serves as that sponsor. To maintain its not-for-profit status, ACM cannot enter into arrangements with meetings that are sponsored by corporate (for-profit) entities, such as computer hardware/software manufacturers.

Before submitting a proposal, consider the relationship of your event to companies that are providing support, such as donations, receptions, travel support for speakers, etc. As long as your website and printed materials refer to them as "financial supporters," "donors," "supporters," or something like that, you pass requirement #5. But if you use the term "sponsor," "sponsored by," etc. to list companies, your meeting does not qualify for in-cooperation status.

What Publisher Means

Legally, the "publisher" of a proceedings is the copyright holder. ACM is not normally the publisher for in-cooperation events. That is the responsibility of the sponsoring organization or host university, or you may choose to use a publishing company (such as Elsevier).

A condition for in-cooperation events is that the conference organizers must obtain written permission from the publisher for ACM to distribute the materials through the ACM Digital Library. That should be easy to arrange with a host university or government agency, and trivial for a publisher (like Elsevier) that supports "open access." If you are planning to use a more traditional publishing firm, you will want to include ACM re-distribution as one of the terms of your contract with the publisher.

In some cases, SIGHPC can help arrange for ACM to be publisher of your proceedings, as part of the International Conference Proceedings Series (ICPS). There is no charge for this service, but it involves some extra paperwork and approvals. Please contact us at meetings@sighpc.org for more information. To see other in-cooperation events that are using this mechanism, see the Workshops and Conferences listings.