Conference preparation and publication process

The conference is held annually. All main activities, including announcements, submission deadlines and conference dates are the same from year to year.

Manuscript submission process communication and document exchange between editors and participants are handled by LBTU proprietary centralised conference management system LBTUCS (https://conferences.lbtu.lv/en). LBTUCS is used for all conferences organized by LBTU and is hosted by the university IT department. The main functions are summarized below:

  1. User logins, profiles for authors, editors and reviewers (currently in development and testing phase).

  2. Personal space for authors to submit manuscript versions, track status changes, view notifications. One login can be used for participation in all conferences; multiple manuscripts are possible for single conference event.

  3. Recording history of all activities.

  4. Configurable automatic e-mail notifications for all roles.

  5. Support for the peer-review process (currently in development and testing phase).

LBTUCS is customisable and tailored to the needs of all conferences organised by LBTU. 

The publication process is managed by editors. There are three editor roles: scientific editor, editor of language and technical editor. During manuscript check and publication preparation editors use help of members of the programme committee. The programme committee consists of high-level scientists with experience of international collaboration. Currently scientists from 16 countries are members of the programme committee. 

The conference event is announced on November 15, when the first announcement and call for papers is issued on the conference homepage. The announcement is also sent to corresponding author emails from publications at the previous event. The abstract submission deadline is January 15 with a possibility to extend upon requests up to January 30. 

After receiving the abstract at least two scientific editors decide if the topic is relevant to the conference. If necessary, members of the programme committee are involved in the decision making.

After a positive decision and acceptance of the abstract authors should prepare manuscripts using the template (found in the documents section on ERDev website) and upload it in LBTUCS. The deadline is March 20 with a possibility of short extension in case of justified circumstances. Submitted articles are checked against plagiarism using Crossref Similarity Check. In case of high similarity levels or similarity to a single source the manuscript is additionally checked by scientific and technical editors, help of programme committee members is also used. If signs of plagiarism are detected, the manuscript is excluded from further publication process.

After successful similarity check scientific and technical editors do preliminary formal check on the manuscript quality, which includes:

  • relevance of the text to the topics of the conference;

  • presence of the main chapters (introduction, materials and methods etc.);

  • overall quality of the text, figures and tables;

  • list of references.

At this step authors may be asked to do corrections and resubmit the manuscript to LBTUCS. If major issues are found the manuscript is excluded from further publication process.

The next step is the peer-review process. Reviewers are selected by scientific editors from the reviewer pool maintained by conference organizers. The pool of reviewers consists of authors and reviewers of previously published papers. Members of the programme committee may also be tasked to find a reviewer for a specified topic. Two reviewers are assigned for each manuscript. The scientific editor sends e-mail with review invitation. If accepted, the reviewer receives instructions and the manuscript with removed author information. After reviews are complete, the editor forwards the decision to the authors. If improvements are necessary, the authors resubmit to LBTUCS the updated manuscript version. If necessary, more than one review round can take place. 

After the review process scientific editors make the final decision about acceptance of the manuscript.

Currently the review process is organised mainly using e-mail, but review support in LBTUCS is currently in the development and testing phase and expected to be launched for the ERDev2026 event.

If accepted for publication, the manuscript undergoes language and technical editing. During this phase authors may also be asked to do improvements in the manuscript.

Final papers are published on the conference website usually on the conference start day in the last week of May. Authors have two weeks to check papers for technical errors before indexing in scientific data bases. 

In two weeks after the conference event the librarian ensures DOI assignment for published papers and makes an application for inclusion in scientific indexing databases.

Figure shows a swim lane diagram of the publication process and all involved roles.

Process diagramm