Updated July, 2020
IEEE GRSS (Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society) recognizes that specialty symposia are useful and important for our GRSS membership. Therefore, the IEEE GRSS offers technical co-sponsorship of these symposia and provides a variety of services to help make them successful.
1. Types of Sponsorships offered by GRSS
Conferences may apply to have GRSS Financial Co-Sponsorship (FCS) or Technical Co-Sponsorship (TCS):
GRSS will share financial responsibility for the conference, including bank accounts, contracts, deficits, surplus, and other financial obligations. In addition, GRSS is responsible for assuring the timely resolution of any legal issues, for issuing any loans that the conference might need, and assuring subsequent repayment, for defining the scope of the conference and managing the technical program. The conference can use the IEEE logo in all publications and announcements. Specific approvals from IEEE are required. | GRSS will not have financial responsibility. It actively participates in the conference technical-program committee, but accepts no financial or legal liability for the conference. The organization that has financial sponsorship of the symposium must be explicitly identified in the supporting documentation and promotional material for technical co-sponsorship to be granted. The IEEE name may not be used in the conference title but, the IEEE and/or GRSS logo may be used in conference publications and promotional materials. |
2. Services from GRSS for Co-Sponsored Meetings and Symposia
The following services are offered by IEEE GRSS for those symposia for which FCS or TCS is approved by the GRSS AdCom.
Logo
Use of the IEEE GRSS logo on all material and websites to show the specialty symposium is co-sponsored by IEEE GRSS.
Publicity
The IEEE GRSS will provide publicity services to help advertise your specialty symposium to the IEEE GRSS membership. Please note that IEEE GRSS will not provide e-mail service directly to the society members.
(1) IEEE GRSS Magazine
The GRSS Magazine is published quarterly (March, June, September, and December) and is available to the GRSS membership electronically. The magazine is also available online.
Please prepare and send the GRSS Newsletter Editor the following information about two months before the publication of the magazine in which you want your ad to appear. Co-sponsorship secures the specialty symposium: 1) a 1/4 page advertisement in the GRSS Magazine and 2) a short announcement in the Upcoming Conferences section which includes the name of the symposium, location, dates, contact information, and symposium URL.
(2) IEEE GRSS Website
We will link the IEEE GRSS website to the URL of the specialty symposium here. Please provide your symposium’s URL to us in the normal application process.
(3) IEEE Electronic Newsletter
The GRSS Society publishes an on-line Newsletter that includes upcoming events. Your conference, symposia or workshop will be added to this description which is circulated to the GRSS membership.
(4) Conference report for the Magazine
After the conference has been held you may provide a report for publication in the GRSS Magazine about the conference. This may include conference attendance and publication statistics, description of social events at the meeting, and general feedback from attendees.
Publications
IEEE GRSS strongly suggests the organizers of the symposium use the IEEE Xplore digital library for disseminating the papers resulting from the symposium. This digital library will enable archival access to the papers from your symposium and make the information from your symposium available to a wider audience. Information on how to get papers published via IEEE Xplore is available here.
Additional overall considerations are provided below:
- No-show papers are treated as rejected papers
- The minimum length of a paper is 2 pages
- GRSS will apply CrossCheck to all conference papers
- The papers should have no more than 40% overlap with prior publications
IEEE GRSS also has three refereed journals that accept special issue proposals: 1) Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters (GRSL), and 2) Journal of Selected Topics in Earth Observation and Remote Sensing (JSTARS) and 3) Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine. The symposium organizers may propose a special issue of the symposium to one of these journals. These requests need to be directed to the editor of the journal. Please refer to the GRSS website for additional information on each of these publications.
Assistance
The GRSS may be able to provide recommendations and assistance in the organization of the technical program, paper review process and organization of workshops and session on specialized remote sensing topics. The GRSS has organized a task force aimed at developing GRSS membership and activities in South America, South Africa and the Asia-Pacific Region. These activities include initiatives for workshops and specialty/regional symposia. For more information about regional initiatives please contact the following GRSS representatives:
China: Prof. Feng Xu (fengxu@fudan.edu.cn)
Asia-Pacific: Prof. Tony Milne (t.milne@unsw.edu.au)
India: Prof. Shiv Mohan (shivmohan.isro@gmail.com)
Middle East and North Africa: Prof. Riadh Abdelfattah (riadh.abdelfattah@supcom.rnu.tn)
Africa: Prof. Anthony Vodacek (vodacek@cis.rit.edu)
Latin America: Prof. Carlos Lopez-Martinez (carlos.lopezmartinez@gmail.com)
3. Process to obtain IEEE GRSS Co-Sponsorship
Provide GRSS background on the proposed conference, symposia or workshop
The organizers of the symposium must send a formal proposal to the GRSS Vice President of Meetings and Symposia to initiate the process of obtaining technical co-sponsorship from IEEE GRSS. Please note that if the proposed conference conflicts with any other major GRSS-sponsored conference, it might not be considered for TCS or FCS approval.
Click here to submit the on-line form. In addition to this form, the Organizers will need to submit a budget estimate and a MoU. For accessing the related templates, please contact the Specialty Symposia Chair at: specialty_symposia@grss-ieee.org . | Click here to submit the on-line form. |
GRSS evaluates the proposed meeting
Once this information is obtained the GRSS AdCom will evaluate the proposal. The most important issues in which GRSS will discuss are 1) the value of the meeting to the GRSS membership; 2) does the symposium technical program reflect IEEE standards; and in case of financial co-sponsorship 3) the budget coherence and sustainability. Generally, a decision will be made at regularly scheduled AdCom meetings which are held in March, July and November. If an urgent approval is required, it may be electronically voted. However, please notice that even in the electronic vote, it takes more than three weeks.
Initial recommendation from GRSS
Once GRSS has reviewed the application, GRSS will inform the Applicants: 1) if the Society wishes to further consider the proposal and 2) if there are any additional GRSS conditions to move forward with the application. Such recommendations or requests may include changes to:
In case of FCS: the organizing and technical committees, the review process, and to the financial conditions and budget estimate.
In case of TCS: the review process, the technical committee, if any TCS-related fees will be required.
Once all of the identified issues (if any) have been addressed GRSS may recommend proceeding with the on-line IEEE application. In most cases an initial recommendation may take one to two weeks, however, if the proposal involves an entirely new activity, a full discussion with the GRSS AdCom may be required. In the latter case, the recommendation may take up to three months.
Proceeding with IEEE on-line
Once you receive notification from GRSS that your application has been approved, then the IEEE application can be completed using the link given in the response email. Within the IEEE online application the conference organizer will be asked if approval has been obtained from the IEEE Organizational Unit (OU) sponsoring the meeting. The applicant should answer yes, as we will have successfully pre-coordinated the details of the FCS or TCS. In the case of FCS, you will need to specify the percentage of financial co-sponsorship agreed beforehand with GRSS. In the TCS, you will need to put in the form such percentage to 0% (i.e., no financial co-sponsorship from GRSS).
Completion of the on-line application will automatically generate a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between IEEE, GRSS (and any other IEEE OU which has agreed to sponsor the meeting), and the conference organizers. The MoU will then be available for IEEE to review.
MoU review and approval
Once the MoU is generated, IEEE will route it to each signatory (GRSS, and the conference PoC), for their review, comment and approval. This process is conducted on-line by IEEE. Once the MoU is approved by all signatories, the final executed version of the MoU is distributed and available for record.
4. Detailed Timeline of the Process
Step 1. Application Submission to GRSS (see above) Detailed FCS process can be downloaded here |
Step 1. Apply for GRSS Sponsorship through link above
Step 15. Final approval by IEEE for posting |
5. Expectations from IEEE GRSS
After the FCS is approved by IEEE GRSS, the organizers of the symposium are expected to provide periodic status reports to GRSS. The ongoing status and final reports will be presented at the IEEE GRSS AdCom meetings (March, July, and November).
For TCS, a short report is expected no later than 3 weeks after the end of the Conference, and to be sent to the IEEE GRSS VP of Meetings and Symposia (vp_meetings_symposia@grss-ieee.org).
In both cases, the report (PowerPoint presentation) should contain relevant information, including: 1) composition of the Technical Program Committee; 2) number of submissions and acceptance rate; 3) number of oral and poster papers presented, and number of no shows; 4) total attendance; 5) total budget; 6) list of sponsors; 7) if applicable, name of journal where a special issue is planned. If there are any special requests from the symposium organizers they can be discussed at the AdCom meeting.
The report will be taken into consideration for the approval of further co-sponsorship requests in forthcoming years.
If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact the IEEE of Specialty Symposia:
specialty_symposia@grss-ieee.org
