Balisage: The Markup Conference
Instructions for Authors

Papers will be published in the proceedings of the conference. Conference talks, based on the accepted papers, will be 30 minutes long, followed by 20 minutes for questions, answers, and discussion.

Please read and observe all the following instructions. If you have difficulty understanding or following these guidelines, please let us know at info@balisage.net and we will do our best to address your needs.

How This Works - Summarized

• Submissions must be:
  • Full papers (final or near-final draft)
  • All new material (NOT previously published; may have been presented at small or local events)
  • Encoded in XML, using the Balisage tag set (a small subset of DocBook V5) using the file naming conventions described in Balisage Tag Set and File Handling Guidelines)
  • Received on time (See Balisage main page for due dates)
• Paper: Authors of accepted papers are expected to:
  • Provide a signed Balisage Non-exclusive Publication Agreement as described below
  • Provide a complete, revised paper
    • Taking into consideration the comments and suggestions of the peer reviewers
    • Encoded in XML using the Balisage tag set
• Presentation: All presenting authors of an accepted paper are expected to:
  • Test your hardware and connectivity setup with the conference staff in advance of the conference (you will recieve email with instructions a week or two before the conference.)
  • Attend Virtual Balisage
  • Present a 30 minute talk based on the paper:
    • in English
    • live using Zoom and Whova, the conference portal app
      (pre-recorded presentations are not acceptable)
    • Answer questions about the paper, in English, after the presentation
• Balisage will:
  • Solicit peer reviews of all submissions meeting minimum criteria (as described on the Peer Review page)
  • Notify authors of acceptance or rejection by the date posted
  • Publish all accepted papers in the conference preliminary Proceedings (on line)
  • After the conference, publish any final, revised versions of papers in the final Proceedings, along with any speaker's on-site materials (slides, demonstration code, etc.) that are provided to us
  • Note: if a paper is not presented at the conference for any reason it will be removed from the online proceedings

Publication Agreement and Copyright Release

Prior to the conference, all authors of each Balisage paper must sign a Nonexclusive Publication Agreements and License (BalisagePublicationAgreement.pdf).

• Please print the form, fill in the blanks, sign it, and get an image of the signed agreement to Mulberry. We would prefer that you scan or photograph the agreement and email it to info@balisage.net. If it is not convenient for all authors of a paper to sign the same copy of the agreement, you may send multiple copies, as long as each author has signed and provided us with an agreement naming the paper and using EXACTLY the same copyright language.

• We do not publish papers or materials (slides, demonstration code or anything provided to us) without securing this license, which is non-exclusive. According to this agreement, we can publish a paper, while its authors retain rights to republish their work as they see fit.

• Beyond securing this license, Balisage does not require any rights, in general or in particular, be released by authors of papers in the Proceedings, and will publish papers with whatever copyright notices their authors wish us to provide (as indicated in the agreement). We encourage authors to consider Creative Commons or other open-access licensing arrangements but doing so is entirely at the authors' discretion.

• Authors will note that the agreement covers all versions of the paper (in addition to any ancillary materials, such as slides, that authors may provide); in particular, please note that we may make available not only HTML and EPUB versions of the papers, but also XML source code, for users to download, inspect and use, trusting that they will respect any copyrights while doing so.

Preparing Your Presentation

• Make visuals (slides) that everyone in the online audience can read:
  • Pay attention to accessibility when you plan your visuals and demonstrations.
  • Use fonts that will work on handheld devices as well as computer screens.
  • Put no more than 7 lines or bullet points on a slide.
  • Avoid graphics or demonstration screens that have inaccessible colors or tiny text that strains the eyes or that would spill off the screen.
• Practice your talk before the conference!
• Talk about your topic, guided by your slides or an outline and don't just read your words.
• Speak slowly!
  (Remember that if your slides are occupying the screen, your audience won't see gestures or read body language.)
• Stay close to your microphone (or use an external plug-in microphone) when you speak.
• Avoid complex demonstrations that may cause difficulties with online presentation. Simplify!
• Be sure you have enough bandwidth in your connection to allow smooth transmission (in both directions).

Instructions for Late-breaking Submission

Late-breaking paper proposals do not need to be full papers (although we would be thrilled to get one!). Extended abstracts, outlines with a few sections written, or a paper will many uncompleted sections are all popular methods. These proposals must be detailed enough to allow reviewers to judge the relevance of the topic, the interest of the results, and the quality and technical merit of presentation.

No less than in final versions, bibliographic references to relevant work should be provided; claims that there is no relevant published work may be cause for skepticism from reviewers.

If you don't send in a proposal with enough substance to be evaluated, your submission will not be accepted, however exciting the ideas sound to us.

Questions/Problems

If you have any questions on any of the above, or any problem creating your paper, please send email to info@balisage.net.