Microsoft CMT – Hosted and Scalable Academic Conference Management System

The Conference Management Toolkit (CMT) is sponsored by Microsoft Research. CMT runs on Microsoft Azure cloud platform with data geo-replicated across data centers. It is highly secure, scalable, and reliable. CMT handles the most complex workflows of academic conferences. Its functionalities are fully accessible through web based interface.

Features


Multiple Roles

Chair, senior meta-reviewer, meta-reviewer, reviewer, author, proceedings editor


Multi-Track Support

No limit on number of tracks in a conference with each track independently configured


Customizable Form

All forms are customizable with ability to configure question visibility independently


Full Submission Life Cycle

Abstract, full paper, supplementary material, revision, camera-ready, presentation


Instruction Message

Welcome message for authors, reviewers and meta-reviewers in rich format


File and Media

Unlimited file upload. Max file size 100MB. Support pdf, docx, audio, video and other file types.


Conflicts Management

Domain conflict, submission conflict, person to person conflict, dblp conflict and chairs conflict


Program Committee Invite

Bulk invite senior meta-reviewers, meta-reviewers, and reviewers and track invite status


Bidding

Allow meta-reviewers and reviewers to bid on papers and allow senior meta-reviewers to bid on meta-reviewers


Reviewer Suggestion

Meta-reviewers suggest reviewers for papers


Assignment

Support both manual and automatic assignment, integrated with TPMS (Toronto Paper Matching System)


Discussion

Threaded discussion and virtual PC meeting


Rebuttal

Authors provide feedback to reviews online or via file upload


Author Notification

Quick steps to notify authors using Author Notification Wizard and custom templates


Copyright

Streamlined IEEE eCopyright submission


Export

Export conference data to Excel/XML/CSV


Download

Download submission files, supplementary material, camera-ready files, presentations


Email

Facilitate communication among users of different roles


Note

Allow chairs, senior meta-reviewers, meta-reviewers and reviewers to create note


Session and Presentation

Facilitate session creation for accepted papers and uploading of slide decks for paper presentation


Audit

Log submission activities and file upload/download

Mobile App

Authors can keep track of submitted papers on the move, and receive notification from chairs about their paper's status on the go. Meta-Reviewers and reviewers can browse and bid on conference papers, view the PDF of assigned papers inside the app, view reviews, participate in discussion and receive notification.



eBooks

No matter the size of the conference and how much chair experience you have, the guides help you navigate the process of managing conference with ease, from requesting CMT site to sending author notification.



Notable Conferences

KDD2021

EDBT2021


IJCAI2021

UAI2021


COLT2021

ALT2020






CIDR2020


ICMLA2020

DCC2021


IPMI2021


CORL2020

RSS2020




Usage

The architect of the Conference Management Toolkit is Surajit Chaudhuri, Distinguished Scientist at Microsoft Research, Redmond. The service was first developed for ACM SIGKDD 1999. Since then, it has undergone several major improvements and extensions and has been used in well over ten thousands of conferences to date. CMT3 is the latest and the most popular version. It is built on Microsoft Azure platform and fully utilizes the best cloud technologies to provide scalability, availability and reliability not matched by any other conference management services. HTML5, Bootstrap and JQuery are used in creating responsive, mobile-first and modern CMT3 web interface.

CMT3 has hosted 9000 conferences. It has over one million users from 240 countries and regions. The following numbers show the usage of a typical large CMT conference.

12,000

Papers Submitted

8,500

People on Program Committee

60,000,000

TPMS Scores Requested

3,000,000

Reviewer Suggestions

6,000,000

Reviewer Conflicts

1,800,000

Reviewer Bids

1,000,000

Emails Sent

80,000

Files Uploaded

30,000

Discussion Posts

Support

CMT provides email based support Monday through Friday, 9am to 5pm Pacific Time. Since CMT is operated by a small team, support is limited. For conference-specific questions, such as the status of a paper, please contact the chairs directly. For other questions, please check FAQ and Docs before contacting support@msr-cmt.org. We will do our best to respond in a timely manner (usually within 24 hours). For conference chairs, we prefer if you can arrange abstract submission, paper submission and reviewer submission deadlines to fall on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday in order to ensure quick response from the CMT team.