Quick Index: Terms Conditions / IEEE Open Access / Submission Process / Review Process / Format / Copyright / Slide Template

General Information

"SMARTBLOCK4AFRICA 2024" is a cutting-edge conference focusing on the integration of emerging and resilient technologies to bolster the development and security of African nations. With a keen eye on the continent's unique challenges and opportunities, this gathering brings together experts, innovators, policymakers, and stakeholders to explore innovative solutions that can transform Africa's trajectory.

Important Dates:

• Paper Submission Deadline: Sunday, June 30th, 2024
• Notification of Paper Acceptance: Wednesday, July 31st, 2024
• Camera Ready Paper Submission: Saturday, August 31st, 2024
• Conference Dates: Monday, September 30th - Friday, October 4th, 2024

Review Call for Papers and Topics

Tutorials, Workshops and Papers are solicited for both oral session and informal (poster) presentation from industry, government and academia (including students) covering relevant research, technologies, methodologies, tools and case studies.

For Papers, only original papers that have not been published or submitted for publication elsewhere will be considered.

NOTE: If you wish to provide an oral-only submission (not seeking publication) you can submit an “extended abstract” (2 pages) to the oral-only track.

Papers must be submitted via the EasyChair Paper Processing System. See EasyChair Instructions for Authors.

Publisher: The Conference Proceedings will be published in IEEE Xplore®.

Terms and Conditions

Article Length: Papers (manuscript) must be from 4-8 pages inclusive. Abstracts for oral-only submission are 2 pages (“extended abstract”).

Number of Papers: Each author is allowed to present a maximum of two papers. If you have more than two papers accepted, you must register accompanying co-author(s) to present the additional papers.

Language: Papers must be written in technical English.

No Show Policy: Papers will be published in the conference proceedings only if at least one of the authors is officially registered and the paper presented. IEEE reserves the right to exclude a paper from distribution after the conference (e.g., removal from IEEE Xplore) if the paper is not presented at the conference.

Registration: Authors must register for the conference and present their work.

• Each full author registration covers a maximum of two papers (small fee for second paper).
• Student registration will cover a single-paper final submission and presentation.

Authorization to publish: IEEE assumes that material presented at its conferences or submitted to its publications is properly available for general dissemination to the audiences these activities are organized to serve. It is the responsibility of the authors, not IEEE, to determine whether disclosure of their material requires the prior consent of other parties and, if so, to obtain it. In order to ensure that the authors are aware of their responsibilities, signed IEEE Copyright Forms must be collected for all papers accepted for publication.

Plagiarism check: Each paper will be verified using plagiarism checking system(s) to ensure all referenced material is properly cited and not previously published.

Quality: IEEE reserves the right to withhold publishing of proceedings or papers that do not meet the IEEE quality standards.

Papers must be submitted via the EasyChair Paper Processing System. See EasyChair Instructions for Authors.

Accepted and presented papers will be published in the conference proceedings. Content that meets IEEE quality standards will be submitted for inclusion in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library. Note that some papers may be accepted for informal presentation (using posters).

IEEE Conference Authors Open Access (OA) Publishing Requirements

There are two common forms of OA. The first, referred to as “Gold OA”, is an author‐pays approach. The author (Or author’s employer/funding agency) pays a charge to ensure that the final version of an article is made openly available to the public—that is, no subscription is needed to view the article. The second is “Green OA”. In this form of OA, an “as accepted for publication” (that is, not final) version of the article is self‐archived by the author in a public space, such as on a personal Web page or in an institutional repository. Conference authors may post their own versions of their papers as accepted by a conference, to comply with Green OA practice.

Overview:
Paper Version Policy

Author FAQ:
Author Version FAQs

IEEE Policy:
Rights Policies

Review (and Final Paper) Submission Process using EasyChair

To submit an invited paper, follow the steps below and as directed by the Program Committee.

There several steps to submitting your paper:

1. Regular Paper:Prepare the content using the IEEE SMARTBLOCK4AFRICA paper template (see Formatting below). For Regular papers submit 4-8 pages inclusive.
2. Author Registration:

First, you will need to set up an account (username and password) as an author. Go to https://www.easychair.org/account/signup.

You will then be automatically directed to the page. Fill in the textbox with the distorted words that appear directly above it, and click on “Continue”.

Then, follow the on-screen instructions and complete the form, and click on “Continue.”

After registering, you will receive an email. Use the link provided in the email to continue the account registration process.

Fill out all of the required information, and click the “Create my account” button to finalize the account registration process.

After the account is registered, you may log in to SMARTBLOCK4AFRICA 2024 simply by clicking on the following link https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=smartblock4africa.

Note: If your username appears taken, it is possible that you have signed up for EasyChair in the past for another conference. In this case, you simply need to ask the system to remind you of your password based on your username

3. After logging in to the EasyChair website for SMAERTBLOCK4AFRICA 2024, you may click on the “New Submission” link located in the top-left corner of the menu bar to submit a new abstract.

Follow the on-screen instructions and fill out all of required information about the authors.

Note: You must use the same email address that you signed up with when creating the EasyChair account.

Fill out the text abstract, keywords and the related topics. Click on the “Submit” link to submit your abstract. Please do not submit the full paper or any other files at this stage.

After completing a submission, a new menu bar ("Submission #" or "My Submissions" in the case of multiple submissions) is created. Click on “Submission #” for changing any information about the submission. Use the links at the top-right corner for:

• Updating information about your submission: select “Update information” from the right-hand menu of the Submission screen to change any of title, abstract and keywords of your submission.
• Updating author information for your submission: select “Update authors” to modify any information about the author(s) and click “save.” In the case of multiple authors, you can add (“Add new author”) or remove authors (Click on “X”); then update the order of the authors by selecting the “Reorder authors” button.
• Uploading files: the “Add file” link may be used to upload files. Please do not upload any files at this stage.
• Withdrawing the submission: select “Withdraw” to withdraw the submission.

At the end of the submission procedure (a new submission or an update of an old one), you will receive a confirmation email from [email protected].

4. Submission:Submit the paper at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=smartblock4africa. This is a unique site with EasyChair for the SMARTBLOCK4AFRICA 2024 Conference.

You can submit a draft paper only by updating the submission you submitted as an abstract.

Once you have completed the abstract submission, the menu bar "Submission #" or "My Submissions" in the case of multiple submissions is created. By clicking on this tab, you will access information about your submission,

In particular, using the menu in the top-right corner, you may change the title, abstract, and keywords by selecting “Update information” and you may also update authors using the “Update authors” page.

Most importantly, you have to submit a draft paper by selecting “Add file”.

After clicking on “Add file”, you will be able to select the file you want to upload with the link “Select file”.

Once you have uploaded a draft paper, you may change the file by selecting “Update file” from the right-hand menu of this screen (which will replace the “Add file” link).

Once the review process is completed, you will receive acceptance/rejection notification with reviews by email.

5. Review/Final Paper Manuscript Submission: If your draft paper was accepted and after the final revision, we request that you submit your revised paper electronically.

To upload your final paper, click on "Submission #" and select “Update file” from the right-hand menu of the Submission screen.

After selecting the file that you wish to upload from your computer, submit your revised paper by selecting the “Submit” button.

Please contact the Program Committee using this form if you have any questions about submitting your manuscript.

Manuscript Preparation

During the submission process via EasyChair, the authors are required to make sure the PDF file and the EasyChair registration page for a paper have the same list of authors and the same paper title. Be certain to add all authors in EasyChair during the submission process. Fail to comply with this rule and your paper may be withdrawn from the review process. Once reviewed, the listing of authors connected to the paper cannot be changed by the authors in the final manuscript.

Final Paper Preparation

IEEE now requires that Conference papers classified as ‘original-research’ material must have premise/process/outcome/conclusion structure [as described below]:

• Premise (hypothesis): A description of the problem being addressed, and the basic idea to address it. For an applications article, this would be a description of what the application was designed to do.
• Process (experiments): A description of what the authors actually did.  For an application article, this would be the detail of the application itself; for a design article, the thought process that went in to the design.
• Outcome (results): What the experiment produced, or how the application performed, or the final design (for a design article).
• Conclusion: A summary of the lessons learned from the paper.

Formatting

For information on formatting your submission you can refer to the IEEE Author Digital Toolbox at http://ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/ and the IEEE Manuscript Templates for Conference Proceedings at http://www.ieee.org/go/conferencepublishing/templates which has standard IEEE Transactions templates for Microsoft Word or LaTeX formats. NOTE: any copyright footer included on the first page must be removed.

Review Process

SMARTBLOCK4AFRICA uses this process for regular paper reviews: review paper then final manuscript.

By using the template, it is easier to develop the paper. The papers (‘review manuscript’, up to 8 pages) are reviewed as required by IEEE and the authors will be notified from EasyChair.

Assuming the review papers meet IEEE requirements, there are three acceptance options:

• accepted – the paper is considered ‘final’ (no further edit required), authors need to file their copyright and register and plan to attend and present. If they do want to update their paper, they can do so (‘final manuscript’).

• accepted with minor revisions – a final version of the review paper with revisions as noted by the review comments is needed.

• accepted with major revision – the review paper has some serious shortcomings or quality issues, and a final version with revisions as noted by the reviewers is required.

Note: When the final paper (‘final manuscript’) is uploaded, the authors must file their copyright. We will check the final paper to ensure that the noted issues were addressed. Then the author(s) register and plan to attend and present.

Copyright

Signed IEEE Copyright Forms must be collected for all papers and oral-only abstracts included in the attendee proceedings. Failure to file the copyright will exclude the paper from the proceedings. Copyright is collected when the final paper is uploaded or after the review paper is accepted without further revision.

SMARTBLOCK4AFRICA has enabled the EasyChair IEEE eCopyright function (ECF). With ECF, authors are redirected to an IEEE web site and fill in the IEEE copyright form on the web. The ECF then reports completion of the web form to EasyChair, allowing the author to upload the form. Thus, authors do not have to print, fill out and upload copyright forms manually.

A link can also be found on each paper page.

If you are an author that requires using a third-party agreement based on your employment or funding, please email [email protected] supplying the paper title, conference name, the EasyChair paper ID, and a copy of the signed agreement.

Details regarding IEEE copyright can be found here. See ieee.org/copyright for full references.

Paper amendments

Authors can amend their submissions online up until the submission deadline. Login to your account and you can upload a new PDF.

If you are unable to submit your paper online, please email the Program Committee by this form.

Guidelines for submitting your paper

• Formatting must comply with the stated requirements (see IEEE template).
• Authors must complete the IEEE Copyright Assignment form.
• All papers must be checked for plagiarism.
• All papers must be PDF verified, either with the paper processing system, or through the IEEE PDF eXpress system before submission.

Questions

Please see the IEEE Author Center for information on publishing with IEEE; guidance and best practices on the IEEE conference publishing process can be found here.

If you have any questions on submission to SMARTBLOCK4AFRICA, please contact the Program Committee using this form.