Guide for HOPE Conference Organizers

Congratulations. Your proposal for a HOPE conference has been accepted, and you can now begin organizing the conference. The papers presented at the conference (or a subset of them) will eventually be published in a supplemental issue of HOPE. This guidebook spells out your responsibilities as a conference organizer and editor of the supplemental issue and informs you of the local people who are available to help you plan and carry out the conference.

What You Need to Know Right Now

What follows is important information at a glance; it is intended to make you aware of certain resources, issues, and constraints at an early stage in the planning process. It will be followed by a list of responsibilities for conference organizers and an explanation of those responsibilities in detail.

Responsibilities of a Conference Organizer

You have already met one of your responsibilities: you have already developed a well-articulated prospectus for the conference and have identified scholars whom you may likely invite to write and present a paper at the conference. In brief, and largely in chronological order, your other responsibilities are as follows:

1. Invite scholars to the conference
2. Work within the constraints of the conference budget and expenses
3. Inform conference participants of word limits for first drafts of papers and for final versions of papers
4. Establish the dates of the conference (in consultation with the managing editor)
5. Select and reserve the site (hotel and meeting space) of the conference (in consultation with the managing editor)
6. Set and communicate pre- and post-conference deadlines
7. Create a program for the conference
8. Establish a format for the conference
9. Preside over the conference
10. Shepherd papers to publication after the conference
11. Write an introduction to the collection of papers
12. Select and obtain permission to use a cover image

The following is a detailed treatment of most of these responsibilities, in the order they appear above.

1. Inviting Scholars to the Conference

HOPE conferences are by invitation only.  Conferences should be carefully designed to advance the scholarly aims embedded in the conference proposal.  Organizers should identify scholars whom they believe can best advance those aims and invite them to write papers for the conference.  The contributors should be the very best scholars on the topic of the conference, and their papers—even though they may sometimes be work already in progress—should be crafted with the goals of the conference in mind.  As a result, an open call for papers is typically not appropriate.  Organizers sometimes worry that they may overlook valuable—especially younger—potential conferees.  The preferred way to address this concern is to canvass other scholars in the field privately to identify the right contributors.  Organizers should be prepared to negotiate with potential contributors to commission papers that address particular aspects of the conference topic.

Conference invitations should be made eighteen to twenty-four months before the conference takes place in order to allow ample time for contributors to write a suitable paper even, as is often true, they will be starting from scratch.

Although most—perhaps all—of the papers presented ultimately will be included in the conference volume, the decision to publish a paper can be made only after the conference.  Organizers, who will act as guest editors of the conference volume, may find that, in the end, a paper does not actually suit the aims of the conference or is not of sufficient quality.  All papers will be subject to refereeing and organizers should note—even in the initial invitation—that publication of an invited paper is not automatic (see section 10 below).

HOPE conferences are intended to feature ample and lively discussions. Thus, in keeping with the intended spirit of the conference, as well the binding constraints with respect to the conference budget and the number of pages permitted in the conference volume, organizers are strongly encouraged to design a small  conference, even if that means limiting the scope of the topics addressed.  (See sections 2 and 3 below for information on budget and publication constraints.) 

Budget permitting, it is also possible to invite special speakers.  For example, Robert Lucas gave a special public lecture at the HOPE conference on the history of the IS-LM model.  Similarly, Robert Solow gave a public lecture and Edwin Burmeister gave an after-dinner talk on his reminiscences of growth theory at MIT at the HOPE conference on the history of the growth model.  Special speakers are generally offered transportation as well as food and lodging and full participation in the conference.

2. Conference Budget and Expenses

2.1. Budget

Virtually every decision about the conference, especially how many people to invite, must be made with the conference budget in mind. Duke University Press will provide $24,500 for the conference. The conference budget typically is enough to pay for food and lodging but not travel costs.  (Travel costs may be covered for special speakers [see section 1 above], so long as the budget is adequate.) 

There are two preferred conference sites, the Washington Duke Inn and the J. B. Duke Hotel. At both hotels, $24,500 is generally sufficient to provide a two-day, three-night conference for approximately fifteen (15) people and the six or so local people who usually attend (the editor of HOPE, the four associate editors of the journal, the managing editor, and HOPE Center visiting scholars). 

Organizers should consult with the managing editor of the journal to plan a conference that stays within the budget. If the organizers want a conference that will cost more than $24,500, they should consult with the managing editor and the local organizer, and they should be prepared to raise the additional funds themselves.

2.2. Expenses

Expenses are largely for lodging, food, and meeting room space. Lodging at the Washington Duke and the J. B. Duke is around $200 per person per night, including tax; there are daily meeting packages (which include lunches, break foods, meeting space, and AV) for around $99 per person per day; and dinners are around $80 per person, including wine and the service charge. Thus, a two-day, three-night conference at the Washington Duke for fourteen conference participants plus six local people will cost approximately $15,655. 

In addition to the expenses just listed, it has become customary (although not mandatory) to hold an informal gathering with dinner and drinks the evening before the conference begins. This gives people who arrive early enough a change to meet for the first time or to renew acquaintances. The event usually costs around $500 and, if held, should be added to the expenses.

2.3. Raising and Using Additional Funds

Conference organizers are encouraged to—and sometimes do—raise additional funds to help pay for the conference. When added to the $24,500 provided by Duke University Press, the extra funds could finance quite a large conference. But HOPE conferences are intended to be small rather than large—twelve to fourteen invited participants is optimal—and using extra funds to finance a much larger conference (say, a conference of more than eighteen invited participants) is discouraged and will be subject to the approval of the local organizer.

Additional funds may be better used to reimburse conference participants for travel costs, to pay for the cost of producing a longer conference volume, or for an honorarium for a special guest speaker. Please consult on these matters with the managing editor and local organizer before you commit to using the extra funds for any of those purposes.

2.4. Paying for Travel Costs

Conference organizers often wish to reimburse participants for travel costs, if funding permits. If the reimbursement is for a US citizen, the process is generally easy. If, however, the reimbursement is for a non-US citizen—which is more likely to be the case—the process can be difficult, as the paperwork requirements can be onerous. Conference organizers should consult with the managing editor before promising reimbursement to any conference participant.

3. Establishing and Enforcing Word Limits

Conference organizers are responsible for establishing and enforcing word limits on the conference papers.

3.1. The Bottom Line

Within the normal budgetary constraints conference organizers face, the supplemental issue can contain no more than 360 pages—about forty of which are reserved for the contributors notes, the index, the table of contents, and other front matter—and so the papers chosen for publication in the issue, including the editors’ introduction, cannot, as a whole, exceed 320 pages. Some may be longer, some may be shorter; but in their entirety, they cannot exceed 320 pages.

For an immediate frame of reference, consider that for a conference with fourteen papers (an amount within the norm), each paper should contain around 8,500 words.

3.2. Handling and Setting Word Limits

Below is a detailed description of the process for setting limits, along with a table to use as a guide.

The precise word limit will ultimately depend on the number of papers chosen for publication in the conference volume. Nevertheless, conference organizers should establish an approximate word limit as soon as possible and communicate it to the conference participants a year or more in advance of the conference.

Although the likely word limit should be communicated early, organizers should note that the ultimate word limits will depend not on the number of papers presented at the conference, but on the actual number included in the volume.  They may or may not wish to enforce word limits on the papers presented at the conference itself.  The upside of not enforcing word limits is that papers can be more expansive and may support more interesting discussion.  What is most valuable in a paper may actually become clearer in the process of discussion and, later, in refereeing; so that early limits may be premature.  Also, if some papers are shorter or if some papers presented at the conference are ultimately not published, more space per published paper may turn out to be available after the conference than was initially thought to be available before the conference.  The downside is that authors find the process of making substantial cuts to papers extremely painful and may not always preserve the best qualities of a paper in a version that has been massively shortened.  Whichever way the organizer chooses to handle the length of the papers presented at the conference, it remains essential that authors be aware of the likely ultimate word limits early on.

Regardless of the tack you take, a fundamental reality remains, an iron law of pages that tends to bring every paper back to the subsistence length: the supplemental issue can contain no more than 360 pages—about forty of which are reserved for the contributors notes, the index, the table of contents, and other front matter—and so the papers chosen for publication in the issue, including the editors’ introduction, cannot, as a whole, exceed 320 pages. Some may be longer, some may be shorter; but in their entirety, they cannot exceed 320 pages. That limit is imposed by Duke University Press, and, within the normal budgetary constraints of the conference, it is binding.

3.3. Determining the Length of Conference Papers

The following is to help conference organizers determine the length limit they should ultimately impose on conference papers. The limit takes into account the page limit of the published conference volume and the number of papers accepted for publication.

As just stated, HOPE conference volumes, in their published form, are allotted a total of 360 pages. However, forty or so of those pages are for the index, the contributors’ notes, the table of contents, and other front matter. Thus, approximately 320 pages are reserved for the articles themselves, including the editors’ introduction. The page limit also takes into account any tables, figures, equations, and the like that papers may have.

To estimate the length of the papers that will be published in the conference volume, the measure to use is characters with spaces. To find what that is for each document, look under Tools in Word, then select Word Count. Check the box that says “Include footnotes and endnotes.” One of the statistics that will appear (along with the number of words) is “characters (with spaces).” Make sure you are looking at “characters (with spaces)” and not “characters (no spaces).”

Each full page in a published HOPE article contains approximately 2,421 characters with spaces. In the conference volumes, approximately 320 print pages are allotted for the articles (another 40 or so are allotted for the index, contributors’ notes, table of contents, and so forth). Thus, the articles altogether should run to 774,720 characters with spaces, including reference lists, footnotes, and any tables, figures, equations, and the like. Tables and figures count toward the page limit. Any figure or table will take up at least a half a page, or the equivalent of 1,210 characters with spaces, and possibly a whole page, or the equivalent of 2,421 characters with spaces. A simple, one-line equation set as display type (that is, not as part of the running line of text but more like a block quotation) will be set with an extra line above and below it and is the equivalent of approximately 200 characters with spaces.

The following table will be helpful in setting length limits and estimating how many pages your conference volume will be.

Number of Papers Accepted for Publication	Maximum number of characters with spaces for each paper*
10	77,472 (12,000 words)
11	70,429 (10,900 words)
12	64,560 (10,000 words)
13	59,594 (9,230 words)
14	55,337 (8,570 words)
15	51,648 (8,000 words)
16	48,420 (7,500 words)
17	45,572 (7,060 words)
18	43,040 (6,670 words)
19	40,775 (6,300 words)
20	38,736 (6,000 words)

 

*Including reference lists, footnotes/endnotes, equations, and tables/figures/illustrations.

It is possible—but not cheap—for a conference organizer to raise extra money to pay for a longer volume. Conference organizers who want to do so should consult with the managing editor and local organizer well before the conference begins.

4. Establish the dates of the conference

HOPE conferences are held in April. Please consult with the managing editor to establish conference dates. April happens to be the month in which Duke holds its annual reunion weekend, when every hotel room in the area is booked. HOPE conferences must be scheduled so as not to conflict with reunion weekend.

Conferences usually take place over no more than 2 ½ days (a Friday–Sunday is typical) and often begin with an informal gathering the night before the first day of meetings.

The optimal schedule is a two-day conference that begins on Friday morning and ends with dinner on Saturday. If the conference must run to 2 ½ days, it is preferable to have the half day at the beginning rather than at the end. Conferences that end with a half day on a given morning have a high attrition rate, as people need to leave—sometimes in the middle of a presentation—to catch flights.

5. Selecting a Site for the Conference

Conference organizers should consult with the managing editor of the journal to select and reserve a site for the conference. The site should be chosen and reserved about a year in advance.

There are two preferred sites for the conference: the Washington Duke Inn, on the edge of Duke’s campus; and the J. B. Duke Hotel, also on Duke’s campus.

There are lower-cost, and less preferred, conference sites, such as the Millennium Hotel Durham. Please consult with the managing editor if you want to explore those options.

6. Set and communicate pre- and post-conference deadlines

There are several deadlines, pre- and post-conference, that conference organizers, in consultation with the managing editor, should establish and communicate to conference participants in advance of the conference. The sooner these deadlines are established and communicated, the better. Conference organizers are responsible for enforcing the deadlines.

Set a deadline for submission of conference papers

• The expectation is that conference papers will be read and studied in advance of the conference, as the conference itself (as you’ll read later) will be devoted mostly to discussion. Therefore, conference participants should submit their conference papers approximately six weeks before the conference begins. The papers will be posted on the conference website (which the managing editor will create). Conference organizers should establish and enforce a deadline for submitting conference papers.

Set a deadline for the submission of revised conference papers

• Authors are expected to revise their conference papers to take into account comments at the conference, including comments and directions from the conference organizer, and to include cross-references to conference papers. Participants should be given four to six weeks to revise their conference papers.

Set a deadline for referee reports

• The revised conference papers will be sent to referees, who should be given four to six weeks to read the papers and prepare their reports

Set a deadline for the final version of the papers

• Conference participants will revise their papers one last time, to take into account the referee reports and any final instructions from the conference organizer. Participants should be given six to eight weeks to prepare the final versions of their papers.

Following is a table of typical action items and deadlines. Just for purposes of this example, assume that the conference takes place April 26–27.

 

Action Item	Deadline
Identify and invite scholars to write papers for the conference (in consultation with local organizer)	Twenty-four months before conference
Set and communicate word limits and deadlines for conference papers (in consultation with managing editor)	Eighteen months before conference
Establish precise dates for conference (consult with managing editor)	Eighteen months before conference
Select and reserve lodging and meeting space for conference (in consultation with managing editor)	Twelve months before conference
Establish precise starting, ending time of conference (consult with managing editor)	November 1 (roughly six months before conference)
Create website for conference (organizers)	January 1
Conference papers due	March 1 (roughly six weeks before conference)
Formally invite any local people, editor, associate editors, to conference	March 26 (roughly four weeks before conference)
Conference	April 26–27
Revised conference papers due	July 1
Papers out for refereeing. Select cover image and obtain any necessary permissions.	July 1–August 15
Referee reports due. Reject any papers that should be rejected.	August 15
Final versions of papers due	October 15
Editors introduction due	October 15
Papers are copy edited by Duke University Press (no action required by organizer)	November–February
Authors review copy edited papers (no action required by organizer)	February
Page proofs are proofread by Duke University Press (no action required by organizer)	June–July
Authors review page proofs (no action required by organizer)	June
Published volume appears (no action required by organizer)	December (roughly eighteen months after the conference)

7. Create a Conference Program

Six months or so before the conference takes place, conference organizers should establish and communicate to participants precise starting and ending times for the conference (e.g., start at Friday at 9:00 a.m., end with dinner on Saturday) so conference participants will have time to plan their travel.

Four weeks or so before the conference begins, conference organizers should consult with the managing editor to create and distribute a detailed conference program. The program should include the following: the day and time that each paper will be presented and discussed; break times; and the times and locations of lunches and dinners. No more than two presentations should occur in succession without a break.

It is important to the overall success of the conference that break times be long and frequent. The informal interactions during break times and meals are often the most productive of the conference. A twenty- to thirty-minute break in the morning, a twenty- to thirty-minute break in the afternoon, a ninety-minute break for lunch, and a two-hour break between the last presentation of the day and dinner are optimal.

Organizers are responsible for keeping the conference on schedule.

8. Format of the Conference

Two things that were said about the conference program are worth repeating here: no more than two presentations should occur in succession without a break, and it is important to the overall success and productivity of the conference that break times be long and frequent.  

HOPE conferences are about discussion rather than presentation. An optimal schedule would give 45 minutes to each paper. Authors would have no more than 10 minutes to present their papers; the remaining 35+ minutes would be discussion. All conferees should contribute to the discussion. There are no designated discussants.

The conference should be divided into sessions. Each session should have a chair. Please consult with the local organizer to identify session chairs and procedures.

Conference organizers should establish the process governing the discussion. For instance, people may be instructed to raise their hands if they want to make a comment or ask a question, and the chair of the session would keep a running list of the hands that are raised and call on them in turn. 

Conference organizers should inform participants of the format of the conference well in advance.

9. Preside over the Conference

Conference organizers are expected to preside over the conference once it starts. Responsibilities of the conference organizer during the conference are as follows.

At the beginning of the conference . . .

• Welcome participants to the conference; thank sponsors
• Remind participants of important details of the schedule (e.g., site of the meetings, site of meals, ending time of the conference)
• Briefly state the goals and origin of the conference and the important issues it should address
• Review the format of the conference, including the process governing the discussion

During the conference . . .

• Keep the conference on schedule by starting and ending each session on time
• Introduce sessions and session chairs
• If necessary, direct (or redirect) discussions toward relevant issues and topics
• Make sure the session chairs moderate the discussions such that no one person dominates them to the exclusion of others

At the close of the conference . . .

• Thank people for attending; thank sponsors again
• Remind participants of the post-conference schedule and what’s next

10. Shepherd the Papers to Publication after the Conference

Conference papers usually undergo two rounds of revision. First, authors revise their papers after the conference to take into account the comments made at the conference and to incorporate cross-references to the other conference papers. Those revised versions are then sent to the conference organizers, who in turn send the revised versions to referees for another round of comments. Authors are expected to revise their papers again in light of the referee reports, producing a final version of the paper.

10.1. Establish and Enforce Deadlines and Word Limits for the First Round of Revisions

Conference organizers, in consultation with the managing editor, should establish and enforce deadlines for the first round of revisions. Authors should be given six to eight weeks to revise their papers. 

At this point, it is possible that some papers will still have exceeded the word limit. Conference organizers should ask that those papers be shortened to conform to the limit.

10.2. Establish and Carry Out a Refereeing Process

Most, if not all, of the papers presented at the conference will eventually be published in a supplemental issue of HOPE. The issue will appear at the end of the following calendar year.

The papers that are published in the conference volume must be held to a certain standard, although a conference volume necessarily calls for some modification of the usual refereeing criteria and procedures.  For example —and this cannot be appreciated enough—conference participants will have only a short time to revise their papers.  Also, conference papers are written in a specific context, and a given paper may respond to a particular need with respect to the conference as a whole, such as pursuing a question that is vital to the aims of the conference.  It is important that authors must be given every opportunity to improve their papers, and conference papers must meet a quality threshold. 

Therefore, conference papers must be refereed. Conference organizers, in consultation with the local organizer, are responsible for determining the referee process and selecting referees, who may or may not be the same people who participated in the conference. Referees should be given four to six weeks to prepare their reports.

It is important to give referees guidelines that will help them write appropriate reports. Referees should be reminded—or, if they are external to the conference, told for the first time—that authors will have only a short time to revise their papers; thus, there will only be so much an author can do. Referees should be asked to prioritize their concerns and suggestions, with the goal of improving the paper as it currently stands rather than writing a different paper altogether. If the referees are external to the conference, they should be briefed on the theme and purpose of the conference and informed that the paper was written for the conference.

As the conference organizer, you, along with the local organizer, have been delegated the authority to make editorial decisions about the papers. Nevertheless, the editor of HOPE retains the right to reject or accept any paper.

10.3. Distribute Referee Reports to Authors, Along with Any Final Instructions

After the referee reports have been collected, the conference organizer is responsible for distributing the reports to the authors (and editing the reports, if necessary), along with any final instructions to the authors. At this time, the organizer should remind authors of the deadline for submitting their final papers (they should be given six to eight weeks) and ask prolix authors one final time to shorten their papers.     

Final papers should be sent as Word documents to the conference organizer, with copies to the managing editor.

10.4. Editorial Decisions

While most conference papers will be accepted for publication, unsatisfactory or inappropriate papers should be rejected.  Once the referee reports have been collected, the guest editors should reject any inappropriate or unsatisfactory papers.  And once the final papers have been collected, they must officially accept the papers for the conference volume and reject those that have failed to come up to the mark even after revision.

10.5. Confer with Managing Editor about the Remainder of the Publication Process

Once the entire set of final, accepted papers has been determined, the conference organizer should confer with the managing editor about the balance of the publication process. At this point, conference organizers have nothing more to do with the papers; from this point forward, the papers are in the hands of the managing editor and Duke University Press.

11. Editors’ Introduction

The conference organizers are expected to write an introduction to the papers published in the supplement. The introduction need not be long—four or five thousand words may suffice. The introduction should be written by the deadline for the final revised versions of the conference papers.

The introduction should not be an inventory of the papers in the volume. Rather, it should put the topic of the conference in context, comment on and identify any salient historiographical issues, and identify the themes of and major questions posed by the conference papers. It should sum up what was learned at the conference and identify the lines of inquiry opened up by the conference papers.

Keep in mind that the introduction counts against the page limit for the published volume; thus the length of the introduction may be affected by the number and length of the conference papers published in the supplement.

12. Cover Images

All conference volumes need an image for the cover. The image should be selected, and all necessary permissions obtained, by August 15 (the sooner, the better). Images, often in the public domain, can be found in many places, including the following:

• National Gallery of Art (https://www.nga.gov/open-access-images.html)
• Library of Congress (https://www.loc.gov/free-to-use/)
• Smithsonian (https://www.si.edu/OpenAccess)
• National Archives (https://www.archives.gov/research/alic/reference/photography)
• The Met (https://www.metmuseum.org/about-the-met/policies-and-documents/open-access) 
• New York Public Library (https://www.nypl.org/research/collections/digital-collections/public-domain)
• Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page)
• Old Book Illustrations (https://www.oldbookillustrations.com/)

The image should be submitted and accepted by the production staff at Duke University Press by September of the year in which the conference volume will be published. 

 

Final Words

In closing, let us remind you that the managing editor of HOPE is available to help you with the details and responsibilities spelled out in this guidebook. Please do not hesitate to contact him/her with any questions you may have.