The call for papers (CFP) is often the first substantive document a potential submitter reads about your conference. It sets expectations, signals the intellectual character of the event, and - critically filters who bothers to submit at all. A vague or poorly structured CFP wastes your programme committee's time and frustrates researchers and practitioners who cannot tell whether their work is a good fit.
Getting it right is not complicated, but it does require deliberate thinking about your audience, your scope, and the information submitters genuinely need.
Define Scope Clearly Before You Write a Word
The most common failure in CFP writing is scope ambiguity. Phrases like "we welcome papers on all aspects of sustainability" or "topics include but are not limited to..." followed by a list of thirty keywords tell submitters almost nothing useful.
Before drafting, answer these questions internally:
- What is the specific disciplinary focus of this conference - is it primarily academic, practitioner-facing, or both?
- Are you seeking empirical research, theoretical work, case studies, or all three?
- What is out of scope? Stating what you will not accept is just as valuable as stating what you will.
- Is there a theme for this edition that narrows the general subject area?
Once you have clear answers, the scope section of your CFP almost writes itself. A well-scoped CFP for a health informatics conference, for example, might specify that it welcomes original research on clinical decision-support systems, patient data interoperability, and AI-assisted diagnostics - while explicitly noting that general IT management or non-clinical digital health topics are better suited to other venues.
Give Submitters the Practical Information They Need
Researchers and practitioners are busy. If they cannot find the submission deadline, word count, or formatting requirements within thirty seconds of reading your document, many will simply move on. Structure your CFP so that the practical details are prominent and unambiguous.
At minimum, every CFP must include:
- Submission deadline - include the time zone (use UTC or specify clearly). "31 March" on its own is not enough.
- Notification date - when will authors hear back? This matters enormously for travel planning and other commitments.
- Submission types and lengths - full papers, short papers, posters, practitioner case studies? Specify word counts or page limits and whether references are included in that count.
- Formatting requirements - link directly to the template. If you use a standard format such as ACM, IEEE, or Springer LNCS, name it explicitly.
- Anonymisation policy - is review double-blind? If so, say so clearly and briefly explain what that means for how authors should prepare their manuscript.
- Submission platform - name it. EasyChair, OpenReview, Microsoft CMT, and ConfTool are all commonly used; link directly to the submission portal.
- Publication and indexing - will accepted papers appear in proceedings? Are those proceedings indexed in Scopus, Web of Science, or the ACM Digital Library? This is a major factor in whether academics can justify the time investment.
If you are running a multi-track conference, consider publishing a separate CFP for each track rather than one sprawling document that tries to address everyone simultaneously.
Write for Your Actual Submitter, Not Your Programme Committee
It is easy to write a CFP that makes perfect sense to the people who drafted it - and is confusing to everyone else. The programme committee already knows the conference's intellectual history, its relationship to related events, and what "high-quality contributions" means in this context. Submitters from adjacent fields or early in their careers often do not.
A few techniques that help:
- Use concrete examples of relevant topics, not abstract category labels. Instead of "methodological contributions", write "papers proposing new evaluation frameworks or mixed-methods approaches for studying X".
- Include a short description of past accepted work if this is not the conference's first edition. Linking to a previous programme or proceedings gives submitters the clearest possible signal about fit.
- State your review criteria. If papers are assessed on originality, rigour, relevance, and clarity, say so. This helps authors self-select and improves submission quality.
- Acknowledge interdisciplinary or practitioner contributions explicitly if you want them, because these submitters frequently assume they are not welcome at academic venues unless told otherwise.
Tone matters too. A stiff, bureaucratic CFP signals a stiff, bureaucratic conference. A clear, direct, collegial tone - without tipping into marketing language - will attract the kind of engaged community you want.
Review, Test, and Distribute the Document Properly
Once drafted, ask someone outside your programme committee to read it and flag anything confusing. Ideally, choose someone from your target submitter profile - a postgraduate researcher or a mid-career practitioner, depending on your audience.
Check every link before publishing. A broken link to your submission portal or formatting template is a surprisingly common problem that causes real frustration.
When it comes to distribution, posting on your conference website is necessary but not sufficient. Share the CFP through relevant mailing lists (many academic societies maintain these), post it to WikiCFP, and list your event on directories like EventCentral.me to reach researchers and professionals actively searching for submission opportunities. Timing matters: issue the CFP at least twelve weeks before the submission deadline for most academic conferences, and consider a reminder post four to six weeks out.
A strong CFP is not a marketing document - it is a specification. Write it with the precision and clarity you would expect from the papers you hope to receive.