Paper Formatting

Download the MESD 2012 template by clicking here

The accepted papers will be published in the Proceedings. We wish to give the proceedings a consistent, high-quality appearance. We therefore ask that authors follow these basic guidelines. In essence, you should format your paper exactly like this document. The easiest way to use this template is to download it from the conference webpage and replace the content with your own material. The template file contains specially formatted styles (e.g., Normal, Heading, Bullet, Table Text, References, Title, Author, Affiliation) that are designed to reduce the work in formatting your final submission.

Page Size

The proceedings are formatted for standard US letter paper (8.5 x 11 inches or 21.6 x 28 cm). The page margins, excluding headers and footers are 1 in. (2.5 cm all around. It is assumed that your word processor will accommodate this paper size and layout. All final publications will be formatted and displayed in US letter size. Margins should be full justified, not ragged right (use the Normal style). Beware, especially when using this template on a Macintosh, as Word may change these dimensions in unexpected ways.

Typeset Text

Prepare your submissions on a word processor or typesetter. Please note that page layout may change slightly depending upon the printer you have specified.

Title, Abstract, and Keywords
In addition to the title, every submission should include an abstract and a set of keywords. The abstract should be a concise statement of the problem, approach, and conclusions of the work described. It should clearly state the paper's contribution to the field. The abstract header is Times New Roman 13-point bold centered (AbstractHeader style), while the abstract text is Times New Roman 10-point italic, full justified with left and right indents of 0.5 in . (1.25 cm AbstractText style. Keywords are to appear in Times New Roman 10-point (Keyword style).

Body of the Submission
NOTES: The length of the body of the Submission is limited to 16 single-spaced pages. These page counts include all text, figures, and tables; authors, abstract, keywords, and references are excluded from this page count. The review process is double-blind. When using this template during the review process, you must ensure that the document contains no author information at all. You can change the document properties via Tools>Options>Security>'Remove personal information from the file properties on save'.

Title

The body of the submission should include the title of the submission. Your paper's title should be in Times New Roman 20-point bold small caps, centered. Initial letters of words are to be capitalized with the exception of words like ‘the', ‘of', ‘a', ‘an' unless it is the first word of the title.

Normal or Body Text

Please use a 12-point Times New Roman font or, if it is unavailable, another proportional font with serifs, as close as possible in appearance to Times New Roman 12-point. On a Macintosh, use the font named Times and not Times New Roman. Please use sans-serif or non-proportional fonts only for special purposes, such as source code text (SpecialStyle).

References and Citations

Although references are not part of the page count, they must be included in the submitted file. Please make sure that all cited work appears in the references. References are to be formatted using the MIS Quarterly style (under MISQ References Format). References must be complete, i.e., include, as appropriate, volume, number, month, publisher, city and state, editors, last name & initials of all authors, page numbers, etc. If you use EndNote, be aware that different versions of the software change the styles, creating some inconsistencies. The MIS Quarterly style for EndNote can be located at http://www.isworld.org/endnote/index.asp.

References in the text must be included in Reference section and vice versa. References in text should include the authors' last names and year of publication. Use et al. for more than two authors, and if you need to use multiple citations at the same time, order them alphabetically and separate them by a semi-colon, e.g. (Jones et al. 1995; Smith 1996). References are to be ordered alphabetically according to authors' or editors' last names, or the title of the work for items with no author or editor listed. For references to items in periodicals, include the author, title, journal, volume, number, month, year, pages. For authors, last names are given first, even for multiple authors. For references to reports or proceedings, use the author's name and title of report (same style as above), report number, source, editor and/or publisher as appropriate, city and state/country of publisher OR full name of conference as appropriate, including date and pages. For references to books, use the author's name (same style as above), title, publisher, city, state/country, year, page, or chapter. The use of "et al." in the list of references is prohibited. The names of all authors and editors must be listed. If you are using EndNote, please check your references to ensure that the settings are correct and that all authors are listed in the references. Several different types of references are illustrated at the end of this document. Your references should comprise only published materials accessible to the public. Proprietary information may not be cited.

Sections

The heading of a section should be Times New Roman 14-point bold, left justified. Sections should not be numbered.

Subsections

Headings of subsections should be in Times New Roman 13-point bold italics with initial letters capitalized. (Note: for sub-sections and sub-subsections, words like ‘the', ‘of', ‘a', ‘an' are not capitalized unless it is the first word of the heading.)

Sub-subsections

Headings for sub-subsections should be in Times New Roman 10-point bold with initial letters capitalized. Please do not go any further into another layer/level.

Figures and Tables

Place figures and tables close to the relevant text (or where they are referenced in the text). Captions should be Times New Roman 12-point bold and centered. Figures and tables should be numbered consecutively (e.g., “Table 1” or “Figure 2”), and placed next to the figure or table. For figures, the caption appears below the figures. In the case of tables, the caption should appear above the table. Please note that the words “Figure” and “Table” should be spelled out (e.g., “Figure” rather than “Fig.”) wherever they occur. The proceedings are delivered in electronic format, and thus support color figures. However, you are advised to refrain from using colors to deliver important information in your figures – not everyone has access to color printers.

Inserting Images

Occasionally MS Word generates larger-than-necessary PDF files when images inserted into the document are manipulated in MS Word. To minimize this problem, use an image editing tool to resize the image at the appropriate printing resolution (usually 300 dpi), and then insert the image into Word using Insert | Picture | From File...

Language, Style, and Content

With regard to spelling and punctuation, you may use any dialect of English (e.g., British, Canadian, US, etc.) provided this is done consistently. Avoid hyphenation at the ends of lines. To ensure suitability for an international audience, please pay attention to the following:

• Write in a straightforward style.
• Try to avoid long or complex sentence structures.
• Briefly define or explain all technical terms that may be unfamiliar to readers.
• Explain all acronyms the first time they are used in your text – e.g., “corporate social responsibility (CSR)”.
• Explain local references (e.g., not everyone knows all city names in a particular country).
• Be careful with the use of gender-specific pronouns (he, she) and other gendered words (chairman, manpower, man-months). Use inclusive language that is gender-neutral (e.g., she or he, they, s/he, chair, staff, staff-hours, person-years.

Page Numbering, Headers and Footers

Please submit your final version with the pre-defined header and footer. (For the Proceedings, headers in odd pages should include the authors' last name (only the first author's last name, and use “et al.” after that if the paper has more than two authors) and a short title of your paper in the header. Headers in even pages should specify the name of the track in which the paper appears. Leave the footer untouched.

Conclusion

It is important that you write for a general audience. It is also important that your work is presented in a professional fashion. This guideline is intended to help you achieve that goal. By adhering to the guideline, you also help the conference organizers tremendously in reducing our workload and ensuring impressive presentation of your conference paper. We thank you very much for your cooperation and look forward to receiving a professional looking, camera-ready version!

 

References

(Ensure that all references are present, complete, and accurate as per the examples.)

Ackoff, R. L. "Management Misinformation Systems," Management Science (14:4),
December 1967, pp. 147-156.

Beer, S. The Heart of the Enterprise, John Wiley, Chichester, England, 1979.

Keen, P.G.W. “MIS Research: Reference Disciplines and a Cumulative Tradition”, in
Proceedings of the First International Conference on Information Systems, McLean,
E.R. (Ed.), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, December 1980, pp. 9-18.

Trevino, L.K. “Business Ethics and the Social Sciences”, in A Companion to Business Ethics,
Frederick, R.E. (Ed.), Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, England, 1999, pp. 218-230.