Frequently Asked Questions
What is CinC's policy regarding conflicts of interest?
CinC requires all authors to disclose any real or apparent conflicts of interest that may have a direct bearing on the subject matter of their papers. Report any such conflicts on your submission form, within your final paper, and in your presentation (slides or poster).
I didn't check the "Abstract is ready" box before the deadline!
Your abstract will be reviewed anyway. If you check the box before the deadline, your submission may be reviewed early.
There is also a "Paper is ready" box on the submission form, and the same rule applies.
Why is the visual quality of the papers so important?
They are well referenced in cardiology papers, and we want them to look professional. That way they will be cited more.
When is CinC posted on-line?
As soon as the review and editing process is complete each year, usually in November. Until then, preprints (posted by their authors but not necessarily in final form) are available.
When will the printed volumes be published?
We aim to publish each year in early December (about 10-12 weeks after the conference).
Technical difficulties caused by multi-layer figures in about 8% of papers submitted for CinC 2006 have delayed general availability of the print version. Authors can help us avoid such problems in the future by flattening figures before including them in their papers (see below).
How can authors help?
Authors can help most by following the layout instructions fully, and taking special care to follow the instructions exactly for the title/authors/address and font styles and sizes. We have to edit well over half the papers we receive, and this is a huge task.
Can I submit a paper to a peer review journal as well?
Yes, but not exactly the same paper. Remember that your CinC paper is your preliminary paper, and you only have 4 pages. Do not cram everything into these 4 pages. Authors often resort to such small illustrations that they cannot be read! So include the information relevant to CinC. Expand the paper with different illustrations and additional data for the peer review journal, and quote the CinC paper.
How do I cite a CinC paper?
At the foot of the first page of all CinC papers we give the most usual medical journal style (the Vancouver style) for your paper.
Are abstracts or papers on the web?
Beginning with volume 28 (2001), complete proceedings (full papers) are freely available on-line here. The full text of this archive can be searched:
Older volumes can be read on IEEE Xplore, which provides subscriber-only access to CinC proceedings beginning with volume 15 (1988). IEEE membership is required for access to IEEE Xplore; many universities have institutional memberships.
Why do I have to submit a separate conference program abstract?
Almost all submissions are accepted or declined solely on the basis of the separate conference program abstract, so its quality is very important. In most cases, the full papers are not available for review when the decisions must be made.
If your paper is accepted, the conference program abstract will appear in the printed conference program distributed at the meeting to all attendees. The full papers are published in Computing in Cardiology and are available freely a few weeks after the meeting to a worldwide audience on-line.
Should the conference program abstract be the same as the abstract in my full paper?
No. A conference program abstract can be up to 300 words (more than twice the maximum length of the brief abstract contained within a full paper). More detail is appropriate in the conference program abstract. The abstract of your final paper, on the other hand, may reflect results obtained since the conference program abstract deadline.
How can I view and print the example layout with correct dimensions and margins?
If you have not done so already, you may wish to download the free Adobe Reader. To print PDF documents such as the example layout with the correct dimensions, choose "Page Scaling: None" and uncheck "Auto-Rotate and Center" (or uncheck "Shrink oversized pages to paper size" and "Expand small pages to paper size") in Adobe Reader's Print dialog.
The margins will be correct only if the document is printed on US letter-sized paper (see the next question).
The margins look wrong!
CinC's page layout is designed for US letter-sized pages (8.5 x 11 inches, or 216 x 279 mm), as used in the printed proceedings. If you follow the instructions above to print your paper or the example layout on standard A4 paper, the margins will be unequal, but those in your paper should match those in the example layout.
If you want to print a copy of your paper with even margins on A4 paper, check "Auto-Rotate and Center" in Adobe Reader's Print dialog. This will not be useful for checking that the margins in your PDF paper are correct, however; for that, you should follow the instructions above.
Why is it essential to flatten all figures and eliminate transparency?
Although you may be able to print a PDF containing multi-layer images on a desktop printer, or view it properly on a computer display, high speed printers such as those used to produce volumes of CinC have a strict upper bound on the time needed to rasterize each page, in order to keep paper flowing through the printers at a constant speed. The time needed to rasterize a multi-layer figure is proportional to the number of layers, which may be arbitrarily large. For this reason, these printers reject pages containing multiple layers.
It is difficult or impossible to flatten multi-layer PDF files in a way that preserves the intended appearance. Usually the result is either a completely black rectangle in place of the figure, or a very blurry image with poor detail. For best results, the software used to create the figure should be used to flatten it, before including it in your manuscript.
Eliminating transparency in figures is usually done by the same software used to flatten them. If this step is omitted, the image will be flattened onto the default background, which is usually black or grey, resulting in an illegible image.