Call for Workshops

Call for Workshops

AAMAS 2021 invites proposals for the Workshop Program, to be held on May 3-4, 2021, immediately prior to the main program of the AAMAS conference.

The objective of the AAMAS 2021 workshop program is to stimulate and facilitate discussion, interaction, and comparison of approaches, methods, and ideas related to specific topics, both theoretical and applied, in the general area of Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems. The AAMAS 2021 workshops will provide an informal setting where participants will have the opportunity to discuss specific technical topics in an atmosphere that fosters the active exchange of ideas and supports community development.

We invite submissions for workshop proposals for review. We encourage workshops that focus on emerging topics and applications, on open research questions and challenges, and on broader topics that are of interest to a wider community. In addition, we also encourage workshops that have had previous editions in AAMAS, and that could attract communities that have been working in the same research area for some years.

Workshops can vary in length from half a day to two days, though we expect most to be one full day in duration. As attendance will be limited to registered participants, workshop organisers and attendees must register for their workshop, whose fee will be separate from the main conference fee. As in previous AAMAS editions, one free workshop registration will be offered for each accepted workshop. Workshop attendees do not need to register for the main AAMAS conference but are encouraged to do so.

For the time being, AAMAS 2021 is expected to be run in person. However, the organising committee is also planning for the possibility that the global public health situation might require to run the conference as a partially or fully virtual event. The workshops will be held in the same modality as the main conference. So, we ask the workshop organisers to plan for both on-site and partially or fully virtual events.

AAMAS 2021 reserves the right to cancel workshops whose attendance does not support their running costs.

Requirements for Submission

The workshop proposals should be submitted electronically as a single PDF file.

Items 1-11 should be a maximum of five pages in length, and should contain the following information:

  1. Title and acronym of the workshop.
  2. A brief technical description of the workshop, specifying the workshop’s goals, the technical issues that it will address, the relevance of the workshop to the main conference, together with a brief discussion of why and to whom the workshop is of interest.
  3. A preliminary workshop format and a proposed schedule for organising the workshop, including the desired length for the workshop. Please include a brief description of how the organisers intend to encourage an atmosphere appropriate for a workshop and indicate whether you intend to have any activities other than contributed talks (e.g., invited talks, panels, or posters).
  4. A description of how the workshop would be run in case the conference will be held online.
  5. A list of related workshops held within the last three years, if any, and their relation to the proposed workshop. Please include, when information is available: when and where they have been offered in the past (i.e., with AAMAS or another conference), organisers’ names and affiliations, number of submitted/accepted papers, approximate attendance numbers, and follow-up publications (e.g., journal special issues). In particular for workshops that have had previous editions (even if they had different titles and were not held with AAMAS), please include a list of URLs of the websites of the previous editions.
  6. Description of the paper review process and acceptance standards.
  7. The names, affiliations, URLs, and email addresses of the proposed workshop organisers. This committee must consist of two to four people knowledgeable about the technical issues to be addressed. The organising committee should include individuals from multiple institutions, spreading across different regions. By submitting the workshop proposal, the organisers commit to fulfilling their responsibilities, outlined below in the “Responsibilities” section.
  8. The name of the primary contact for the organising committee.
  9. A list of potential program committee members, including their titles and affiliations.
  10. A tentative list of places (distribution lists, websites, journals, etc.) where the workshop is planned to be advertised.
  11. If available, a list of tentatively confirmed attendees.

In addition to the above items, please include one-page CVs for each of the organising committee members (not included in the 5-page limit). Please focus on the qualifications of the individual committee members with respect to organising an AAMAS workshop and including a list of key publications demonstrating scholarship in the field and a list of workshops previously arranged, if any. Note that strong proposals should include organisers who bring differing perspectives to the workshop topic and who are actively connected to the communities of potential participants.

Selection Criteria

The selection of workshops for the final program will be based upon multiple factors, including the scientific/technical interest of the topics in relation to the AAMAS community, the clarity of the proposal in addressing the requested information, the innovative character of workshop topics, the cross-disciplinary nature of the workshop, the capacity of the organisers in leading a successful workshop, and the capacity of the conference workshop program. Please note that AAMAS may request proposers addressing similar or overlapping content areas to merge their proposals.

Responsibilities

For all accepted proposals, AAMAS will be responsible for:

  • Providing publicity for the workshop series as a whole.
  • Providing logistic support and a meeting place for the workshop in case of a physical event.
  • Together with the organisers, determining the workshop date and time.
  • AAMAS reserves the right to cancel workshops, for example in case of a low number of registrants.

Workshop organizers will be responsible for:

  • Setting up a website for the workshop.
  • Advertising the workshop and issuing a call for papers and a call for participation as per the important dates.
  • Collecting and evaluating submissions, notifying authors of acceptance or rejection on a timely basis, and ensuring a transparent and fair selection process.
  • All workshop organizers are strongly advised to adopt the same deadlines for paper submissions and notifications of acceptance as per the important dates.
  • Ensuring that the workshop organizers and the participants register for the workshop and are invited to register to the main conference (at least one author must register for the workshop in order for a paper to appear in the workshop proceedings). AAMAS reserves the right to cancel any workshop if the above responsibilities are not fulfilled.

Submission Instructions

Workshop proposals must be submitted via Easychair using the following link:

AAMAS-2021 EasyChair Site

Submissions are supposed to be in a single pdf file, not exceeding 5 pages (plus one-page CVs for each organizer).

The deadline for submission is October 25 2020, 12am AoE.

Inquiries

Please send any inquiries to the AAMAS 2021 Workshop Co-chairs: