The scientific program of the DHd Annual Meetings is prepared by a program committee appointed by the DHd Association on the basis of a call for papers and a review process.
Composition and use
The Scientific Program Committee (PK) is appointed by the DHd Association approximately one year before the conference. It typically has 10-12 members who represent various disciplines or different areas (such as humanities departments or cross-cutting topics like software engineering, data management, GLAM) and the different German-speaking countries. When selecting members, appropriate consideration should be given to gender diversity. Members of the PK should be members of the DHd Association. They serve a term of up to five consecutive years. For each conference, approximately 20% of the PK members should be newly appointed. The PK has a Chairperson, who is appointed by the board. This person should hold a permanent position for reasons of independence. Usually, the chair is taken by the representative of the local organization of the previous DHd conference. The PK chair appoints the other members in consultation with the DHd board. The board sends at least one voting member. The local organization of the respective conference sends a representative. This representative has voting rights and should act as a liaison between the PK and the local organization. The Program Committee elects a Vice-Chairperson from among its members in its inaugural meeting.
Tasks
The Program Committee discusses the Call for Papers and the schedule for submission and review deadlines proposed by the local organization. The Call for Papers is then published by the local organization. The chairperson of the Program Committee solicits proposals for plenary lectures from the PK and the local organization. Plenary lectures should be selected with consideration for cultural, disciplinary, geographical, and other types of diversity. The local organization may reject a nomination due to financial reasons or conflicts of interest. The final selection of lectures is the responsibility of the PK. Once the plenary lectures are determined, the local organization invites the speakers and is responsible for accommodation and travel arrangements.
The Program Committee assigns the submitted proposals to reviewers. Members of the PK can volunteer to serve as reviewers.
The PK creates the conference program based on the submitted reviews. In consultation with the local organization, it determines the number of parallel sessions and sets a cut-off point for the acceptance of contributions. The PK then considers borderline cases (e.g., widely varying review results) and contributions near the cut-off point, deciding on their acceptance or rejection. PK members must disclose any potential conflicts of interest during the evaluation process.
Finally, the PK organizes the accepted contributions into individual sessions and selects suitable session chairs. Panel submitters can suggest session chairs to the PK, but the final decision on session leadership is made by the PK. The chair of the Program Committee is also responsible for resolving complaints regarding reviews or reviewers. If a resolution cannot be reached or if there is a conflict of interest, the complaint is referred to the Ombudsperson for the DHd Conference.