HW2: Conference Review

Due: Monday, Feb 5th

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

Objectives

• Use data conceptual modeling techniques to create an EER model.
• Collaborate with other students using draw.io (app.diagrams.net).

Crow's Foot Notation

For this assignment, you must use Crow's Foot notation to draw the diagram. You may use the conventions shown in the lecture slides; see Modified Crow's Foot Key and EER for MedX. The Vertabelo blog also has a nice summary of Crow's Foot notation.

Overview

Create an EER model for the scenario described below. Be sure to note any assumptions or explanations. Follow the same Getting Started procedure as in Homework 1.

Consider a system for managing conference paper reviews. Such systems are used to help administer the process of deciding which researchers' papers can be presented/published at an academic conference. Researchers submit their papers for consideration for inclusion in the conference, and each paper is reviewed to see whether or not it is worthy of being included.

Requirements

Assume this system manages a single conference, but this conference is held annually. All records from each annual meeting must be saved in the database. These records are important for recruiting authors and reviewers, and for advertising how selective the conference is.

Researchers write papers about their research and can submit one or more papers to the conference each year. Researchers can also serve as reviewers during any year (whether or not they submit a paper). Each submitted paper requires at least two reviews. The system allows reviewers to record their comments about each paper, score the paper with respect to some categories, and recommend whether to accept or reject the paper.

The detailed requirements are as follows:

• Paper authors are uniquely identified by their email address. Their first and last names are also kept, as well as their affiliation(s).

• Each paper is assigned a unique id, and has a title, an abstract, one or more topics, and the filename of the paper itself. Once the reviewing process is over, the final decision (which is either accept or reject) for the paper in the conference is stored. The final decision is made after all reviews are submitted, and is a human decision based on all the scores and comments in each review.

• A paper may have multiple authors, but a single author is designated as the contact author. The contact author is the one who gets all the emails about the paper.

• Reviewers are uniquely identified by email address. A reviewer's first and last name, phone number, affiliation(s), and set of topics of expertise are kept. Also, the total number of papers that have been reviewed by this author is stored.

• Each paper is assigned multiple (at least two) reviewers. A reviewer rates a paper on a scale of 1–10 in four categories: technical merit, readability, originality, and relevance (to the conference). They also give an overall recommendation, which is either accept or reject.

• A review also includes two text comments: comments to the author, and private comments (to the committee who will make the final decisions about the papers).

• Authors can also act as reviewers, but they cannot review papers written by themselves or any person who currently shares or has shared the same affiliation as them in the past.

• An affiliation is a university or research lab where the person works or has worked in the past. It has a name, country code, and website address. A researcher may have one or more current affiliations, and any number of previous affiliations. A researcher's current affiliations have a start date. Previous affiliations have a date range.

• We assume that there is some software module that automates the matching of reviewers to papers, using the topics and affiliations to select correctly.

• A paper's most current state in the review process (and the date-time the state was entered), per reviewer, must be stored for each paper. The review process is as follows:

  • A paper is assigned to a reviewer.
  • The reviewer either accepts or rejects the offer to review the paper. If the offer to review is rejected, the reason for rejection is stored.
  • The reviewer can work on the review and save their work without submitting the final review.
  • Finally, the review is submitted.

Submission

Submit a 2-page pdf document for your group to Gradescope that includes:

• Page 1
  • The names of all the group members. Please also add group members to your submission (when uploading).
  • An image of your EER diagram (not hand-drawn) that follows the crow's foot style.
• Page 2
  • No more than one page of supplemental notes for your model, including:
  • Definitions of terms or abbreviations that you used that were not given in the requirements.
  • Any assumptions that you made about information that was not included in the requirements.
  • Any extra data items you created that were not mentioned in the requirements.

Acknowledgements

This exercise was adapted from an exercise in Fundamentals of Database Systems by Elmasri & Navathe.