What to ask your abstract management vendor: fifteen questions and why each one matters
Fifteen questions for any vendor of conference abstract management and program software, each with the reason it matters and what a good answer sounds like. It names no vendor. It is written to be forwarded inside a program committee, and every question is one we would want to be asked.
1. Can I see your price without a sales call?
Of the twenty-four vendors we assessed against their own websites, nine publish a price. A published price lets a program committee plan a budget, compare like with like, and skip a discovery call whose real purpose is to size you. Where there is no price there is usually also no way to see the product, and a decision that cannot be checked before purchase should be weighed accordingly.
A good answer: A rate card on the website, with what each tier includes, and a statement of whether implementation or annual setup fees apply on top — a published license figure can be a fraction of the year-one total when the module has to be built at implementation and rebuilt each year, so ask for year one and year two in writing.
2. Where does your coverage stop?
A scientific meeting runs one chain: the call for abstracts, peer review, selection, speaker file collection, content review, the timed schedule, the signage outside the room, and the attendee app. Most platforms cover part of it and hand off to another supplier somewhere in the middle. Every handoff is a place the record is re-keyed and a place something goes wrong the week of the meeting.
A good answer: A plain list of which of those steps the product does itself, which it integrates with, and which are yours to solve. Ask for the integrations by name and ask what the record looks like on the other side.
3. Is peer review blind, and single or double?
Blind review is the integrity mechanism your reviewers and your society rely on. It is also the most common place a vendor’s marketing says one thing and the product does another, because masking author identity touches every screen a reviewer sees, every export, and every file.
A good answer: The vendor can say exactly what a reviewer sees and cannot see, whether author identities are stripped from uploaded files as well as from the form, and whether the masking is enforced by the server or merely hidden by the interface.
4. How do you handle conflicts of interest?
There are two halves to this and vendors often have only one. Disclosure collection asks submitters and speakers to declare relationships. Reviewer conflict checking stops a reviewer being assigned to work they have a stake in. A program that needs continuing-education accreditation needs both, documented.
A good answer: Disclosure fields are configurable, disclosures follow the person across everything they submit, and reviewer assignment is either blocked or flagged automatically when a conflict is declared.
5. When someone has not done what they were asked, what happens?
Every platform can send email, so “automated reminders” as a yes-or-no tells you nothing. What matters is whether the system chases the people who have done nothing — the reviewer who has not scored, the speaker who has not uploaded, the author who has not confirmed — on a schedule, without a staff member remembering to. In our research this was the widest gap in the category: fewer than half of the vendors assessed document chasing non-completers at all.
A good answer: The vendor can describe four things without hesitation: what triggers a chase, who is chased and who is not, on what schedule relative to the deadline, and what stops it once the task is done.
6. Can I set the reminder schedule myself?
Some products chase non-completers but on a schedule the vendor hard-coded — a fixed number of days before the deadline, at a fixed hour. Your call for abstracts, your speaker deadline and your reviewer window are three different rhythms, and a society in one country running a meeting in another has opinions about the hour.
A good answer: The days-before schedule, the send hour and the repeat interval are yours to set per event, and the vendor can show you the setting rather than describe it.
7. Is everything evaluated in the venue’s timezone?
A deadline of “midnight on the 14th” means midnight where the meeting is, not midnight at the vendor’s data center or in the browser of whoever set it. The same applies to reminder hours and to the schedule itself. Timezone handling is invisible when it is right and expensive when it is wrong — an abstract rejected as late that arrived on time is a complaint to the committee chair.
A good answer: The event carries a venue timezone, every deadline and every reminder is evaluated against it, and the agenda grid displays in it regardless of where staff are sitting.
8. Is the schedule a timed grid or a list?
Many abstract systems end at “group the accepted talks by topic” and leave the actual timetable to a spreadsheet. A timed grid with rooms and conflict detection is where the double-booked chair and the two talks on the same subject at the same hour get caught before the program prints.
A good answer: Rooms and times on a grid, drag and drop, and a visible warning when a person or a room is in two places at once.
9. How do speaker files get from the speaker to the room, and who checks them?
Collecting slides is the half of the chain that is usually sold by whoever wants your audiovisual contract. Ask how a speaker uploads, what happens when they upload a second version, who reviews content before it plays, and how the approved file reaches the right room at the right hour.
A good answer: A personal upload link per speaker, versioning, a review step with a clear approved state, and a documented path to the room that does not depend on a USB stick.
10. Does the software price include anything else, and can I license the software alone?
Some vendors sell software together with audiovisual production, onsite staffing or registration. That can be convenient. It also means the software price is not separable from the services, and if you later want to change one supplier you may find you have to change both. Ask the question whether or not you plan to buy the services.
A good answer: A software price on its own, stated separately from any services, with no obligation to buy those services to use the software.
11. What does an attendee see, and does it need an app store?
Native apps need an install, an account, and a store listing that lags the program by days. A web app at a short link needs none of those. Ask which one you are getting, what an attendee sees before they sign in, and whether the schedule they are looking at updates when the committee changes it.
A good answer: A link that opens on any phone, shows the program without an install, and reflects the live schedule.
12. How do I get my data out if I leave?
Abstracts, review scores, author records and the program are your society’s data. The question is not whether an export exists — it is whether you can run it yourself, whether it is complete, and whether it arrives in a form the next system can import.
A good answer: A self-service export of every entity in a spreadsheet or a documented format, no notice period, no exit fee.
13. Where does AI touch the process, and can it change a decision without a human?
AI is arriving in this category from two directions: assistants that draft, group and propose, and scoring engines that rank submissions. For a society whose reputation is its peer-review integrity, the second kind needs scrutiny. Ask what the AI is allowed to do, what it reads, and whether anything it produces is written without a person reviewing it.
A good answer: AI proposes and a human applies. Nothing reaches an author, a reviewer or an attendee without organizer review, and author identities are never sent to the model.
14. Can I read the manual before I buy?
A vendor whose documentation is public is a vendor whose claims you can check. It is also the fastest way to learn what the product actually does, including the settings whose labels are misleading and the modules that quietly depend on another.
A good answer: The full operations manual and a settings reference, with defaults, on the public website — not behind a login or a demo.
15. How many customers do you have, and what happens if I am among the first?
Every vendor was new once, and the honest ones say where they are. A small or new vendor can be the right choice — closer attention, more influence over what gets built — if the terms recognize the risk you are taking rather than asking you to carry it. Ask what happens if it does not work.
A good answer: A straight answer about customer count, and terms that let you run in parallel with your current system, start with a smaller meeting, and leave with your data.