MeetingHand Abstract Management vs OpenReview

MeetingHand Abstract Management helps academic event organizers collect, review, schedule and publish submissions. Organizers can configure submission forms with topics, presentation types, rules, deadlines and author fields, and accept text, file or multimedia uploads. Review features include assigning reviewers, recording scores and comments, tracking progress on dashboards and conducting blind peer review. Authors can edit abstracts until the deadline if the organizer enables that permission. Accepted submissions can be scheduled into a multi-track agenda and exported as a book of abstracts. Abstract submission can connect with conference registration through single sign-on, with an option to require payment for submissions. MeetingHand says the system is designed for events with hundreds or thousands of submissions. Pricing depends on registrations or abstracts collected: Free covers up to 25, Pay as you go costs $4.90 a month and is charged according to collected registrations and abstracts, and Small is a prepaid plan at $990 a month for 250. The Medium plan covers 1,000, but no price is listed. The software is web-based. MeetingHand offers human support and a knowledge center; it also notes that its site is not tailored to regulations such as HIPAA or FISMA.

OpenReview is a configurable web and API platform for peer review and scientific communication. Venues can track submissions and coordinate authors, reviewers and editors through multiple review stages. Organizers configure review forms, permissions and timing, while accepted papers can retain reviews, comments and ongoing discussion. Reviewer-paper matching can use expertise, bids, constraints and reviewer balancing. Venues may enable real-time committee chat on paper forums; messages are hidden from authors and the public by default. The REST API covers records, groups, documents, invitations, assignments, conflicts and workflow automation. OpenReview’s web interface is free software under the GNU Affero General Public License v3, and other platform components are also open source. Its free plan provides free paper access and submissions with no fees. Organizers request a venue through a support form, then the OpenReview team reviews and deploys it. For venues with separate track deadlines and review forms, organizers are instructed to request a separate venue for each track. General inquiries use the support form.