Microsoft CMT vs OpenConf

Microsoft CMT is a free web-based conference management system for academic and scientific peer review. It supports roles for chairs, senior meta-reviewers, meta-reviewers, reviewers, authors, and proceedings editors. Organizers can create any number of independently configured tracks and customize forms with separate question visibility. The workflow covers abstracts, full papers, supplementary material, revisions, camera-ready files, and presentations. Reviewer assignment can be manual or automatic, with Toronto Paper Matching System integration. Review collaboration includes bidding, reviewer suggestions, threaded discussion, virtual program committee meetings, and author rebuttals. Uploads are unlimited, with a 100 MB maximum per file, and supported types include PDF, DOCX, audio, video, and others. Conference data exports to Excel, XML, or CSV. CMT runs on Microsoft Azure with geo-replicated data, logs submission and file activity, and offers a schedule builder and IEEE eCopyright workflow. After a conference ends, CMT removes its data. The Free plan costs nothing.

OpenConf is a system for managing peer review, conferences and abstracts. Organizers can build submission forms from built-in fields or add their own, then assign reviews manually or match submissions and reviewers by topic or bids. Its workflow includes scoring, acceptance decisions, notifications and committee discussion. Accepted submissions can be scheduled into a web program or print booklet, and proceedings can be published online. OpenConf can be installed on a customer's server or used through a hosting service administered by the maker. Authentication options include passkeys, magic links and single sign-on using OIDC and SAML. Privacy tools include policy links, cookie banners, consent checkboxes, personal-information review and administrator-managed data deletion. Professional Edition lists IEEE eCopyright, ACM copyright export and ORCID reviewer credit features. OpenConf 8 requires an HTTP server with TLS/SSL, PHP 7.3 or later and MySQL 8.0.4 or later. Support is included for hosting account and license contacts; Community Edition users receive no support. Community Edition has no listed price and is limited to three or fewer events and journals per calendar year.