The floor is open for submissions for special sessions. They should focus on topics which are not explicitly or insufficiently addressed by the individual ISPRS Working Groups of the five Technical Commissions. They should highlight topics in photogrammetry, remote sensing and spatial information sciences that have newly appeared and/or have reached a significant importance since the XXIII ISPRS Congress in Prague (2016). The goal of a theme session is to attract specialists with modern methods, themes and applications to present their results to a large ISPRS audience.
We invite proposals gathering between 5 and 10 technical papers, showing the diversity or the complexity of the field. Each submission must include a title, a brief description with keywords, a short abstract of the topic stressing its importance and its relation to the ISPRS missions, the name and CV of the proponents, the expected target audience, as well as a preliminary list of full papers and authors that agreed to submit to the session. A « tutorial » overview introducing the sessions is encouraged, especially with a limited number of invitees.
The deadline is 1 October. Proposals should be sent to sessions@isprs2020-nice.com
Acceptance/rejection decision for special sessions will be decided by the International Scientific Committee of the Congress. Then, all invited papers will go through the regular review process.

We solicit proposals for short courses and tutorials to be held on Sunday 14 June, the day before the main program. Tutorials should give a comprehensive overview or a basic understanding of a specific topic related to photogrammetry, remote sensing, and spatial information sciences. A good tutorial should be educational rather than just a compendium of existing methods. The topic should be sufficiently relevance and importance to attract significant interest from the ISPRS community: graduate students, researchers, and practitioners from both academia and industry.
We invite proposals for both half-day and full-day courses. Each submission must include a full course description, the name and CV of the proponents, the expected target audience and number, as well as a description of the resources that will be distributed.
The deadline is 1 October. Proposals should be sent to tutorials@isprs2020-nice.com. Decision will be taken by the International Science Committee of the Congress.

Prospective authors of papers for the technical sessions of the Congress and youth forum are invited to prepare an extended abstract of 1000 words of their proposed paper in English. The abstracts must contain enough detail to clearly convey the approach and results of the research, concepts, and the reasons why it should be considered an interesting message for the audience. The papers must be prepared according to the ISPRS guidelines.
Authors of accepted abstracts will be asked to submit their final papers that will be published in the ISPRS Archives, the series of peer-reviewed proceedings published by ISPRS.

Prospective authors of papers for the technical sessions of the Congress, the youth forum and the special sessions are invited to prepare a full paper of 6-8 pages in English, including figures, tables, and references. It should be submitted anonymously.
Authors of accepted full papers will be asked to submit a final paper that will be published in the ISPRS Archives or ISPRS Annals, the series of full paper double-blind peer-reviewed scientific proceedings of ISPRS. This will depend on the output of the evaluation process.
Authors may optionally upload videos showcasing the proposed approach and the main results both when submitting their blind paper and their camera-ready papers. These videos will help the reviewers taking their decision and the International Science Committee of the Congress to assign papers to long oral, short oral and interactive sessions.

Paper reviews will be conducted according to the ISPRS reviewing process.
According to the primary (and possible secondary) Technical Commission specified through the Conference Management System, each submission falls into a specific Working Group. The TC Presidents and the Program Chairs of the Congress fast check the paper and decide to allocate the paper to a specific WG or even another TC, in accordance with the authors.
Technical Commission Presidents and Vice-Presidents (TCP) assign the papers to Area Chairs (AC). AC are selected among WG officers and external experts if required. They check whether papers are consistently, fairly, and timely evaluated. The TCP ensure the harmonization between all AC.
Area Chairs select qualified reviewers and take preliminary acceptance/rejection decisions for papers in which they are experts. AC are often the officers of the WG related to the submission. They also carefully read the papers and animate a discussion phase after a first round of review if necessary, in addition to the review collection process. The AC do not make reviews themselves: they make their decision based on the collected reviews, and their own opinion on the quality of a paper. In this decision making, the AC officers can ignore reviews of a poor quality (e.g., missing motivation for negative assessments, sparse comments). They are asked to take position if reviewers expressed contradicting views on the quality of a paper.
Area Chairs should report any conflict of interest as soon as possible, so that TCP can transfer papers to another AC.
TCP check the preliminary decisions of the AC and make the final decision. TCP can involve another AC for decision taking if necessary.
The final decision can be :
Accepted for publication in the ISPRS Annals : full papers that were the best rated ;
Accepted for publication in the ISPRS Archives : accepted abstracts and other full papers ;
Reject: both abstracts and full papers can be rejected.

Whether an accepted paper will be presented in a long, short oral or an interactive session is decided later by the International Scientific Committee of the Congress. Such a decision is strongly based on the recommendation of the TCP and AC. For that purpose, a consolidation report is written for each contribution.
Papers submitted by TCP will be reviewed out of the Commission by a specific pool of reviewers. Papers submitted by WG officers will be directly handled by the TCP and re-directed to another WG.

The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences is the series of peer-reviewed proceedings published by the International Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS). They contain the peer-reviewed proceedings and the scientific and technical presentations of all ISPRS Congresses, Symposia and selected Conferences and Workshops, the series was established more than 100 years ago.
The publication costs for each Archives volume are settled through the corresponding conference. Therefore, authors do not have to pay article processing charges.
Since 2011, the Archives are published under the Creative Common Attribution 3.0 License, see publications.copernicus. org/for_authors/license_and_copyright.html for details. The Archives are listed in the ISI Conference Proceedings Citation Index (CPCI) of the Web of Science, SCOPUS, the E/I Compendex, and the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).

The ISPRS Annals of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences contain full paper double-blind peer-reviewed scientific contributions of ISPRS Congresses, Symposia and a number of Conferences and Workshops. The series was newly established in 2012.
The publication costs for each Annals volume are settled through the corresponding conference. Therefore, authors do not have to pay article processing charges.
The Annals are open access publications; they are published under the Creative Common Attribution 3.0 License, see publications.copernicus.org/for_authors/license_and_ copyright.html for details. The Annals are listed in the ISI Conference Proceedings Citation Index (CPCI) of the Web of Science, SCOPUS, the E/I Compendex, and the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).