Optimizing Academic Time: The Story of a Complex Event Managed Solo
With 260 registrants and over 200 submissions to manage, the EPIP 2025 organizers orchestrated a complex process behind the scenes. Discover how Fourwaves enabled a single organizer to manage it all while maintaining academic excellence.
International, independent, interdisciplinary, non-profit association of researchers
Facilitate the exchange of high-quality research, best practices, and cross-sector perspectives.
The complex workflow is managed by one person which preserved the academics' time.
The European Policy for Intellectual Property’s (EPIP) Annual Conference occupies a distinctive space in the academic landscape.
Unlike events aimed solely at researchers, EPIP places equal value on bringing together scholars, practitioners, policymakers, and professionals who engage with intellectual property from very different vantage points. The result is a conference where rigorous research must coexist with real-world relevance and policy impact.
For the 20th edition of the EPIP Annual Conference, which took place in 2025 and was hosted at the University of Antwerp, this balance was central to how success was defined. The goal was not simply to attract a high volume of submissions, but to curate a program that reflected both academic excellence and diversity of perspective. Achieving that mix required careful orchestration long before the first attendee arrived on site.
When Ambitious Goals Meet Operational Realities
That ambitious vision quickly turned into a demanding operational reality: 218 submissions, 160 oral presentation proposals, and a multi-stage review and scheduling process that left little room for error.
It's worth noting that the organizer was mostly alone in this process and had other work to manage outside of the conference. Submissions had to be reviewed by the right experts, evaluated fairly, accepted or declined, and then grouped into coherent thematic sessions that would make sense to a diverse audience.
With hundreds of submissions, having everything in one place was essential to staying organized and avoiding mistakes.
Research Manager, University of Antwerp
Much of this work happened out of sight, but it demanded constant attention. Assigning reviewers, tracking who had completed their evaluations, and ensuring no submission was overlooked during session allocation created a dense web of interdependencies.
At this scale, relying on disconnected tools or manual tracking would have introduced unnecessary risk, missed reviews, version conflicts, or errors that only surface at the last minute.
Fourwaves: Bringing Order to Chaos
Fourwaves became the operational backbone of the conference by consolidating every stage of the workflow into a single system. More than 200 submissions needed 2 independent expert reviewers. The assignment engine allowed this to be done flawlessly.
As reviews progressed, centralized visibility proved critical. Organizers could immediately see which reviews were complete, which still required follow-up, and where potential gaps existed.
Fourwaves makes it easy to see each reviewer, their workload, and review status.
When it came time to move from acceptance decisions to session building, that same structure made it possible to allocate papers efficiently to sessions while preserving thematic coherence without relying on parallel spreadsheets.
Rather than eliminating stress entirely, the platform offered something more valuable: clarity. When questions arose, the team could quickly determine whether an issue stemmed from organizer input or participant action, allowing them to respond with confidence rather than uncertainty.
Being able to quickly view and filter submissions and reviews by category or status was a lifesaver at every stage of the process.
Research Manager, University of Antwerp
In addition to managing abstracts, peer-reviews and sessions building, the organizer created and published an event website and put in place a registration and payments system for more than 260 attendees. All flawlessly with Fourwaves.
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Protecting Academics’ Time Where It Mattered Most
One of the less visible but most meaningful outcomes of using a structured conference management system was the redistribution of effort.
By enabling a single organizer to manage much of the operational workload independently, Fourwaves reduced the need to pull academic committee members into logistical problem-solving.
That precise shift changed how effort was distributed across the team. It allowed researchers and reviewers to focus on the intellectual substance of the conference (evaluating research quality, shaping discussions, and preparing for meaningful exchange), rather than navigating administrative friction.
As submission numbers grew, maintaining that separation between academic judgment and operational execution became increasingly important.
Fourwaves made it possible to manage the conference largely on my own, without pulling academics into logistics.
Research Manager, University of Antwerp
Future Plans: Scaling Upcoming Events without Added Complexity
Looking ahead, the EPIP organizing team sees centralized conference management as essential to sustaining and scaling the event. Clear overview dashboards showing submission counts, registrations, and financial inflows supported daily communication with academic stakeholders and simplified budget oversight.
As expectations for transparency, reporting, and efficiency continue to rise, having a reliable system in place reduces reliance on ad hoc processes and lowers the number of errors as conferences expand. For the EPIP, this foundation makes it possible to focus less on firefighting and more on refining the conference experience itself for better attendee engagement.
About the European Policy for Intellectual Property Association
Founded in 2001, the European Policy for Intellectual Property Association is an independent international scholarly society dedicated to advancing research and dialogue on intellectual property law and policy.
Apart from its annual conference, the EPIP supports doctoral training, specialized workshops, and collaborative initiatives that connect academic research with industry, government, and public institutions across Europe and beyond.