DiGRA Australia prides itself on running accessible and inclusive events. To this end, we have long committed to running our conferences for free, with no registration fee.
An unforeseen consequence of this has been people occasionally withdrawing their accepted submissions not long before the conference commences, as the lack of registration fee makes it easier to pull out with no consequence. This has been particularly unfortunate at conferences where other perfectly good submissions were rejected due to the sheer number of positively reviewed papers.
As such, from the 2020 National Conference onwards, influenced by similar policy at other conferences, DiGRA Australia has implemented a ‘grey list’ policy. Authors who withdraw accepted submissions without providing a suitable reason will be added to a grey list for the following National Conference. If the organising committee of that following National Conference have more acceptable submissions than can be fit in the program, those people on the grey list will be the first to be rejected.
The grey list is cleared every National Conference.
The purpose of this policy is to ensure only serious and committed submissions are made to DiGRA Australia Calls for Papers. The purpose is not to make precariously employed and junior academics afraid of submitting because they don’t know where they will be in 6 months. As such this policy does not apply to current students, sessionally-employed academics, or unemployed academics.
Authors who withdraw or fail to present an accepted submission will not be added to the grey list if:
- They withdraw their paper within 7 days of acceptance notifications being sent out.
- They have had to withdraw for health reasons.
- They have had to withdraw for bereavement reasons.
- They provide another reason deemed appropriate by the conference organising committee.
Any queries about this policy can be directed to the current DiGRAA president.