The ability to combine papers provides authors from large research teams with the opportunity to build a more detailed and comprehensive story than might be possible in a shorter manuscript. Also, authors from institutions where results are shared across several manuscripts can avoid re-use of content, and possible rejection of their papers, by combining them into one original work. Combined papers should obey the following policy: Intention to combine papers must be requested by the conference submission deadline. The request should be made to the editor in chief of the special issue. The request shall state: a. which manuscript ID numbers are being combined; b. which ID number will be the one that the combined manuscript will be submitted under (default will be the earliest in the program sequence); c. which author will be the corresponding author (default will be the corresponding author of the ID number in item (b) above). Authors shall be granted a page limit that scales with the number of papers being combined, including optional pages for references. That is, two papers with a 4-page limit may be combined into a single 8‐page paper with optional additional pages for references. Extra page fees will apply beyond the page limit. The combined paper shall require one valid conference registration code (if applicable) for each paper being combined, i.e. 3 paid registrations for (12+3). These codes shall be communicated to the editorial staff at the time of manuscript submission. Paper upload into ScholarOne will use the ID number and corresponding author account identified in item (2), and one of the registration codes in item (4). The upload process should be no different than that for a regular manuscript. All presentations represented by the program ID numbers being combined must be given at the conference. The EiC reserves the right to invalidate any combined manuscript for which presentations were not given. Other editorial policies will apply to the combined manuscript in the same way as regular manuscripts.
