Academic Conference CFP & Registration Monitor

Monitor academic conference deadlines, registration pages, event dates, venue details, attendance format, and public fee signals from maintained public conference sources and official event pages.

This actor is designed for recurring monitoring, not one-off scraping. It discovers conferences automatically, follows official event pages when useful, and returns normalized rows that are easier to diff over time.

---

Why use this actor?

• Track upcoming CFP and registration activity without checking conference directories manually.
• Discover conferences automatically instead of asking you to supply conference links.
• Enrich track pages with parent-event context while clearly labeling shared registration or fee data.
• Keep production datasets clean by storing operational errors in the run report and logs by default.
• Feed normalized conference rows into alerts, dashboards, internal tools, or downstream actors.

---

What data does it extract?

Field	Description
conferenceName, series	Event name and detected acronym or series
entityType, trackName	Whether the row is a conference or a track such as Workshops or Industry Showcase
parentConferenceName, parentConferenceUrl	Parent event identity for track rows
country, city, venue	Extracted location details
conferenceStartDate, conferenceEndDate	Event date range when detected
abstractDeadline, submissionDeadline, notificationDate, cameraReadyDate	Primary normalized conference deadlines
deadlineRounds	All detected labeled deadline rounds when the page exposes multiple dates
registrationPageAvailable	Whether a registration page or registration endpoint was found
registrationOpen	Explicit open or closed registration signal only
earlyBirdDeadline, registrationDeadline	Registration date signals
earlyBirdFee, regularFee, lateFee, studentFee, virtualFee, currency	Public fee signals normalized from registration pages or tables
attendanceMode, soldOut, waitlist	Public attendance and pressure signals
registrationScope, feeScope, inheritedFromUrl	Whether registration or fee fields are direct or inherited from shared event context
cfpUrl, registrationUrl, officialUrl	Key conference links
sourceConfidence, validationWarnings	Confidence and warning fields for auditability

---

Product semantics that matter

• registrationPageAvailable is not the same as registrationOpen.
• registrationOpen is only set when the page explicitly says registration is open or closed.
• Track rows can inherit registration or fee information from shared event pages. When that happens, the actor labels it with registrationScope, feeScope, and inheritedFromUrl.
• deadlineRounds helps preserve early, late, first-round, and second-round signals instead of pretending every event has only one submission date.

---

How it works

1. Start from the actor’s maintained public conference discovery sources.
2. Detect whether each page is a listing page or a conference detail page.
3. Extract normalized conference fields from the page itself.
4. Follow related home, venue, or registration pages on the same event site when that improves coverage.
5. Normalize the result, add warnings when semantics are ambiguous, and write one row per conference or track.
6. Store operational failures in the run report and logs by default instead of polluting the public dataset.

---

Input

Input	Type	Default	Description
keywords	array	empty	Keep only conferences matching these terms
countries	array	empty	Keep only conferences matching these country or region terms
dateFrom	string	empty	Keep conferences with at least one relevant date on or after this YYYY-MM-DD value
dateTo	string	empty	Keep conferences with at least one relevant date on or before this YYYY-MM-DD value
datasetId	string	empty	Optional dataset to append to
runId	string	empty	Optional pipeline run ID

{
  "keywords": ["software engineering", "systems"],
  "countries": ["Germany", "Belgium"],
  "dateFrom": "2026-04-01",
  "dateTo": "2026-12-31"
}

---

Output

The dataset contains normalized conference or track rows only. Operational errors stay in the run report by default.

{
  "entityType": "track",
  "conferenceName": "ECOOP 2026",
  "trackName": "Student Research Competition",
  "parentConferenceName": "ECOOP 2026",
  "country": "Belgium",
  "city": "Brussels",
  "venue": "Vrije Universiteit Brussel",
  "notificationDate": "2026-04-24",
  "deadlineRounds": [
    {
      "type": "submission",
      "label": "Early Submission Deadline",
      "date": "2026-04-21",
      "source": "detail"
    },
    {
      "type": "submission",
      "label": "Late Submission Deadline",
      "date": "2026-06-15",
      "source": "detail"
    }
  ],
  "registrationPageAvailable": true,
  "registrationOpen": null,
  "earlyBirdDeadline": "2026-07-03",
  "regularFee": 160,
  "currency": "EUR",
  "attendanceMode": "in-person",
  "registrationScope": "shared-event",
  "feeScope": "shared-event",
  "inheritedFromUrl": "https://2026.ecoop.org/attending/registration",
  "registrationUrl": "https://2026.ecoop.org/attending/registration",
  "officialUrl": "https://2026.ecoop.org/",
  "sourceConfidence": "medium",
  "validationWarnings": [
    "registration_inherited_from_shared_event_context",
    "fees_inherited_from_shared_event_context"
  ],
  "error": false
}

The run report is stored at the default key-value store record OUTPUT. When operational failures happen, the actor also writes a separate ERRORS record with structured failure details.

---

API

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/trovevault~academic-conference-cfp-monitor/runs" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "keywords": ["formal methods"],
    "countries": ["Portugal"],
    "dateFrom": "2026-05-01",
    "dateTo": "2026-12-31"
  }'

---

Limitations

• Academic conference sites are inconsistent and often incomplete.
• Pricing and registration data are best treated as public signals, not guaranteed commercial truth.
• Some conference series publish multiple rounds or updated deadlines; use deadlineRounds and validationWarnings when precise deadline semantics matter.
• Shared event registration pages can apply to multiple tracks. Review registrationScope, feeScope, and inheritedFromUrl before treating fees as track-specific.

---

FAQ

Can I run it without supplying links?
Yes. That is the intended default.

Why do some rows have a registration page but no registrationOpen value?
Because a visible registration page does not prove that registration is open. The actor only sets registrationOpen when the page says so explicitly.

Why are some fees marked as shared event context?
Because some workshops and sub-tracks reuse parent conference registration pages. The actor labels that inheritance instead of pretending the fee is track-specific.

Where do errors go?
By default, into logs plus the run report records OUTPUT and ERRORS.

Does it work best as a monitor or as a one-time scraper?
As a monitor. It is designed for recurring runs and dataset diffs.

---

Changelog

v0.1

• Initial release with built-in conference-source bundles, Researchr, OpenResearch, WikiCFP, official-page enrichment, shared-event inheritance labeling, structured deadline rounds, and cleaner default output semantics.