About EuSpRIG

Who Are We?

The European Spreadsheet Risks Interest Group – EuSpRIG – (“yewsprig”) for short. To contact us, click here

Why Are We Here?

Directors of companies, charities, departments of government and other organisations have numerous statutory, fiduciary, reporting and compliance obligations. Penalties for failing to meet them include fines, jail sentences, undesired share price movements and unplanned career changes. The ability to meet these obligations is undermined if the information upon which decisions are based turns out to be flawed. In most businesses, a majority of that information is derived from spreadsheet models.

Research has repeatedly shown that an alarming proportion of corporate spreadsheet models are not tested or controlled to the extent necessary to meet these obligations. Uncontrolled and untested spreadsheet models pose significant business risks, including:

  • Lost Revenue, Profits, Cash, Assets & Tax
  • Mispricing and poor decision making due to prevalent but undetected errors
  • Fraud due to malicious tampering
  • Systemic financial failure, due to overdependence

Furthermore, an inability to show that spreadsheet-based business information has been subject to procedures designed to ensure it is reliable, is in itself a failure of fiduciary and regulatory compliance.

What Do We Do?

EuSpRIG offers Directors, Managers and Professionals in all disciplines, the world’s only independent, authoritative & comprehensive web based information describing the current state of the art in Spreadsheet Risk Management. EuSpRIG is the largest source of information on real-world, implementable methods for introducing into organisations processes and methods to inventory (keep records of), test, fix, document, backup, archive, compare and control the legions of spreadsheets that support critical corporate infrastructure.

How Do We Do It?

We run a well-established annual conference which provides a forum for researchers, practitioners, trainers, vendors, consultants, regulators and auditors. The conference provides attendees with an opportunity to network and share experiences with international leaders in the field of spreadsheet risks research. We provide speakers and content for professional societies, associations, conferences and journals.

We publish the conference proceedings free of charge on the Cornell University Moderated Scientific Repository www.arxiv.org (search for “spreadsheet”) or view the indexes and abstracts here.

We run a moderated discussion forum where over 750 interested parties share information, resources and ideas.

EuSpRIG publishing ethics statement

Publish Original Research

When submitting your paper for publication, it should:

  • Contain original research that has not been published before.
  • Not be submitted to any other publication while you await a peer review decision.

Definition of Authorship

EuSpRIG considers individuals who meet all of the following criteria to be authors:

  • Made a significant intellectual contribution to the theoretical development, system or experimental design, prototype development, and/or the analysis and interpretation of data associated with the work contained in the paper.
  • Contributed to drafting the paper or reviewing and/or revising it for intellectual content.
  • Approved the final version of the paper as accepted for publication, including references.

Proper Citation Practices

You can improve research reproducibility with proper citation practices. Always cite your sources. Citation is required in several instances. Follow these guidelines:

  • Direct quotation: Place verbatim text from another source in quotation marks. Indent text for longer quotes. Include a citation to the original source.
  • Paraphrase or summary: Include a citation when restating or summarizing information from another source, including ideas, processes, arguments, or conclusions.
  • Data, research results, information, graphics, or tables: Cite the original source when referring to, adapting, or reusing any information from another source.

Note that the same rules apply to your own previously published work. When in doubt, include a citation.

Inappropriate use of citations

Citing an irrelevant source for the purpose of artificially inflating citation metrics is considered a breach of ethics. Only cite relevant sources that legitimately contribute to your paper according to the criteria outlined above.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism in any form is unacceptable and is considered a serious breach of professional conduct, all submissions are screened for plagiarism.

Data Falsification and Fabrication

It is important to be truthful when communicating research, avoiding fabrication and falsification, when you are writing or revising your paper.

  • Fabrication: Inventing data or results.
  • Falsification: Manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes, or changing or omitting data or results

EuSpRIG’s ethics requirements are adapted from the IEEE: Ethical Requirements – IEEE Author Center Conferences

Peer review process

Any submissions to EuSpRIG are first examined by the editor to determine if the paper meets the basic requirements of EuSpRIG and that it fits into either the general scope or specific scope of the relevant call for papers

  • Assuming the paper passes the initial consideration, the paper will be double blind reviewed by at least two domain experts. The identity of authors and reviewers is kept secret from both parties. All communication will be brokered through the editor who also has the final say on requirements around revisions.
  • The usual timeline is dictated by the call for papers which is generally released by October, with deadline submissions in March and notifications in April. Final camera-ready papers are required by early May.
  • Reviewers are domain experts from academia and industry, they represent a truly global panel with reviews conducted by academics and industry experts from all over the world: US, Canada, Ireland, UK, France, Germany, Austria and Australia.

Citation statistics

Based on 193 papers published between 2000 and 2019, the total number of citations to this work is just over 2000. The average number of citations per paper is in excess of 10. The top 20 EuSpRIG papers have been cited 1100 times with an average of 55 citations each. Papers that have been around longer are cited more. The number of citations per paper per year shows that our citation performance has remained broadly similar over the two decades, including recently. However, the number of papers submitted has almost halved (70/123 = 56%) in the second of our two decades of operation. The number of papers in the last 5 years is half the number of papers in the first 5 years. Papers that cite EuSpRIG papers are themselves highly cited. The top 20 EuSpRIG papers have been cited by 1100 papers that have themselves been cited over 20,000 times. Net of duplication, we have still been cited directly and indirectly by very many thousands of differing publications.

Costs to publish

All published work is open access, meaning that there is no paywall for accessing the articles published by EuSpRIG. All abstracts and published work can be accessed here There are no costs to the authors of papers, if a paper is accepted, then fees associated with registration, attendance at the conference and publication are waived by EuSpRIG.

Editor and Editorial Board:

Editor and Programme Chair: Dr Simon Thorne

Dr Simon Thorne is a Senior Lecturer in Computer Science at Cardiff Metropolitan University. Simon teaches and researches in the fields of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Neural Networks, End User Computing, Spreadsheet Error and Human Factors. As editor of EuSpRIG, he has overseen the publication of over 100 peer reviewed manuscripts in 13 published proceedings. Simon has personally published 30 peer reviewed manuscripts in journals and conferences and has published 19 manuscripts on spreadsheet risk and software quality. He has led £600K in EU and UK research funding and is a subject specialist for AI, machine learning and software quality for the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).