Contribution domain

The IPIC conference series is an open forum for worldwide researchers, innovators, practitioners, legislators, leaders, and citizens who care about and are engaged in:

• Enhancing the societal, economic, and environmental efficiency, resilience, and sustainability of fulfilling humanity’s needs for physical objects and the service they provide, and more specifically of the way we move, deploy, realize, supply, design, and use physical objects;
• Investigating, shaping, enhancing, and enabling the further emergence and large-scale implementation and adoption of the Physical Internet across industries and territories, at all scales from within facilities, to urban and rural areas, regions, countries, continents, spanning the whole planet and beyond through space;
• Imagining, shaping, and engineering the forthcoming generations of hyperconnected supply chain, logistics, fulfilment, production, transportation, and retailing capabilities, facilities, networks, systems, ecosystems, and infrastructures, built with physical, digital, operational, transactional, legal, and inter-personal interconnectivity at their core;
• Imagining, designing, launching, and scaling innovative business models, operating models, and innovation models, notably including the open, omnichannel, multimodal / synchromodal, and multi-party cooperation and consolidation protocols, interfaces, models, platforms, and marketplaces enabling and leveraging the Physical Internet;
• Enabling and leveraging Sharing Economy, Circular Economy and Reverse Logistics, Inclusiveness, and Fairness concepts, principles, and practices;
• Assessing, leveraging, and guiding the scientific and technological advances in Physical Internet enabling domains such as Artificial Intelligence and Optimization; Augmented and Virtual Reality; Autonomous and Sentient Systems and Vehicles; Additive Manufacturing; Big Data, Cloud and Edge Computing; Blockchain and Smart Contracts; Clean Energy; Collaborative and Mobile Robotics; Digital Twins; Internet-of-Things, Industry X.0; and Active Ecofriendly Modular Packaging, Handling, and Transport Containerization.
• Assessing, leveraging, and guiding the legislative, standards, and governance advances in Physical Internet enabling domains such as recent regulations on Clean Energy; Reusable Packaging; Supply Chain Resilience, Security, and Visibility; and Strategic Physical Internet roadmaps in Europe and Japan.

This paradigm breaking scope broadly defines the domain of contributions we are welcoming at IPIC 2026!

Contribution types

• Research contribution

  • Open to diverse types of original research, notably conceptual and vision framework and theory building; feasibility, capability, and sustainability assessment; scientific case study, action research, and living lab; modelling and methodology; technology; validation; state-of-the-art research review; and roadmapping.
  • Interdisciplinary research contributions are welcome, including joint authors from academia, industry, and public organizations.
  • Scientific review process
    • All submitted research contributions will be evaluated with regards to their suitability for the conference, scientific originality, and technical soundness
    • See below for template for research contributions
  • Research paper
    • Up to 10 pages.
    • Online publication in the IPIC 2026 Proceedings and website
    • DOI indexing (default, may be refused by author-s)
    • In-person presentation at an IPIC 2026 thematic session by at least one of the authors of the paper
  • Research poster
    • Accepted Posters will all be exposed in Poster Hall of IPIC 2026, with attended presentation by one of the authors
    • Accepted Posters will be posted online the conference website

• Innovation contribution

  • Innovation contributions may be authored by anyone, from whatever combination of disciplines and type of organization
  • These contributions may be of various types, including:
    • White paper offering thought leadership on novel ideas, applications, technologies, issues, and challenges
    • Progress report on a major initiative, program or project
    • Case study report describing an application in practice
    • Demonstration of technological innovations
    • Best practice review
    • Education and learning innovations (e.g. gaming, immersive platforms)
  • These may come in combinations of one to three forms:
    • Paper of up to 10 pages
    • Prerecorded flash 7-minute video that will be posted on www.pi.events with capability for attendees and presenters to interact around questions and/or comments
    • Author-s may be invited for oral in-person presentation at an IPIC 2026 thematic session, based on excellence of contributions above
  • Editorial review process
    • All submitted innovation contributions will be evaluated with regards to their suitability for the conference, originality, and soundness

• Special session or panel contribution

  • We welcome proposals for special sessions and panels, whether they are research and/or innovation oriented, related to a major thread, challenge, project, initiative, etc., in line with the theme of IPIC 2026
  • If interested in proposing and leading an invited session or panel, please use our contact form
  • Convince us this session is worth being on the IPIC 2026 program
  • Specific research or innovation contributions targeted to be part of a session must be individually accepted through the review process
  • Target size: three to five contributions or panelists

Important: Contribution presentation and publication in IPIC 2026 requires conference registration of at least one of the coauthors.

Submission Guidelines

• Research and Innovation contributions should be submitted by February 15, 2026 for abstracts and by April 1, 2026 for full papers via EasyChair (link to EasyChair to be provided later)

  • Please note that you must first register for an EasyChair account to be able to access the submission link. First-time users, please visit EasyChair's "How to make a new submission" for an overview of the submission system.
     
• Special session and panel contributions must be submitted by February 15, 2026 via email at ipic2026.contact@kedgebs.com

Templates (for paper & poster contributions)

IPIC 2026 Research Contribution Abstract Template

IPIC 2026 Innovation Contribution Abstract Template

IPIC 2026 Research Contribution Full Paper Template

IPIC 2026 Innovation Contribution Full Paper Template

IPIC 2026 Poster Template

Timetable and Deadlines

Research and Innovation contributions

If you are submitting an in-person or innovation contribution, we will accept your proposal up to April 1, 2026. The target review response time between abstract submission and acceptance for these submission is 15 days.

Special Session and Panel contributions

Outreach

• Conference proceedings will be produced with the accepted full papers and poster abstracts contributions.
• The Proceedings papers are to be made available in the below locations (except if requested otherwise by the authors).
  1. Posting within the IPIC conference website: www.pi.events
  2. Archived within the ALICE Knowledge Platform
  3. Archived within the Georgia Tech SMARTech repository which is indexed by Google Scholar. The Georgia Tech Library will provide DOIs for publication by registering each item with DataCite. Please note that DOIs will not be processed until AFTER the conference and when the Conference Proceedings are finalized.

Review Process

All submitted papers will be evaluated with regards to their suitability for the conference, originality and technical soundness.

• Research and Innovation contribution abstract submissions will be respectively reviewed by the Scientific Committee (peer-reviewed) and the Program Committee.
• Research papers will be peer-reviewed by the Scientific Committee.
• Authors of accepted abstracts of papers, posters and presentations will be invited to present them in related conference sessions, in-person during the Conference or in online video format.

For more information, please contact us via ipic2026.contact@kedgebs.com