\documentclass[12pt]{book}
\usepackage[a4paper,margin=3cm,innermargin=3cm]{geometry}
\usepackage{needspace}
\usepackage{marginnote}
\renewcommand*{\marginfont}{\sffamily\footnotesize}
\usepackage{imakeidx}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\makeindex[intoc]
\newenvironment{conf-abstract}[4][]{
\needspace{10\baselineskip}
\begin{center}
{ \renewcommand\textsuperscript[1]{}
\phantomsection\addcontentsline{toc}{section}
{\texorpdfstring{#2 (\emph{#3})}{#2 (#3)}}
}
{{\large\bfseries #2}\marginnote{#1}\par}
\medskip
{#3\par}
\smallskip
{\small #4\par}
\end{center}
}{%
\bigskip
\hrule
\bigskip
}
\usepackage{etoolbox}
\newcommand{\indexauthors}[1]{%
\forcsvlist{\index}{#1}
}
\setcounter{tocdepth}{3}
\setcounter{secnumdepth}{-1}
\pagestyle{plain}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\title{2016 Conference of Wonderful Research}
\author{Association of Amiable Scientists}
\begin{document}
\frontmatter
\maketitle
\chapter{Welcome Address}
Yo, welcome! Have a good time you guys!
\tableofcontents
\mainmatter
\chapter{Here be the Abstracts}
% Specify conf-abstract like this:
% \begin{conf-abstract}[optional text going into the margin note]
% {Title of Paper}
% {Authors (use \textsuperscript as institution markers)}
% {Institutions (use \textsuperscript as institution markers)}
% \indexauthors{Lastname1!Firstname 1, Lastname2!Firstname2}
% Abstract text
% \end{conf-abstract}
%
% It's probably best to generate the abstracts from a
% database or something via a script. Don't forget to
% check through for any special characters that need to
% be escaped.
\input{abstracts/paper1}
\input{abstracts/paper2}
\input{abstracts/paper3}
\backmatter
\renewcommand{\indexname}{Author Index}
\printindex
\end{document}
