How to Cancel a Presentation
To cancel, presenters should reply to any of the recent notification emails received about their abstract.
This is the clearest way to communicate your cancellation since the abstract ID number is included in the email. Messages and notes passed in person on the meeting site are highly unreliable!
Email is by far the best method for letting us know what has happened. We may not be able to respond during the conference but we will save all such messages for processing after the conference. If you are cancelling after May 1 and would like us to consider waiving the applicable penalties, please include a brief reason for the cancellation when you contact us. If you cannot find a notification email, please send the title of your presentation to Jennifer Riem (jennifer@esa.org).
Consequences of Cancelling A Presentation
Before submitting an abstract, presenters should be reasonably confident that they will attend the meeting and make the presentation as scheduled. Presenters in uncertain funding situations should cancel by May 1 or be prepared to pay the late cancellation fee. Late cancellations due to a presenter’s inability to secure funding to attend, starting a new job, or other scheduling conflicts are considered avoidable. Presenters should not submit “just in case.”
If you are employed by a federal agency and are facing a challenging process to acquire travel approval, rest assured that ESA will be lenient regarding penalties in such cases. In return we ask that you help us adapt by keeping us informed. The sooner we know of each cancellation, the less disruptive it will be. If by mid-April when acceptance notices are sent you are still unsure about whether your travel will be approved, please let us know.
Late cancellations and failures to give scheduled presentations without any notice are disruptive and leave gaps in the program that are a source of frustration for attendees. Therefore, ESA enforces the following penalties for avoidable situations which result in gaps in the meeting program.
Late Cancellations
The deadline for cancellation without penalty is May 1. Cancellations received after this date are considered late and a $50 USD fee will apply. The fee applies for all presentation types (invited and contributed, posters and talks). It applies only to the presenting author, not to any coauthors.
No Shows
Failure to give a scheduled presentation without any notice is especially disruptive to the meeting.
The no show penalty is a one year presentation ban for all presentation types (invited and contributed, posters and talks). Any abstract with the penalized author listed as the presenting author will not be accepted for the following year’s conference. This penalty applies only to the presenting author, not to any coauthors. The ban is for presenting a formal talk or poster only. The presenting author can still organize a session, be listed as a coauthor, and attend the conference.
Extenuating circumstances
We realize that sometimes unforeseen events outside of a presenter’s control prevent them from presenting as scheduled. For example, a flight cancellation, medical condition, or family emergency may suddenly disrupt a presenter’s plans. The late cancellation and no show penalties will not be applied to presenters with sudden and unavoidable reasons for not attending the conference (medical issues, family emergencies, unforeseen travel problems, difficulty acquiring a visa for travel to the US, and similar situations outside of a presenter’s control).
We realize that in the cases of no shows, sometimes a presenter’s immediate problems cannot be communicated to ESA staff until after the scheduled presentation time has passed. We will be lenient for such situations if we receive some sort of explanation from the presenter, even if the message is sent after the presentation would have occurred. For other cases, where there is not a compelling reason and no notice was received, the no show penalty will be enforced.
Replacement speakers
A replacement speaker is allowed (and encouraged) if your plans change close to the conference dates. If circumstances prevent attendance for a scheduled presentation, the presenting author should attempt to find another person to make the presentation on their behalf. A coauthor is ideal, but the substitute speaker does not necessarily need to be a coauthor. If you have arranged for a replacement speaker after May 15, you do not need to notify ESA because we cannot update the program. However, please notify the session organizer if applicable.
