97th ESA Annual Meeting
Portland, Oregon
August 5 - 10, 2012
Call Open: Late July - September 15, 2012
We invite proposals for organized poster sessions for the 97th ESA Annual Meeting. The meeting will be held August 5-10, 2012 in Portland, Oregon at the Portland Convention Center.
Organized poster sessions will consist of sets of posters, in multiples of 5 that are organized around a specific topic with all of the presenters invited by the organizer.
Organized poster sessions will be scheduled during one of the regular poster sessions at the annual meeting, from 4:30-6:30 PM, Monday-Thursday. All posters in each organized poster session will be placed as a group in the exhibit hall.
Proposals addressing the meeting theme, “Life on Earth: Preserving, Utilizing, and Sustaining our Ecosystems” are especially welcome, but any timely and coherent subject of broad interest will be considered. We also welcome proposals that explore interdisciplinary connections with areas of social and natural science outside of ecology or that relate to ecological education at any level.
Applications must be received on or before Thursday, September 15, 2011. You must use the online submission site at http://eco.confex.com/eco/2012/cfp.cgi that will be available from the ESA website (www.esa.org/portland) as of late July.
A. Evaluation Process and Criteria
B. Endorsements
C. Presentation Rules
D. If Your Proposal Is Accepted
E. Application Format
F. Cancellation Policy
G. Communication With Presenters
H. Summary of Deadlines
I. Begin Submission Process
A. Evaluation Process and Criteria
Organized poster session proposals will be assessed under the following criteria. Weighting of particular criteria may vary depending on the nature of proposals, but proposals should explicitly address these criteria, as appropriate.
Decisions will be made by December 15, 2011.
Scientific strength: Sessions may receive higher priority if they:
- feature significant contributions to or advances in ecological understanding
- present innovative and original work
- provide examples of how ecological research benefited from attention to public policy concerns, outreach or educational activities.
Structure and organization: Strong proposals will describe sessions where:
- individual posters clearly contribute to a coherent whole
- the collection of presenters offers a range of perspectives; organizers should carefully avoid the appearance of biases toward their own perspectives
Integration: Proposals may receive higher priority if they are clearly linked to the meeting's overall theme, or to other sessions proposed for this meeting or presented at recent ESA meetings.
Presenters:Invited presenters may be a mix of well-established scientists and newcomers, but each presenter should bring new contributions to the session, not simply reviews of previous work. Inclusion of experienced or particularly engaging presenters can strengthen a proposal, but new voices are also important. Proposals with a larger proportion of confirmed presenters will be favored.
All presenters will be required to submit an abstract by the February 23, 2012, abstract submission deadline. The Session Organizer is responsible for assuring that all abstracts are received by this date.
There are no official endorsements of organized poster sessions.
In the interest of broadening participation, an individual is allowed to be an organizer (either a principal organizer or a co-organizer) for only one organized session (symposium, organized oral, organized poster).
Persons agreeing to present posters in organized poster sessions also should be aware that the one paper rule will be enforced. That is, anyone who is presenter of a poster in an organized poster session cannot also be presenter for another paper whether for a symposium, organized oral session, contributed oral session, or poster session. Organizers should make certain that presenters they recruit understand this rule and make no conflicting commitments.
Exceptions to the one-paper rule may be made for participants in special sessions or workshops and for plenary speakers. Also, an author may submit an abstract for a second presentation ONLY if the second abstract is directly related to ecology education or scientific outreach.
D. If Your Proposal Is Accepted
After organized poster sessions are accepted and the scheduling for the meeting is underway, cancellations and schedule changes are very disruptive to meeting planning. Hence, organized poster session organizers should obtain firm commitments from as many of their invited presenters as possible before submitting their proposal.
If a proposal is accepted, the organizer(s) must submit a final summary description of the organized poster session to the Program Coordinator no later than January 16, 2012. This summary will appear on the meeting website, should have a description written so as to stimulate interest and promote attendance by a general audience, and thus is different in focus from the longer description in the original proposal. This final summary must include a complete and current listing of organizers' names and their affiliations, addresses, telephone and fax numbers, and email addresses; a 250 word description of the session; a single-sentence (up to 50 words) description of the session; and a final, confirmed presenter list.
Organizers will be informed of their session’s time and date by the end of February. Organized poster sessions may be scheduled any evening Monday through Thursday. The program committee will attempt to avoid any overt conflicts between sessions and will give organizers an opportunity to notify us of such conflicts; however, we are unable to honor special scheduling requests. Organizers should inform their invited speakers that scheduling on any day of the conference is possible when asking speakers to commit to the session. We cannot schedule or move a session to accommodate the availability of speakers.
It is the responsibility of the organized poster session organizers to see that each presenter submits an individual abstract of his/her presentation through the Abstract Submission site by the February 23, 2012, deadline.
ESA is not able to provide any financial assistance, stipends, free registration, travel assistance, or paid lodging to organized poster session organizers or to individual session participants. Organizers are responsible for making this clear to the participants.
All proposals MUST follow the format of the online submission form on the ESA meeting website. Incomplete and inaccurate information provided on these forms may result in the proposal not being accepted.
Note that the following information must be entered on the http://eco.confex.com/eco/2012/cfp.cgi. It is provided here to assist you in planning your submission. Also note that the web page format may differ slightly from the format listed here.
All proposals must include:
- Title of organized poster session
- Principal organizer (Name, institution or affiliation, email)
- Co-organizers (Names, institutions or affiliations, email).
- Presenters (Names, affiliations, and tentative titles or topics). Indicate which presenters are confirmed and which are tentative.
- Description (< 400 words) and justification (<250 words) of the session: Background information, goals, objectives, importance, and interest to the membership of ESA. The description should focus on the theme and structure of session (including anticipated sequence of posters and topics), while the justification should focus on how the review criteria are met by the proposal and should not simply repeat the description. Keep in mind the evaluation criteria in preparing your description and justification.
When you submit your proposal on the website submission form, you will be notified of receipt by email to the address that you provide. If you do not receive such notification within 2 days of submitting your proposal, please contact Program Coordinator Jennifer Riem at jennifer@esa.org. Organizers of accepted Organized Poster Sessions will be notified by the end of February regarding the date for their sessions at the Annual Meeting. Organizers are responsible for notifying all participants in their session concerning the date of the session.
For Session Organizers.
Once an organized oral session has been accepted and listed on the meeting website, cancellation causes serious disruption of meeting planning. Do not submit a proposal if you are uncertain that you will be able to fulfill your obligation to organize and conduct the session.
For Presenters.
Before submitting an abstract, authors should be confident that they will attend the meeting and make the presentation.
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 presenter does not necessarily need to be a coauthor. If you have arranged for a replacement presenter after May 15, you do not need to notify ESA and we cannot update the program. Please notify the session organizer.
If cancellation is unavoidable, the author should notify Jennifer Riem by email as soon as possible. Please let us know if you will not be able to present, even if you are cancelling on a date close to or during the Annual Meeting. 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.
The deadline for cancellation without risk of penalty is May 1, 2012. For more information on ESA’s cancellation policy, continue reading through the next section.
Penalties and Fees for Cancellations/No-Shows
Late cancellations and failures to give scheduled presentations (no shows) are disruptive and leave costly gaps in the program that are distracting to all attendees. Therefore, ESA has adopted the following cancellation policy and fee schedule (all values are in US dollars):
ESA’s late cancellation and no show policy:
- In all cases where cancellation is unavoidable, the author should notify Jennifer Riem by email as soon as possible.
- The deadline to cancel without penalty is May 1, 2012. After May 1, 2012 authors are charged a late cancellation fee.
- After May 15, 2012, authors are charged a late cancellation fee and banned from presenting at the 2013 conference.
- Presenting authors who do not notify ESA of cancellation and fail to present at the scheduled time (no shows) are at risk for the late cancellation fee and a 2 year presentation ban (2013-2014).
- The late cancellation fee is $60.00 US Dollars for oral presentations and $40.00 US Dollars for poster presentations.
Exceptions: Cancellation fees and penalties may be waived for extenuating circumstances. Consideration will be made on a case by case basis. Please include a brief reason for the cancellation if you would like us to consider waiving the applicable penalties.
Fees for cancellations will be processed within 4 weeks of notification. Fees for cancellations received after July 1 and all no shows will be processed after the Annual Meeting. Decisions regarding bans from future meetings will be made after the Annual Meeting.
G. Communication with Speakers
If a proposal is accepted as a session, it is very important that the organizer communicates with speakers between December and August about the acceptance status of the session, the confirmation status of speakers, session scheduling information, and expectations for participation in the conference.
Please note that ESA is not able to provide any financial assistance, stipends, free registration, travel assistance, or paid lodging to symposium organizers or to individual symposium participants. Organizers are responsible for making this clear to their speakers.
September 15, 2011: Deadline for proposal submission
December 15, 2011: Notification of acceptance sent out
January 16, 2012: Deadline to submit session revisions and confirmed speaker lists
February 16, 2012: Notification of date and time of symposia sent out
February 23, 2012: Deadline for speakers to submit abstracts for their talks (required)
I. SUBMIT PROPOSAL HERE (link to http://eco.confex.com/eco/2012/cfp.cgi)
Dr. Brian C. McCarthy
Department of Environmental & Plant Biology
Ohio University
Athens, OH 45701
Phone: 740-593-1615
Fax: 740-593-1130
Email: mccarthy@ohio.edu
Jennifer Riem
Program Coordinator
Ecological Society of America
1990 M Street, NW, Suite 700
Washington, DC 20036 USA
Phone: (202) 833-8773 x 218
Fax: (202) 833-8775
Email: jennifer@esa.org
phone 202-833-8773