Present

Call for Proposals

Sessions

Overview
Requirements and Best Practices
Next Steps

Overview

Session proposals are submitted for review and accepted and allocated formats by the Ocean Sciences Meeting Program Committee. The proposal guidelines are provided to help inform your submission.

The session proposal submission deadline was 11:59 p.m. ET on 24 May 2023.

Requirements and Best Practices
  • Title and Description: Session proposals must include an informative title (20-180 characters), accompanied by a concise definition of the scientific topic and a description of why the topic is relevant and timely (limit 200 words). Sessions should be designed to have a broad appeal and to engage multi-national participation. The program committee will not approve sessions that are too narrowly focused.
  • Chair Roles: Each proposal must identify a primary chair to serve as the point of contact, and at least one additional co-chair, with a limit of four session chairs total. Individuals may serve as primary chair on only one session proposal. In addition, primary chairs can only be listed as a co-chair on two additional session proposals.
    • All session chairs listed on session proposals must consent to being named as part of the proposal at the time of submission.
    • Session chairs should try to incorporate diverse voices among their cadre of co-chairs and session presenters. When we think about diversity, it includes not only race, geographic region, ethnicity, and gender but also opinion, age, and scientific discipline. Additionally, to foster and strengthen the next generation of marine scientists, we encourage session chairs to include early career scientists or students among their co-chairs and session moderators.
    • At least one of the session chairs must be available between 9-27 June 2023 for the session proposal evaluation period to approve merges and/or changes in content. In addition, one of the session chairs of accepted sessions will need to be available between 5-12 October 2023 to finalize scheduling of the abstracts within their sessions.
  • Topic Area: Session chairs will select a primary topic area as well as up to three other topic areas that are relevant to the submission. Topic areas are simply ways of organizing session proposal submissions for the program committee and help meeting attendees efficiently plan their time. There is no content to them other than the title. Session chairs will also be asked to select descriptive keywords from a pre-defined list of index terms that best describes the session. These keywords are used as a tool for authors to facilitate searches during abstract submission and in the final online program.
  • Session Formats: Session chairs should indicate their preference to be considered for any session format (oral, eLightning, and poster), to only be considered for a poster format, and to be considered for an online session in addition to an in-person session.
    • Because of the large number of abstract submissions expected, we are encouraging scientific content to be presented in poster form as much as possible. To that end, we strongly encourage nominations for poster-only sessions. Posters will be displayed for the entire week of the meeting to maximize viewing opportunities, and they will be scheduled for one two-hour session on one day of the meeting, during which one poster author needs to be available to present their work.
    • One block of the meeting program on Wednesday, 21 February from 8:30-10:00 AM CST will be dedicated to online content only. Session chairs who would like the program committee to consider their session for inclusion in this online programming block can indicate their interest on the session submission form. Sessions with an approved online component will be open for virtual presenters to submit to during the abstract submission period.
    • The program committee will have the final responsibility for the allocation of session types across the program.
    • Session chairs must not promise oral presentations to any potential authors. The number of oral versus poster presentation slots are allotted to each session by the program committee based on the total number of abstracts submitted to each session. Not all sessions will receive an oral session assignment. Once session format assignments are finalized by the program committee, session chairs will assign poster and (if any) oral and eLightning presentations.
    • View information on the session formats here.
  • Session Merging and Modifications: Session chairs should understand that the program committee will merge sessions if multiple sessions are submitted on similar topics. In addition, the program committee may request modification in the title or description of the session or move it to a more appropriate topic area than the one to which it was submitted. Session proposals will be available for public viewing throughout the proposal submission period, and potential chairs are asked to carefully examine the list of previously submitted session proposals to make sure their proposed session does not overlap significantly with other previously submitted sessions. The program committee will work with session chairs throughout the merging process after all session proposals have been submitted.
  • Restrictions: Session proposals must be based on scientific value and not have a focus other than scientific results and/or their applications; thus, sessions that are celebratory or in honor will not be considered. Sessions cannot be in tribute to a specific person or contain the name of a scientist in the session title or description. Session proposals that are deemed to be primarily advertisements of commercial products and services will also not be considered, nor will session proposals that contain the name of a specific experiment in the title or description. Town halls provide a suitable alternative venue for these sessions, if so desired.
  • Student Presentation Evaluation: Session chairs must agree to be responsible for coordinating the evaluation of all student presentations (oral, eLightning, and poster) in their session. One session co-chair must be identified during the scheduling process to serve as the point of contact and must coordinate the evaluation process. Additional information regarding this responsibility will be distributed as the meeting approaches.
Next steps

Submission Review Process
The program committee will review all session proposals in May-June 2023. The evaluation process will include decisions to merge proposals to avoid duplicate sessions on similar subjects within or across topic areas. The program committee will notify session chairs when sessions need to be merged and/or descriptions revised. Session chairs will receive an email regarding the final status of their proposal in early July 2023.

Abstract Submissions
During the abstract submission period of 12 July – 13 September 2023, session chairs should promote their session to potential authors and monitor the abstracts being submitted to their session using the online abstract viewer. OSM24 staff should be alerted by a session chair if there are abstracts in a session that are not topically relevant. After the scheduling phase in early October (see scheduling information below), abstracts will no longer be available for viewing until the program is finalized by the program committee in early November.

Scheduling Abstracts
In early October, session chairs will receive communications from the program committee regarding the format(s) assigned to their session: oral, poster, eLightning, or a combination (when sessions have sufficient submissions to span multiple time slots). Not all sessions will receive an oral session assignment and some sessions will only receive poster and/or eLightning assignments. Session chairs will have approximately one week from 5-12 October 2023 to review and schedule the abstracts within the session formats they have been allocated. Detailed scheduling instructions will be provided.