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Track Chairs
The Abstract Review site is OPEN to all Track Chairs to begin. The deadline for all accept/reject decisions is MARCH 27.
INSTRUCTIONS to ACCESS the abstract review site (PDF)
Commitments
and Responsibilities
Key Points to Remember
Timetable
Reminders
The Review
Deciding the Fate of the
Paper Abstract
Creating Sessions from
Accepted Abstracts
Naming and Confirming
Moderators and Discussants
Scheduling of Sessions
for the Conference
Commitments and Responsibilities
Thank you so much for agreeing to be a track chair; your efforts are critical to the success of another ACSP-AESOP Joint Congress. This information is intended to give you an overview of your responsibilities and a timetable for completing your work. You will receive additional information and instructions for your use of the COS web site for accessing abstracts. Your username and password for the COS site will be included in these instructions. Congress organizers are at your disposal for inquiry and assistance. Please do not hesitate to contact us:
- Congress Co-chairs: Curtis Winkle, University of Illinois at Chicago, cwinkle@uic.edu; Simin Davoudi, Newcastle University, simin.davoudi@newcastle.ac.uk
- Congress Director: Donna Dodd, ddodd@acsp.org
- Registration Manager: Kirsten Dazevedo, kdd@acsp.org Back to Top
You have four primary tasks:
- Review abstracts and make final decisions on whether the abstract is accepted or rejected for presentation at the Congress.
- Organize accepted abstracts into coherent sessions for the Congress.
- Recruit discussants and gain their commitment to participate.
- Reorganize your sessions as authors withdraw or other occurrences cause the schedule to bend and flex. The timetable below is intended to help you organize your efforts to achieve these objectives. Back to Top
Timetable Back to Top
- Reviewers have access to the abstract management system: February 25.
- Abstract review deadline: March 27
- Decisions delivered to authors: First week of April
- Submit sessions to the Congress office: First week of April
- Book of Accepted Abstracts posted to the web: Second week of April
- Begin schedule creation: Week of May 12th
- Email schedules to presenters: Week of May 26th
- Hotel registration deadline; Conference Early Registration deadline: June 2
- Presenters must be registered or they will be automatically withdrawn from the program: June 2
- Submit completed papers to discussant and to Congress office: June 2
- If you will be unavailable during the critical work time frame (March through June), and unable to follow through on your commitment, contact one of the Congress Committee co-chairs immediately to find your replacement.
- If an abstract is submitted directly to you, return it to the author immediately and explain they must use the proper submission procedures. Direct them to the Congress web site and to the link for submitting at the web site. Improper abstract submissions will inevitably cause headaches for you and Congress staff.
- If you are co-chairing a track, please make sure to communicate with your co-chair to discuss these instructions and how you will divide your efforts. Letting Congress Director Donna Dodd know your processes will help her with the administrative work that follows yours.
- Accepted abstracts will be posted as a PDF file to the web prior to the Congress and published for distribution at the Congress in the manner in which they were submitted! A good abstract may still embarrass an author with typos, bad grammar or lack of references so you might call this to the attention of authors in your comments within the COS system. It is not your job to perform the editing of these abstracts. Back to Top
- COS Instructions -- Step-by-step printable instructions for accessing the COS web site to perform your reviews will be emailed to you along with your username for the COS system before the access date arrives.
- Naming your review team – Some tracks are quite large and others may not be more than 15-20 papers. Decide if you need help or even wish to have help reviewing abstracts. If you do, recruit additional reviewers you know you can count on to help you make published deadlines. Each reviewer will be provided access to the COS web site to perform his/her own reviews and submit her/his own decisions. Including yourself and your co-chair, there should be no more than four (4) reviewers per track that have access to the COS system. Submit the name, institution affiliation and email address of your review team members to ddodd@acsp.org before the access date arrives. You may also work with additional reviewers by emailing them an abstract directly from the COS system. They can read it and provide input while only you have direct access and final decision to accept or reject. Reviewers are also expected to submit final accept/reject decisions by the Review Closed deadline. If there are only two of you reviewing abstracts, please make an attempt to double-check that your decisions don’t conflict in the COS system. If there are three of you, the fate of the abstract lies with the majority decision.
- Transferring abstracts to another track – If an abstract has inappropriately been placed by an author in your track (it happens all the time!), contact ddodd@acsp.org for assistance in transferring it to the proper track location. Conferring with the appropriate track chair prior to making the change is appreciated by both Congress staff and the receiving chair (it may be you next time!); and keep in mind that the reviewers in the receiving track need time to perform their review so please don’t request a track change the day before the review is closed.
- Posters - If you feel a paper would be better suited to a poster presentation, feel free to suggest this to the author prior to the review deadline. The author must agree. If they do, contact ddodd@acsp.org as soon as possible and the change can be made within the COS system. You may also work with the author (and Donna Dodd) to change the paper type from an individual paper to a poster if the only option is to reject the work otherwise. Back to Top
Deciding the Fate of the Paper Abstract
We encourage you and your reviewers to make definitive statements about the fate of the abstract, without a revision and resubmission request. The invitation for an author to revise and resubmit slows down the abstract review process and often leads to problems. On the other hand, the ethic of our organizations is to work with the authors of promising research to help them improve their submission. Therefore, we have established an abbreviated process for revision and resubmission (described below) for you to use, if you choose to do so. The key point is that you still need to make an “Accept” or “Reject” decision for each abstract submission by the review deadline.
- Accept - Not much needs to be said about good work. Enter “accept” into the web site. Even though the work is good, most authors will appreciate comments anyway.
- Reject – some work just won’t be ready for presentation. Enter “reject” into the web site. Fair, honest and constructive comments will be appreciated by authors along with encouragement to submit to the next conference of either organization.
- Revise and Resubmit - If an author’s abstract needs work, and you are prepared to accept it with revisions, you must contact the author on your own early in the review process. If you can’t see the author’s contact information in the COS site, let us know at ddodd@acsp.org as soon as possible. Email the author and suggest your point of view. Give him/her a deadline for submission of the revised abstract. In the case of a student abstract, early dialogue with the student’s advisor on the anticipated status of the work by presentation time would be helpful. Ask authors to send the revised version directly to you by email. This is critical, since the author no longer has access to the web site. If the revised abstract makes your deadline and is then acceptable to you, please enter your “accept” decision into the web site and forward the revised work to ddodd@acsp.org immediately. If the revised work doesn’t make your deadline or is not acceptable to you, feel free to enter a “reject” decision into the web site with final comments to the author.
- Other Reviewers and Conflicting Decisions: Reviewers are expected to submit final accept/reject decisions by the Review Closed deadline regardless of whether your invitation and deadline to revise the work was made. If there are only two of you reviewing abstracts, please make an attempt to double-check that your decisions don’t conflict in the system. If there are three of you, the fate of the abstract lies with the majority decision. Back to Top
Creating Sessions from Accepted Abstracts
- Submit completed sessions in a MS Word document. The Congress abstract manager will be working on the schedule in MS Word and it would help a great deal if all documents were the same file type.
- A complete session
includes:
- Title of the session – in most cases created by you
- Tracking ID and paper title of each accepted abstract
- Confirmed discussant and moderator along with their email addresses
- A roundtable is a session that stands on its own. The name of the roundtable is the name of the session.
- Posters will be on display, not presented in a session. Do not include posters in a paper session.
- A pre-organized session should include no less than 3 papers and no more than 5. The title of the session should be established already by the session organizer and is included as the abstract title, not the Group title. What is considered the “Introduction” or “Overview” abstract within the COS web site is there solely for the purpose of tying the presentation abstracts together in the database. This overview will contain general information for you so it is certainly worth reading; however, the overview abstract never becomes a final paper for presentation. If you accept the entire panel, the introduction/overview must also be accepted in the system. In many cases, the introduction/overview text will include the name of a suggested discussant – a really good reason to read the intro!
- Congress staff will keep you apprised of withdrawals of papers and discussants as they occur within your sessions. Changes to what you think are finished sessions are very likely!
- Consider the balance of a session – students and faculty. Back to Top
Naming and Confirming Moderators and Discussants
- Moderators – This individual may be named from participants/presenters in the session ensuring the likelihood that he/she will attend and perform the job. It is also perfectly acceptable and more often-than-not easier for the discussant to assume this role as well. As we near the conference, if a moderator withdraws from the Congress, the Congress staff will automatically replace the moderator for you as it would be too time consuming to have you reconfirm someone who is simply performing a timekeeper’s role.
- Discussants – This individual should not be presenting a paper in the session, but should be invited to participate with the session. The session topic and dates of the Congress should be confirmed as available with the discussant. Email addresses should be provided with the name confirmation. Direct the discussant to the Congress web site for the detailed role description of a discussant. It is helpful for Congress organizers to have confirmed discussants beforehand so the schedule can be prepared and conflicts for the discussant’s own paper presentations can be avoided. But you may also wait until the schedule is complete to invite your discussants. The trouble is, even when the schedule is set in May, we can’t promise by July it will stay be exactly the same!
- Individual Paper Sessions – require both a moderator and discussant. This can be two people or one and the same person.
- Pre-Organized Paper Sessions - require both a moderator and discussant. A discussant may be suggested by the session organizer, but you have the final say, and confirmation with the discussant is still required. Check the text block for the overview/introduction abstract at the web site.
- Roundtables - do not require a discussant but do require a moderator. The moderator is typically the person who submitted the abstract and the organizer of the session, but not necessarily so. Back to Top
Scheduling
of Sessions for the Conference
The schedule is set according to track chair suggestions ("prime time slot please"), availability
of meeting rooms, day, date and time availability of authors and discussants,
conflict avoidance with meetings and special sessions, conflict avoidance
with similar topics, and other very subjective but necessary decisions.
With that said…
- Feel free to suggest a session order, but we cannot guarantee it for the final program.
- Please understand when changes to your sessions occur due to any of the above-mentioned items or even discussant and author withdrawals.
- Please inform Congress staff immediately if an author contacts you with any changes of information such as paper title changes, email address changes, author additions, or withdrawal.
- As a reminder, your sessions may change dramatically after you submit them. We ask for your help when time allows, but please be advised, it will likely be the Congress co-chairs making last minute rearrangements to your sessions due to the timing of the program’s production schedule.
- Please confirm discussants as early as possible. They too require our attention as the schedule gets adjusted.
- Once we send the schedule information by e-mail to presenters, the document becomes a living, breathing ever-changing product until it finally goes to print. Even then, as you arrive at the registration desk, Congress staff will hand you an update to the schedule.
- Theme Sessions. Track chairs are encouraged create a session or two focused on the theme: “Building Bridges: Celebrating the City”. These sessions may be created from papers submitted for review, developed as a pre-organized paper session, or be organized as a round-table. We hope to do some special promotion of these sessions in the program. Indicate these as “theme sessions” when you submit your report of sessions.
- High Profile Sessions. Track chairs are encouraged to organize one or two sessions that are intended to be highlights of the track (focused on the theme or not). Indicate their importance when you submit your sessions.
- Prime Time Sessions. Track chairs will be invited to identify one or two sessions that they wish to appear in prime time. These prime-time sessions could be regular sessions or round-table sessions. Note that we will not schedule all the high-profile sessions at the same time. Back to Top
Again, if you have any questions, please feel free to contact either Donna ddodd@acsp.org or Curt Winkle cwinkle@uic.edu. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Frequently Asked Questions
Presenters
Poster Presenters
Moderators and Discussants
Track Chairs
Congress Definitions