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Submit an Abstract
The abstract submission site is closed. The submission deadline was February 8.
General Submission Requirements
Track Descriptions
Review
The Fate of Your Abstract Submission
Multiple Program Placements
Posters
Discussants
Doctoral Students
Submission and Fees
Having
Trouble? Questions?
Mail in Abstract
Pre-Organized Sessions
Notes for All
The official language of the Congress is English. Abstract submissions in other languages will not be reviewed but returned for translation prior to review. Return to Top.
General Submission Requirements
Abstracts must be submitted to one and only one track. If you are not sure which track is most appropriate, we encourage you to seek the advice of track chairs. If you think that any of the following requirements are inappropriate for your work, please provide other relevant information. Do not include full bibliographies. Your abstract should be suitable for publication without any further editing and contain the following information in 200 - 400 words:
- Central theme or hypothesis: what question are you trying to address?
- Approach and methodology: how will you address that question?
- Relevance of your work to planning education, practice, or scholarship
- Key data sources
- 3-5 major references to allow the track chair to place your work in its field. Return to Top.
Abstracts will be reviewed by track chairs and anonymous readers. Proposals will either be rejected or accepted, however, there may be a short period of time during which some authors may be invited by the track chair to revise and resubmit their work for reconsideration, with acceptance based on meeting published deadlines and a second review of the proposal. This decision is left to the individual track chair. Track chairs are particularly interested in both formal paper sessions and informal roundtables that assess and synthesize the state of knowledge, revisit classic works, and review major new studies. If you expect to propose such a session, please discuss your scheme with the appropriate track chairs. Return to Top.
The Fate of Your Abstract Submission
Whether accepted or rejected, you should expect to receive constructive comments by the review committee. Disagreements with these comments should be addressed to the appropriate track chair for discussion. Many excellent proposals are rejected due to lack of time and space on the final conference agenda for sessions. Return to Top.
Participants on the final program will be limited to: one presentation of an individual paper whether in a formal paper session or involved in a pre-organized formal paper session; one placement on a roundtable panel; one placement as a discussant of a formal paper session. These roles are not interchangeable. If you have more than one submitted paper abstract accepted and are invited to participate on more than one accepted roundtable, in fairness to everyone, we will ask you to limit your participation. Return to Top.
Poster
sessions economize on space and are a particularly effective way of presenting
ideas that call for review of graphic materials, a brief but dense text,
or a sequence of equations. Posters will be easily accessible throughout
the conference and time will be allotted for authors to be present to
answer questions and receive comments. Return
to Top.
Discussants
Track Chairs may invite discussants for all sessions. We do, however, welcome suggestions for discussants proffered by authors and session organizers. If you are willing to act as discussant, please contact the appropriate track chair. Return to Top.
If you are a doctoral student, please indicate the relation between your proposal and your doctoral dissertation completed or in the works (e.g. no connection, drawn from an almost completed dissertation, drawn from an approved dissertation proposal). Include the name and e-mail address of your advisor or dissertation supervisor with your abstract. Guidelines for what is acceptable as a final paper presentation will be posted soon. Return to Top.
All abstracts are to be submitted using the online abstract management system available through the link at the top of this page. The required fee is $30 per abstract. The Congress accepts personal or institution/company checks made payable to the ACSP, Inc.; purchase orders from your institution; or MasterCard or Visa. When using the abstract submission system, you will be required to indicate a method of payment prior to completion of your submission. If payment for your abstract is not collected by the time the review process begins, your abstract will not be reviewed. Return to Top.
If you have any trouble using the system, or are unable to access the on-line submission system and thus unable to submit an abstract, please contact us as soon as possible. We will offer quick and friendly advice to guide you to a successful submission. All submission procedure questions should be addressed to Donna Dodd, Congress Director: ddodd@acsp.org. Return to Top.
If submitting your abstract on-line is a complete impossibility, contact us immediatley and we will provide instructions to you that will enable the Congress staff to submit the abstract on your behalf. The abstract submission fee for this service is $50. Return to Top.
The conference committee characteristically respects the grouping of papers in pre-organized sessions but reserves the right to realign papers when it has all the proposals before it. Please read the instructions below before attempting to work within the abstract management system. The conference management office extends its assistance to submitting the session successfully into the web-based abstract management system.
Here in the administrative office for the Congress, we regret to admit this is a troublesome process. We hope these instructions are simple and helpful, and we will gladly walk you through the abstract submission process step-by-step if ecessary! Please don't hesitate to contact us as you work through the organization of your session. ~ Donna Dodd, Congress Director, ddodd@acsp.org.
Prior to the Submission Process
- Propose the theme of your session and invite and confirm participating authors. There must be a minimum of three paper presentations and not more than a maximum of five paper presentations.
- Each group of authors should designate one person as the session organizer. Congress staff and track chairs will come to rely on this person when finalizing the details of the program. The session Organizer must submit an Overview abstract prior to any other authors submitting their abstracts. Congress staff will work with the Organizer when something goes awry with any abstract submissions for the session.
- Prior to submitting the Overview abstract, the session Organizer should reconfirm all participating authors that they will indeed be prepared to submit their own abstract before the abstract submission deadline. It is unfortunate, ut it happens often enough that authors fail to make their submission and there is potential for the entire session to collapse.
- Participating authors should be aware that presenting in a pre-organized session is the ONE paper presentation allowed by conference policy. Authors should not expect to be able to present an individual paper in another session.
- The Overview abstract will not be presented at the conference as a paper. It will not be formally reviewed except to give the reviewer an introduction to the title, purpose and participants of the entire session. Your text might also include suggested moderator and discussant for the session. There is no abstract submission fee required for this submission. Once you indicate in the abstract submission system that this is the overview abstract, the system will allow you to bypass the payment step of your submission.
- At the submission site, when prompted, select "Pre-Organized Paper Session" as your abstract type.
- At the step called, "Session Organizers and Presenters" you must select the button that says you intend to submit An Introduction.
- Create a session title this title should be different from any individual paper title in the session. The title of the Overview abstract will be the title of the session in the final program, but again, the Overview will not appear listed as a paper presentation in the final program. Also create a group password. Try to keep both session title and password short and memorable.
- At the step called "Text and Title." Have the current email addresses for all authors who are participating with the session and include this information in the abstract text block. This will help administrative staff double-check to make sure all authors have indeed submitted their papers correctly to your session.
- Also at "Text and Title" - Suggested discussants are likely to become the confirmed discussants. Make this information clear in your abstract at the very bottom of the text box or inside the references box.
- Do not include every participating author in the "Author Information Step". Only your name as the organizer is required for the Overview abstract submission.
- Once you have successfully submitted the Overview abstract, send the session title and group password to all the participating authors in your session. They must have this information before they can successfully make their own abstract submissions.
- Remind all participating authors (this is important) that they too must select "Pre-Organized Paper Session" as their abstract type. If they select "Individual Paper" as their abstract type, their abstract will not be linked to your session.
- Copy Donna Dodd, or send a separate brief email to her including the title and participating authors/papers intended for your session and the name of your suggested discussant if you have one. She will help keep you posted if the session is completed or still considered "pending" by the web site. You can also check back to the web site to find the status of the session.
- We can't stress this enough, please follow up with the other participating authors before the deadline to make sure they submitted their paper. It is isappointing when a session collapses because someone failed to make the submission deadline.
- At the submission site, when prompted, select "Pre-Organized Paper Session" as your abstract type. Do not select “Individual Paper” or your abstract will not be tied into the session.
- At the step called, "Session Organizers and Presenters" you must select the button that indicates you are submitting "A Presentation".
- Use the group title and password provided by the session Organizer to complete this step of the submission process.
- Abstract submissions for authored papers to be included in the session eachrequire the $30 submission fee. Each will be individually reviewed, accepted or rejected. Return to Top.
- If a pre-organized session has individual papers that are rejected leaving the session with two papers or less, the pre-organized session will "collapse." Remaining accepted papers will be combined by track chairs with other individual papers into a new session for scheduling.
- There are similar instructions for submission at the abstract submission web site. It will be good to re-familiarize yourself with instructions before moving ahead with each step.
- Any questions or problems can also be referred to the web site Help Desk by email or telephone. Return to Top.
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