Guidelines for ESDAR Conferences

Poster Preparation

We hope that the following guidelines will help you when preparing your presentation. Poster session is one of the most important sessions at the Annual Conference of the European Society for Domestic Animal Reproduction.

Display boards will be provided for posters. POSTERS SHOULD HAVE A SIZE OF 120 x 90 cm (vertical presentation).

Copies of your poster reduced to A4 format are generally well appreciated by delegates. If you wish to distribute it, please prepare them before and bring them with you. Provide an envelope where delegates can leave their cards for more information.

Please do not mail your poster.

Ideas for Improving Posters

(Based on guide-lines published in the Embryo Transfer Newsletter Volume 16, Number 3, September 1998 by G. E. Seidel, Jr.)

Accuracy, efficiency, and ease of communication should be the main criteria in designing posters. Secondary criteria include aesthetic appeal and variety (such as mixing graphs with tables, use of colour, and attention grabbers). The following suggestions will help to produce a poster that people will read and possibly remember:

1. Allow plenty of time to prepare the poster so that there is time to make corrections or obvious improvements.
   2. Ask a colleague not directly involved with the material to read the poster and make suggestions.
   3. The poster title should be in large letters that can be seen a long distance away (ideally, 4 cm high).
   4. The names and addresses of authors should be in much smaller letters than the title.
   5. Text letters should be at least 1 cm high.
   6. A poster is not a scientific paper. It should be possible to read and understand a poster within 5 minutes. Long posters are ignored by most attendees. A maximum of two references (first author, year, journal, volume, pages) of published full papers can be included.
   7. For posters, lists are preferable to text; tables are preferable to lists; and graphs are preferable to tables. Long and complex tables and complicated graphs have no place in posters.
   8. A little colour adds immensely to posters particularly graphs; a lot of colour or gaudy colour is worse than no colour at all.
   9. Be creative, but not cute. A good large colour photograph frequently adds greatly to a poster; overdoing this can be boring, however.
   10. The use of photographs as a background for the entire poster is strongly discouraged. It usually makes it very difficult to read part of the text.
   11. The following parts are absolutely essential for most posters:
   a. Introduction (putting work into context)
   b. Procedures (materials and methods)
   c. Results (what was found)
   d. Interpretation
   e. Conclusions
   Hypotheses often are appropriate or informative, but this depends on the nature of the experiment. Minimize abbreviations to one or two per poster. It is very difficult to remember three or more abbreviations (other than standard ones like FSH) when studying a poster.
   12. Most people read the title and conclusions. If these do not pique their interest, they go on to the next poster. Design the parts just described to be simple and effective. It may be advisable to have a handout of your paper or copy of your poster to distribute
   13. Get the housekeeping right: Poster size, method of attaching materials to poster, legible from a distance (see No. 5), have the poster up (and down) at the appropriate times and stand by the poster at the correct time.
   14. ESDAR keeps a list of authors from previous conferences who submitted abstracts, but did not present a poster; abstracts will no longer be accepted from scientists who authored or co-authored previous abstracts and failed to put up a poster (without good cause).

Registration

Please remember to send your registration form in order to be allowed to participate in the poster session and to register at the Congress Secretary.

Mounting, viewing and removing the poster

There will be two Poster Sessions held in Hochschulzentrum Von Roll, Fabrikstrasse 6:

Poster Session 1 (25 August) - Posters with an odd number

Poster Session 1: posters have to be mounted on Friday 25 August, from 08:30 to 13:00 and dismounted until 17.30

Poster Session 2 (26 August) - Posters with an even number

Poster Session 2: posters have to be mounted on Saturday 26 August, from 08:30 to 12:30 and dismounted immediately after the Poster Session 2.

Fixing tape for posters will be available in the poster exhibition area. Please use only the fixing materials made available by the poster exhibition staff in order to avoid damages on the poster boards.

Important note: Posters that are not dismounted until 17:30 will be dismounted and disposed of by the staff.

Poster manning

The authors are requested to be present to answer any questions concerning their poster during the poster session.

Submission and acceptance of manuscripts 2017

Please prepare the manuscript in accordance with the following guidelines

1. General

Reproduction in Domestic Animals is an international journal publishing original, significant articles on reproduction in domestic animals, laboratory animals, and wildlife, with particular attention to basic and clinical research. Reproduction is considered in a broad context, with its strong disciplinary, comparative core. The journal therefore covers obstetrics, neonatology and udder health, and welcomes contributions in these areas. The scope of the journal applies to veterinarians, breeders, and biologists while also being of interest to practitioners of human medicine. Reproduction in Domestic Animals is the official organ of the European Society for Domestic Animal Reproduction (ESDAR), the European Veterinary Society for Small Animal Reproduction (EVSSAR).

Important: For conference participants an electronic version of the supplement will be provided on sticks.

2. Manuscript submission

The submission and review process of Reproduction in Domestic Animals is handled online at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rda. To submit an article to Reproduction in Domestic Animals, please go to http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rda, create an account and submit your article. Complete instructions on how to submit a paper are available online at the Journal website www.interscience.wiley.com/journal/rda. Make sure that your manuscript is submitted latest on the
1^st of February 2017.

2.1. Licence to publish

Additionally, the corresponding author MUST submit a Copyright Transfer Agreement. This form includes, among other items, your complete corresponding address, the number of your submission (Manuscript number) and the copyright transfer agreement. The form is to be retrieved, filled and signed, and then scanned in .pdf format to be uploaded in the submission of your manuscript, alongside with the other manuscript files. Please mark this CTA as supplementary file. The CTA will thereafter follow the handling of your manuscript and only become effective if the manuscript is accepted for publication. Please note that a missing CTA in the submission will mean that the paper shall not be processed.

Last updated: 4.1.2017

Abstracts for Posters and Short Oral Communications 2017

Beside invited plenary presentations and workshops, free communications on all aspects of reproduction in domestic animals will be presented at the conference. Although most free communication will have to be presented as posters, ESDAR likes to give scientists the opportunity to present their data orally and numerous sessions with short oral communications will be offered. All submitted abstracts will undergo a strict peer-review process (see below). Accepted abstracts will be published in the journal Reproduction in Domestic Animals. You are invited to submit abstracts of your scientific work to be presented at the ESDAR conference 2017 not later than February 15th, 2017.

Abstracts for posters or short oral communications can only be submitted through the ESDAR web site. Please follow the according submission advices there.

Abstract requirements

Abstracts must be written in English. If you are not a native speaker, ask for help to edit grammar and style.

Your name must only appear once as first author of an abstract. However, you may submit additional abstracts as co-author.

Abstracts should contain the purpose of the study, methods used, results, and conclusions. Do not forget to indicate the species within the title.

A maximum of two references (first author, year, journal, volume, pages) of published full papers (no abstracts!) may be included.

No figures or tables are allowed.

Abbreviations have to be defined and should be used sparingly. Abstracts without results (e.g.:.... the results of this study will be presented at the meeting) are not acceptable. Abstracts are subjected to scientific review by peers. The decision on acceptance/rejection by the program committee is final.

The maximum size of abstracts is limited to 1,800 characters including spaces from the first word of the title through to the last word/character of the text! This restriction must apply due to page limitations of the Journal (RDA). No exceptions can be accepted and longer abstracts will be rejected. All authors are obliged to indicate the number of characters in submission form

ESDAR 2017 gives young scientists (doctoral thesis, PhD) the opportunity to participate in a contest for the Best oral communication. If you chose this contest, your oral communication is strictly limited to 6min + 2min discussion and you are expected to create a poster as well.

Submission of abstracts

By submitting the abstract, the author concedes
(1) that the work has not been published previously and is the work of the named authors, who all agree to be listed as co-authors and

(2) that the experiments have been conducted under the appropriate legal authority. 


Make sure that the author or one of the co-authors is present at the conference and will present the publication either as oral communication or poster. Failure to present the work after the abstract has been published in the conference proceedings will result in rejection of abstracts from this particular laboratory in the following years.

Review of abstracts

The abstracts are subjected to a rigorous peer-review process. Firstly abstracts must meet the formal requirements laid down in the information for authors of abstracts. Abstracts exceeding the character limit of 1,800 are not accepted. Abstracts may be re-submitted before the deadline expires. The corresponding author of each submitted abstract will receive an automated confirmation email. If not, they should make contact immediately with the program secretary.

Submitted abstracts are then distributed to the reviewers and rated

a) Accepted without revision

b) Accepted after minor revision

c) Major revision necessary

d) Not acceptable

A second reviewer will review abstracts rated not acceptable. In case the abstract is rated again not acceptable, the abstract will be rejected. In any other case, a third reviewer decides on the abstract.

Abstracts, which need a major revision, will be returned to the corresponding author with detailed questions/instructions. After resubmission, the original reviewer again reviews the abstract.

Abstracts, which need only minor revision will be returned to the author and will be rechecked after resubmission for the requested corrections.

Very often the reason for rejection of abstracts is poor scientific quality. e.g. poorly designed experiments with inappropriate statistical analyses, or abstracts containing no data.

Poor language per se is not a reason to reject an abstract; however we strongly recommend all non-native speakers to get help from a native speaker. Minor language problems are edited by the reviewers and finally in the editorial office of the publisher.

Abstracts will be rated major revision necessary when the abstract contains interesting data but lacks some formalities e.g. description of methods, lack of statistics, lack of conclusion etc. Very often authors claim that they could not include sufficient information because of the limited characters. However, careful reading of the text usually reveals that there are quite a number of words, phrases or even sentences, which can be omitted without losing information.

Please refrain from inquiries about the status of the abstract after submission. The entire procedure will take up to 8 weeks. Authors will be informed by e-mail as soon as the final decision has been made.

The decision whether an abstract is accepted as poster or oral communication is made by the program secretary and depends on the general layout of the scientific contents of the conference. The decision is final.

Workshops 2017

Workshops provide the platform for the intensive and interactive discussions of selected areas of reproduction in domestic animals with ESDAR conference participants. Within the conference programme, workshops should allow interactive discussion on specific issues; they are not extended oral presentations! The latter are reserved for plenary sessions and oral communications. The programme committee very carefully selects the objectives of the workshops, which fit in with the theme of the annual scientific presentations.

The following rules have been developed to help organizing good workshops. Workshop moderators and speakers are cordially requested to follow these rules.

- The local organizer invites the workshop moderator and discusses the topic of the workshop

- The workshop moderator invites up to 2 workshop speakers and develops the framework for content and timing. Moderator and speakers are requested to give an overview of the field of interest and to stimulate the discussion with their short oral contributions.

- Both the workshop moderator and the invited speakers submit electronically their abstract through the ESDAR web site not later than 1st of February 2017 using the registration forms provided in the abstract submission section of the website. Layout and length are described under abstract submission for posters