Not Your Typical Conference Abstract #TDWG2021

TDWG 2021, the virtual conference of Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) being held 18–22 October, issued a call for abstracts representing presentations in fifteen symposia, as well as posters (including infographics), and contributed oral presentations appropriate to the conference theme Connecting the world of biodiversity data: uniting people, processes, and tools. Registration is now open, with the deadline for abstract submission set to 2 August 2021.

Joint blog post by #TDWG2021 Program Committee and Pensoft Editorial Team

TDWG 2021, the virtual conference of Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) being held 18–22 October, issued a call for abstracts representing presentations in fifteen symposia, as well as posters (including infographics), and contributed oral presentations appropriate to the conference theme Connecting the world of biodiversity data: uniting people, processes, and tools. Registration is now open, with the deadline for abstract submission set to 2 August 2021

Detailed instructions have also been made available to guide authors through the process. Abstract publication costs are included in the conference registration. All presenters must be fully registered before their abstracts can be published. 

Why are these not your typical conference abstracts? 

In short, each published abstract is a mini-paper designed to entice conference participants to attend your presentation, but, even more importantly, to let you provide something more enduring, a snapshot of your research progress the size of a written elevator pitch.

Using Pensoft’s ARPHA writing tool, you can enhance your abstract, so that it includes figures, keywords, references, and supplementary materials. Slides, posters, and video links can also be added to the abstract’s media tab after the conference, to build a well-rounded understanding of your work. TDWG’s open access Pensoft journal, Biodiversity Information Science and Standards (BISS), will even provide metrics about views, downloads, citations, or even online mentions of your abstract. 

Benefits of publishing your TDWG conference abstract: 

  • Free and open access to your abstract ahead of the conference via the society’s open access Pensoft journal, Biodiversity Information Science and Standards (BISS) 
  • A Digital Object Identifier (DOI), a unique, persistent, and citable reference assigned to each abstract 
  • Distribution of abstracts under the terms of Creative Commons attribution licenses, either CC BY 4.0 (default) or CC0 (by request).
  • Review provided by at least two editors for each abstract.
  • Readers can comment or ask questions within the Comment tab in the publication. Authors may also use the Comment tab for updates or errata.
  • Automatic linking of your abstract to your author record via ORCID and/or Web of Science (Publons) ResearcherID.
  • To prompt discoverability, all articles, including abstracts, are automatically harvested upon publication by a range of indexers, from AGRIS to ZDB.
  • Technical editors are cited as part of the article metadata. 
  • Abstracts are associated with the conference session in which they were presented.
  • Easy to create buzz around your presentation by sharing your abstract on Twitter, Facebook, Mendeley, Reddit, or via email with a single click thanks to share buttons.

While BISS is currently known as (just) a place to publish conference proceedings, this is a misconception. Authors are encouraged to publish full articles of methods, standards, guidelines, case studies, software descriptions, forum papers, editorials, correspondence, data or software reviews. BISS provides a discount on the article processing charges (APCs) for TDWG members.

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Join the conversation around this year’s Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) conference on Twitter via #TDWG2021.

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Visit BISS Journal website at: https://biss.pensoft.net/ and follow on Twitter and Facebook.

ARPHA-Proceedings Module: Streamline conference abstracts authoring, editing and publication

Creating, reviewing, editing and publishing of collections of proceedings from conferences, symposia and workshops is now available with the ARPHA-Proceedings module via the publishing platform ARPHA.

Designed as a venue for conference organisers to streamline proceedings publications, while simultaneously giving credit to the authors and preserving their contributions in a format that makes them easy to find and read by both humans and machines, the ARPHA-Proceedings module can be regarded as a simplified and straightforward journal publishing process specialised for conference abstracts.

The workflow supports multiple proceedings collections. For instance, a proceedings publishing platform could be created for a particular conference taking place on a regular basis or for a number of conferences organised by an institution or a society. A fine example is the Proceedings of TDWG dedicated to the yearly Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) conference.

Within the platform, hierarchical article collections could also be established. Abstracts can be submitted to sub-collections dedicated to various workshops/symposia within a larger event. The different sub-collections can be handled by different editors, normally the workshop/symposia conveners.

The workflow used in the ARPHA-Proceedings module includes ARPHA Writing Tool, editorial/technical evaluation, publication and dissemination.  

At any point and at no additional costs, the platform can be modified to feature additional article types (e.g. full-text papers, posters, talks etc.). It is for the conference organisers to decide whether these submissions are to undergo a conventional peer review process.

Abstracts can be enriched with citations, figures, tables, data and multimedia if the conference organisers decide to allow it.

Abstracts can be published straight on the platform as soon as an editor approves them, so that the publication is available online ahead of the conference.

Abstracts published in this way have all features common for regular articles published via ARPHA, including Digital Object Identifier (DOI); publication in HTML, PDF and machine-readable and harvestable XML; citation, indexing and archiving in various databases; dissemination and others.

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Below you can find a practical guide to the submission process of a conference abstract and assigning it to a collection via the ARPHA-Proceedings module.

1. Log in at the platform’s website or ARPHA Writing Tool.

Home awt

 

2. Click “Start a manuscript” to see the platform and article type options.

start a manuscript

 

3.  Select a venue and article type for your manuscript.

select platform and article type

4. Click “Collections” on the navigation bar at the top. This is where you select the conference track to which you are assigning your manuscript (this does not guarantee acceptance in that track).

Collection tab

Select collections track

5. Fill in your abstract’s metadata by hovering over a category, and then clicking on the pencil icon. The fields “Title”, “Abstract”, “Keywords”, and “Presenting Author” are mandatory. The submitting author and affiliation are taken from the profile of the logged-in user. More authors can be added by clicking the icon beside “Authors” on the left-hand side. The corresponding author and the authors’ order can be changed from the same menu. The corresponding author must be available to communicate about the abstract until final acceptance for publication. The presenting author is the person who will actually be giving the talk/demonstration.

Mandatory fields

6. You may add references, figures, tables (if allowed on the particular platform) by clicking on the appropriate icon. You may also upload supplementary materials associated with the abstract.

figures references etc

7. Click “Validate”. An automated check will ensure that all mandatory fields are filled in and the abstract is assigned to a collection.

8. When you are ready to submit your abstract, click “Submit for technical review.” This will send the manuscript to the track editors, who will review it for relevance to the track. The button will be visible as soon as the validation has been successful.

9. The editors of the track to which you have submitted your abstract may accept or reject your submission, send feedback requesting changes or suggest submission to a different track.

10. Once the abstract is accepted, the ‘Submit to the journal’ button becomes visible in ARPHA Writing Tool. You need to click this button and go through a checklist of submission steps. The fourth and final step asks you to assign categories to your submission (optional). When the submission process is finalised, the abstract goes directly to production and publication, a DOI is assigned and the abstract cannot be further revised.

submit to the journal

11. To see your manuscripts, go to the ARPHA Writing Tool’s website, log in and click the “See more” button, so that you can access your ARPHA dashboard.

see more in AWT

On the right-hand side, you can see the stage each manuscript is currently at, along with the collection it has been assigned to (note that this does not mean that it has been approved for this collection).

user dashboard

If an abstract is at the Draft stage, it means that it is still being authored. Once submitted for Technical Review, it reaches the In pre-submission review stage where it stays until a Collection editor approves it for addition to a particular collection. In layout means that a manuscript is successfully submitted to the journal and awaiting publication.

12. If at any time you feel in need for further assistance, you can send an email to the journal’s technical staff via the system. Click “Helpdesk” on the top navigation bar to open a new window with an email form for you to fill in.

Helpdesk

Please keep in mind that the stepwise instructions displayed are subject to slight modifications per request. Feel welcome to contact us with your personal platform’s needs!