Plenary speakers will have an hour to speak, which should include time for questions. They will not need to submit an abstract for this talk. 

Invited Speakers are encouraged to submit an abstract for their talk to the program, but this is not essential. Invited talks will be 30 minutes, which includes time for discussion and questions. 

Abstract limitations do not apply to plenary and invited speakers, as they can have their honorific talk and also be selected to contribute another separate oral or poster presentation to a different session. Abstracts for these additional contributions will need to submitted formally to be considered for inclusion in any of the other sessions.

There will be parallel sessions for Oral Presentations. Each oral session presentation will be limited to 15 minutes, with 5 additional minutes for discussion and questions (for 20 minutes total). Presenters will need to submit their Powerpoint presentation at the registration desk or other IT area at least one day before your presentation. Speakers are kindly requested to stay within the allocated time. Session chairs are kindly requested to ensure that the sessions will progress according the planned timetable.

Freestanding compatible poster boards will be provided. Poster dimensions should be not more than 40" x40" or 101 cm x 101 cm. Boards will be shared, so please ensure your poster fits within this size. Also, remember that the text of a poster is best when  easily readable from 2 m distance.

Poster presenters should hang their posters during registration, on Sunday, and posters will remain up throughout the symposium. During the poster session, authors are also asked to remain at their posters to interact with the other Delegates. However, if you would like to be at your poster during breaks or other times throughout the week, then you are encouraged to provide this information on your poster.

Poster presenters are encouraged to review resources to make the most of their space and time, such as: 
-- https://colinpurrington.com/tips/poster-design/
-- https://www.nature.com/articles/nj7614-115a
-- https://guides.nyu.edu/posters

A panel of judges will evaluate student oral and poster presentations to award top prizes for research presented at the symposium.

Decisions will be based on, but not limited to:
- Understandability and impact (scientifically and aesthetically)
- Balance among presentation style (e.g., of allotted time for introduction, results, discussion for talks or of visual content of text, figures, and tables for posters)
- Evident scholarships, scientific novelty, and excellence
- Response to questions and familiarity of subject matter

Any early-career biogeochemistry investigator or student (35 years or younger) may compete for the Wolf Vishniac Memorial Award, presented by the International Society for Environmental Biogeochemistry.

To be eligible, the applicant must be the first author of either an oral or poster presentation given at the Joint ISEB-ISSM Symposium in Banff, Canada, during the week of October 22-27, 2023.

To apply, a single pdf file including (1) a cover letter, (2) a complete but unsubmitted/unpublished manuscript (including text, figures, appendices, etc.), and (3) a current curriculum vitae must be emailed to the conference organizers before September 22, 2023. The cover letter needs to include an explanation of their eligibility and intended destination for the manuscript. Manuscripts can be submitted to pre-print servers, but cannot yet be accepted for publication in a journal. 

In addition to the Terms and Conditions for the Symposia, we also ask all Delegates and their accompanying guests to abide by a Code of Conduct to provide an enriching, inclusive, harassment-free experience for everyone.

Delegates are encouraged to present research findings that address the Joint Symposium Themes. Presenting delegates will need to submit written abstracts in English.

Abstracts should be as informative as possible and address the research background and aims, methods used, results, and conclusions. Please do not use abbreviations. Submitters are required to ensure that all co-authors are aware of the content of the abstract before submission.

Abstract submissions and reviews will be managed through Pensoft's ARPHA Conference Abstracts publishing platform, which will result in each abstract having a unique digital object identifier (DOI) and being open access. It does not cost anything to submit the abstract for review. However, each submitted and approved abstract will have a ~$50 article processing charge to be paid by the authors.

All submitted abstracts will be edited and reviewed by the organizing committee volunteers for content, suitability, and language. This review will also help to assign abstracts to specific symposium themes. 

"Presented at": Please add details here regarding whether you would like an oral presentation or poster presentation for the abstract, and even session topic(s) you think your work fits the best.

Abstract Metadata: The mandatory fields are Title, Author, Abstract, Keywords, Presenting Author, and Presented at (should be filled in with ISEB-ISSM 2023).

Title Format: All major words should begin with a capital letter (Title Case). Please do not use all uppercase or italics unless in reference to genus and species names. 

Authors: The submitting author is the person who will be responsible for the submission of the abstract. This is assumed to be the person logging in and starting the abstract, as well as the corresponding author (although this position can be any author, as well), but also the presenting author. In the ARPHA editorial platform, you should use only one email account that you check regularly and you do not mind providing it publicly (once the abstract is published, then this email address will appear on your abstract's webpage). All presenting authors must register for the symposium. If the presenting author cannot attend, then the abstract can be transferred to another author.  Coauthors are added by clicking the "Authors" icon on the left-side navigation panel. Add affiliations for all authors. You need to assign commenting and editing rights to each coauthor. The submitting author should notify all authors of the submission. 

Length: Abstracts are limited to 6000 characters, including spaces, any figure or table captions, and references. Inclusion of a figure or table is encouraged, but please limit these to one each. 

Content Development:  
● This is a highly interdisciplinary symposium. Please write for a general audience, providing context for your presentation and no unexplained jargon. 
● We do not recommend using abbreviations or acronyms, but if you need to use them, note that the first mention of acronyms (including organizational acronyms) or abbreviations in the abstract or figure/table legends must be spelled out (exceptions: 3D, DNA, RNA, PCR, GIS, etc.).
● Consider embedding hyperlinks (URLs) to institutions and concepts that will help readers to appreciate more fully the topic you are presenting. This can be especially helpful for jargon. However, be mindful of links that may change in the future and then become broken links through time.
● You may add references, figures, tables, and upload supplementary materials associated with the abstract. None of these are required. Create these resources first from the end of the left menu, before linking them to the appropriate text in your abstract.
● In addition to Acknowledgements, abstracts can also include information about funding sources, grant titles, hosting institutions, ethics and security, conflicts of interest, and author contributions.

Keywords: Keywords are words that readers might use in a search to find your content. Please add keywords not used in the title of the abstract. Separate each keyword by a comma (not a semicolon). Only capitalize proper nouns; do not capitalize the first keyword unnecessarily.

Please proofread your submission carefully.

Validate: Click the "Validate" button (near bottom of left panel) to have the system automatically ensure that mandatory fields are filled in, and that the abstract is assigned to a collection. Be sure to finish this step, even if you and your co-authors are not finished writing or reviewing your submission.

Submit for Technical Review: Clicking this button (bottom left panel) is the first step toward submitting your abstract for consideration. This step must be done by 16 June 2023. 

The organizers may accept or reject your abstract submission, or may send feedback requesting changes, and/or indicate that your abstract is being moved to a different format (e.g., oral to poster) for programming reasons.

Draft (again): If a submission is returned to you for changes, then its status will return to Draft. Only you and other authors with editing or commenting privileges will have access to the abstract until you make or respond to changes requested and send it back for technical review.

Track changes and/or written comments from editors need to be addressed. Accept or reject suggestions and use comments as necessary to further communicate your actions.

Your manuscript may require more than one cycle of revision so please address communications promptly.

Approval & Submission: Once your abstract is approved, you will have the opportunity for final proofing. Validate to make sure that there are no issues. One approved, then you can submit the abstract for publication by "Submit," which takes you through a checklist. There are two steps to this process.

1) License and copyright of your abstract. The default is CC BY 4.0 with copyright attributed to the authors. However, if any author is a U.S. or Canadian government employee, you might need to specify CC-0. Any other issues should be referred to the help desk.

2) Payment. Abstracts will have a ~$50 article processing charge (APC). Note that abstracts will not be published until payment is made. Submitting authors may:
-- Agree to pay for the APC invoice.
-- Specify that the submitting author is the person to be charged the APC.
-- Specify that a different person (e.g., institutional business manager) will pay (you will need to provide their name, email, and postal address). If you anticipate grouping invoices, then please work with your business manager to avoid publication delays.

Finalize: When the submission process is finalized (and paid), the abstract goes directly to production for publication, a digital object identifier (DOI) is assigned, and the abstract cannot be revised further (without difficulty). The deadline for finalizing your abstract for publication is 31 August 2023, to enable us to prepare the program. Abstracts will appear in the ACA Collections, under the Joint Symposium. 

Incomplete submission: If, after your manuscript has been approved, but you fail to complete all of the steps in the previous section, then you may see it tagged as "Incomplete Submission" in your ARPHA dashboard, even though a ID has been assigned to the abstract. You will need to complete the submission (or delete it) via the dashboard. 

Troubleshooting: If, at any time, you need further technical assistance, check the Tips and Tricks link or if you fail to find an answer to your question, send an email to the journal’s technical staff via the system. Click “Feedback” icon (on the top navigation bar to open a new window with an email form for you to fill in). 

To provide sufficient and equitable space and time for all attendees, delegates should not submit more than two abstracts as the presenting author. Please understand that we would also like presenting authors to limit themselves to giving one oral presentation and one poster presentation. Lead authors will not be selected to present two oral presentations, nor will they be selected to present two poster presentations.