Please read this guide carefully, send us your proposal(s) online through the submission portal and help us to uphold the high standards of previous conferences by exploring new ideas and directions.

Who can submit?
The presentation topics must be of interest to the extended RMA community, but anybody may make a submission. Submissions are normally made from those working in research offices, research centres, and in national and international research funders.  We particularly welcome those who have never or rarely presented at our conference before. 

You do not need to be a member of EARMA to make a submission.

Note! The ACPC rarely accepts more than 1-2 abstracts from one author, especially as the only speaker. For this reason and to enable the ACPC to build a programme without overlaps that you need to submit the names of all speakers (presenting co-authors) along with the abstract. You may also have other contributors to the abstract who do not join us and they should be added in the box for non-presenting co-authors.

Each Session will usually have a 60-minute time slot, but may contain several ‘presentations’ of shorter durations, it is rare for a single presentation to fill a whole session, most commonly submissions are allocated 30 minutes or shorter formats. Please also read the Speaker & Topic Terms and Conditions for abstracts and speakers prior to submitting your proposal.

In the following you will find advice for each page of the abstract submission process:

• Formats
• Details
• Content
• Alternative Formats
• Your Abstracts

If you are interested to find out more about the following, you will find below:

• Review Criteria
• Other issues

Details of the online submission
Available session formats are:

• Oral 60 mins (including panels)
• Oral 30 mins
• Fifteen Minute Discussion Tables
• Pecha Kucha
• Poster

You will start with choosing your preferred format. The alternative formats will be asked later. Please read the session format descriptions in annex 1 for more details. In the submission system you will need to add the following information (* for required fields):

Page: Details

• Short title* (Strongly recommend no more than 50 characters, due to programme clarity) Please provide a clear and concise title of your presentation. This title will be visible in the programme at glanze.
• Subtitle (Strongly recommend no more than 100 characters, due to programme clarity): If needed.
• Short introduction*: In a few lined the content of the presentation.
• Category*: Please choose the most relevant one:

- Case study
- Discussion starter
- Good practice
- Interactive session
- Methodological session
- Operational 'lessons learned’
- Practical initiatives
- Technical report
- Theoretical

• Topic*: The abstract submission must be submitted to one of these topic areas. 

- EARMA and professional associations (including, but not restricted to: National and international associations, building and developing an association, membership, events).
- Impact (including, but not restricted to: Impact in policy, in pre-award, in post-award, impact follow-up and other related topics).
- International (including, but not restricted to: collaborating across national boundaries, particularly outside Europe; and working with foreign funding or philanthropy).
- Leadership (including, but not restricted to: best-practices in leadership, HR issues, resourcing, leadership development).
- Open Science, Responsible Research & Innovation (including, but not restricted to: research integrity, gender issues, public engagement, stakeholders’ engagement, ethics, all aspects of open science and innovation such as publishing, data and policies to enhance openness locally, nationally or internationally in policy.
- Organising Support Services & Team Building (including, but not restricted to: Organising the full project cycle or any of its parts within or between organisations; distribution of work, benchmarking, attracting and retaining RMA talent).
- Policy, Strategy, Evaluation and Foresight (including, but not restricted to: Research Policy, Strategy development and Research evaluation).
- Professional Development and Recognition (including, but not restricted to: professional development, recognition of profession; skills relevant to RMAs including soft skills, professional training and certification).
- Proposal Development (including, but not restricted to: research design and development; funding opportunities; grant writing; evaluation).
- Project Management (including, but not restricted to: project management, grant management including tools, legal/financial aspects, audit, conflict of interest, litigation, internal allocation of funding, personal payments, tax).
- Research information systems (CRIS) (including, but not restricted to: Research Information systems, evaluation, development, best practices).

• Level of experience*: Please indicate to which level of experience in the audience your proposal suits the best:

- "New to Topic" (no prior knowledge required)
- "Intermediate" (knowledge development)
- "Experienced only" (requiring considerable amount of previous knowledge)

Presentation or room requirements: If needed. Please let us know if your session has any special technical or other requirements at submission stage. We cannot guarantee meeting any requirements unless fully stated in the proposal and that the requirements do not generate additional substantial costs for EARMA.

• Author permission* Tick a box if you have approval from all authors.
• Additional considerations*: Would you like your abstract to additionally be considered for a stand-alone digital or in-person EARMA event? This will not affect your consideration for this conference.

- Both 
- Digital event
- In-person event
- Neither

• EARMA newsletter: Tick this box if EARMA may approach you regarding a feature of your submission in its newsletter.
• JoRMA publication: Tick this box if EARMA may approach you regarding a feature of your submission in a JoRMA publication.
• Time allocated*: Tick this box if you agree that by submitting an abstract you agree that you willsubmit my session presentation in the timeline indicated in the guide for presenters to the presentation submission system.
• Video recordings: Tick this box if you give your permission for your session to be recorded if applicable and published on the EARMA website as part of the video library.
• Presentations: Tick this box if you agree that your presentation may be shared on the EARMA website post event in pdf format. If you wish to have an adapted version of your presentation shared, you will ensure to provide EARMA with that version by the last day of the conference.
• Commercial Interest: Tick this box if you are submitting this abstract on behalf of a commercial enterprise.
• GDPR*: Please tick this box to confirm that you agree with the terms and conditions <link> or abstract authors.

Page: Content

• Abstract*: A short descriptive piece explaining your presentation and your format choice for a non-expert audience (500 words). Please include take away messages in the abstract (learning outcomes).
• Comments for Reviewers: This is the place to provide additional information about your submission (300 words). For example you may like to justify the reason for your choice of format (ie. 15 min discussion table etc.).

Page: Authors

The submitting author is the default main contact for communications about the abstract. If you want to change this please contact conference@earma.org. Please note that lack of author information or any other information crucial to the evaluation may lead to rejection.

• Presenting co-authors

You will be able to list up to five authors for standard presentations, 1 or 2 presenters is the usual case. If you suggest a panel discussion, you can nominate 3 to 5 panel members. You can type author name and select from the list or add other names. Submit the names of all people coming to present (presenting co-authors) along with the abstract. 

• Non-presenting co-authors

You may also have other contributors to the abstract who do not join us at the conference and they should be added in the box for non-presenting co-authors.

Page: Alternative Formats

Formats: You are requested to add two preferences (according to your priority) to follow your fist choice made when starting submission. However, ACPC reserves the right to change the format to best suit the Conference structure, this may include a format you have not selected.

- Oral 60 mins (panels included)
- Oral 30 mins
- Fifteen Minute Discussion Tables
- Pecha Kucha
- Poster

Page: Your Abstracts

On this page you can return to editing, submit, view and view as pdf your abstracts (ones you are a submitting author for). Remember to submit your abstract when you are ready!

Review Criteria
Depending upon the abstract, some or all of the following criteria will be taken into account:

• The relevance and timeliness of the content for RMA.
• Overall clarity and completeness of the abstract.
• Appropriate level of audience [Select one of: "New to Topic", "Intermediate", "Experienced only"].
• The intended learning outcomes – take away messages.
• Relevance to the Conference theme.
• Quality and level of speakers: Do they have sufficient knowledge and experience of the topic? Except for new speakers, do they have good feedback from previous sessions? (Note: we welcome both previous and new speakers).
• Number of speakers (please fully justify in abstract if more than 2 speakers are required.
• The novelty of the topic: Where possible, the ACPC looks to support new ideas for topics not previously covered. Please see the relevant Call for Abstracts. However, if the topic is not particularly novel, it will still be evaluated favorably if it can be justified in terms of any of the following:

1) essential for the day-to-day work of an RMA
2) update to previous knowledge
3) particularly helpful for beginners

Other issues
Limits on number of participants: EARMA’s aim is for sessions to be open to all delegates. Therefore, we do not normally accept limits on sessions, the limit is defined by the size of the room allocated to your presentation. Normally only workshops have a limited participation. Workshops take place as a pre-conference event, usually by invitation only. Nevertheless, if your session does require a limit on participants, a full justification should be given.

Repeat sessions: We may also ask whether you would be willing to do a repeat session. We would only ask this where your session is likely to be very popular. However, whilst this would greatly help the conference organization, there is absolutely no obligation to accept.

Speakers: Please note that speakers need to register by the early bird rate deadline (EBRD) (21 January 2023). If at least one speaker of the proposal is not yet registered by the EBRD, the ACPC will remain the right to remove the abstract from the programme.

Chairs: Once a draft programme is ready, the ACPC will launch a call for session chairs. Therefore, you will be assigned a chair closer to the conference. 

GDPR: The system is GDPR compliant. For more information see Term and Conditions.

Annex 1: Session Formats 

Standard Oral Presentation (30/60 mins)

The format is the more traditional format and consists on one (two) speakers and allowing for questions and answers. This is a suitable format if the participants need updates on current issues or to receive new information. There are two specific types of presentation:
Oral Presentation: The majority of the programme sessions will be parallel which oral presentation submissions will be considered for.

Plenary session (not availabe through the abstract submission system): These are mostly initiated by the ACPC and/or board. Plenary sessions are stand-alone sessions. If you think that your topic is worthy of consideration for a plenary please contact the ACPC chair.

Length of a standard presentation can be: 55 min + 5 min Q&A or 25 min +5 min Q&A

Panel Session (usually 60 mins)
Focuses on stimulating an interactive discussion with multiple speakers and a moderator. Speakers (2-4 usually) give their views on a certain topic and discuss their opinions with one another and the audience, under the guidance of a moderator. It is recommended that approximately 30% of the session is dedicated to questions and answers, discussions or other formats that encourage audience participation. One submission per panel session to be submitted detailing the topic and all panelists.

Length of a panel session should be 60 min (Q&A included).

Fifteen Minute Discussion Tables
Fifteen Minute Discussion Tables: Within an hour time slot there will be a maximum of four round table ‘presentations’. Each table will be hosted by the “presenter”. Host presenters need only have a question and some expertise in that area; conference delegates will choose a table to start at and spend 15 minutes there; after 15 minutes all the delegates will rotate round to the next table, and so on until all the tables have been visited. Each fifteen minutes session will comprise a 2 minutes introduction of a theme, problem, or issue, by the host presenter, who will then moderate an open discussion for the remainder of the fifteen minutes. Each host presenter will cover the same topic up to four times in the session with different groups of delegates. It is sensible to have a supplementary question ready to stimulate debate. Delegates do not need to prepare for these sessions, just to be ready for quick wide-ranging discussions and remember who they would further like to talk to afterward in the coffee break and beyond. Many presenters find it useful to prepare and bring printed copied of an A4 information sheet as a take-away for delegates.  But there is strictly no Powerpoint.  A concrete problem or case studies are most suitable for this format.

Length of each discussion table presentation lasts max 15 min (2 min presentation of the topic+ 13 min discussion).

Pecha Kucha
A Pecha Kucha is a very short (6 minutes and 40 seconds) presentation format with exactly 20 slides shown for 20 seconds each (and set to automatically advance!). It is a very dynamic and exciting style of presentation that takes a lot of planning - there is no time to waste - you need to know exactly what you want to say, and what information (not much!) you want on each slide.

Practicing beforehand is imperative! We will group a number of Pecha Kuchas into a single one-hour session and leave some time for questions at the end.

Poster
Some topics can be best explained by an A0 poster on which an idea, new insight or process is presented. Posters should be designed in an attractive way in order to appeal to the audience. The main poster session will be held after lunch on the first day of the conference. Poster presenters should be by their posters then, but also any other break time to discuss their posters. Posters will be placed at a central spot at the conference venue and a vote for the best poster will be held.

Other formats (to be submitted as 60 mins oral)
Other innovative methods of presenting and outlining a session are welcomed and encouraged – for example questions and answers, interactive games, illustrating with film, etc. please indicate in your abstract. Such sessions should be submitted under oral 60 mins, but stating clearly in abstract the special form of the session. Any special technical or other requirements should be clearly indicated in the topic submission. We cannot guarantee meeting any requirements unless fully stated in the proposal. Note that the requirements should not generate additional substantial costs for EARMA.

Closed Session or group meeting: This is normally only for meetings which EARMA agrees to host. Such sessions should be submitted under oral 60 mins, but stating clearly in abstract that the session is closed. Whilst these meetings will not be subject to the normal selection procedure, EARMA reserves the right to refuse a closed session where it is not relevant to the needs of the Association. We also have limited spaces at the venue and will not compromise the quality of the conference to accommodate these. For unofficial meetings, please contact other venues such as hotel or local universities for spaces for meetings.  A typical example of a closed session hosted by is a meeting of an internal EARMA committee or thematic group or meetings of entities such as INORMS or the Leiden Group.

Sponsored Session (not available in the abstract submission, please contact johanna.roodt@earma.org)
Some sessions may be sponsored and this will be clearly indicated if applicable. Sponsored sessions are not advertorials of the product but a genuine contribution to the debate on RMA.

Length of a standard presentation can be: 55 min + 5 min Q&A or 25 min +5 min Q&A.