Preparing your abstract for the INORMS Congress Madrid 2025
The INORMS Congress 2025, hosted by EARMA in Madrid, welcomes submissions from professionals in research management and administration (RMA) globally. This guide outlines the submission process, focusing on the theme “A sustainable profession in a sustainable world.” Authors can submit up to two proposals, emphasising practical tips and lessons for attendees. You can submit your abstract by September 23, 2024, 23:59 CET.
Submissions should include a title and optional subtitle, a 250-350-word abstract, and a category (Case Study, Good Practice, New Initiative, Other). Presentation formats are Oral (30 or 20 minutes), Fifteen-Minute Discussion Tables, and Posters. Topics span various aspects of RMA, including governance, knowledge valorisation, AI, transnational collaborations, and sustainability.
Submissions must be complete and detailed for proper evaluation. The review process assesses global relevance, practicality, clarity, learning outcomes, alignment with the INORMS Congress 2025 theme, and speaker quality. Presenters must register by the early bird deadline. The Programme Committee invites participation and encourages joining the committee through a call later in the year.
For a successful submission, adhere to the guidelines and consider additional dissemination routes like digital events and publications. Compliance with GDPR and timely submission of presentations are mandatory.
Please read this Guide carefully. It will help both you, the proposer, and us, the Programme Committee, make the INORMS Congress 2025 a memorable event for all participants.
Proposal(s) should be submitted through the dedicated online submission portal. Please read this guide before submitting, as the information in it will not be repeated in the submission portal. You can also download this document as a PDF file.
Contents
Who can submit?
Making a submission
General Remarks
The Submission Process
Formats
Details
Topics
Level of Experience
Some Additional Information
Page: Content
Page: Alternative Formats
Page: Your Abstracts
The Review Process
Other issues
Finally
Who can submit?
· The INORMS Congress 2025 is the conference for anybody with a professional interest in research management and administration. The work of research managers and administrators (RMAs) occurs wherever research or research-related activities or services take place.
· In 2025, EARMA hosts the International Network of Research Management Societies’ INORMS Congress in Madrid. Submissions should be broadly applicable to research management practices worldwide, as the conference will be attended by RMAs from across the globe.
· The INORMS Congress 2025 will replace the EARMA Conference in 2025.
General Remarks
· We aim to feature a diverse a range of presenters and presentation. Therefore, we will not accept more than two submissions from any single author. To allow proper provision for your presentation, please include the names of all co-authors.
· Remember, if you feel your interest might be underrepresented in the INORMS Congress 2025, represent it here by preparing your own submission.
· Abstracts should reflect the INORMS Congress 2025 theme “A sustainable profession in a sustainable world”.
· The more complete your submission is, the more likely that reviewers will be able to evaluate it, so please take time to complete your application. You will not be asked for additional information.
· While we welcome submissions from wherever they come, we particularly welcome those who have never or rarely presented at either INORMS or EARMA before.
· Abstracts focusing on providing practical tips and lessons that attendees can bring home with them are especially welcome.
The Submission Process
The submission process is straightforward. In this section, you will find help for each stage and element of the process.
Formats
· Oral 30/20 Minutes
· 15 Minute Discussion Tables
· Posters
Read more details in Annex 1
Details
In addition to formats, submissions should respect the following:
· A Short title. This will appear in the programme; brevity means clarity.
· A Subtitle. This is not mandatory but is recommended, it allows you to provide more clarity to the contents of your presentation.
· An Abstract. This should be enough for evaluators to clearly understand your intent. 250-350 words is sufficient. You should address the key elements of your presentation and the learning outcomes you expect your audience to come away with.
· A Category. Please choose the most relevant one:
o Case Study: Describes an initiative, action, project, and the objectives, the outcomes, impacts and lessons.
o Good Practice: Describes something that worked well to the benefit of researchers, and other ecosystem actors and could be applied elsewhere.
o New Initiative: Have you tried something new and innovative in your office? Would you like to share it? Then this is the category for you.
o Information: Essential information for RMAs, relevant to their day-to-day work, programme information, rules and regulations, etc.
Topics
The Programme Committee uses these broad topics to organise the programme. Topics are deliberately chosen to be broad and inclusive and so, may well include subjects that neither the ACPC nor potential presenters would have chosen. The topics of the INORMS Congress 2025 are:
· Building Better RMA services: Including things like Research Management in very small or developing research offices, Research Infrastructures and Research Management, Supporting Cast, Things RMAs need to know, Building the Perfect Research Support Service, I am an RMA but I don’t work at a university and other things that add value and develop RMA services.
· Governance and Regulation: All aspects of governance and regulation, Data Protection, Export Controls, Dual Use, State Aid, etc.
· Knowledge Valorisation: Outputs, Outcomes and Impact, Working with industry, Research Exploitation, IP, Impact mapping and tracking.
· Open Science: Supporting collaboration, research assessment, open research and accessibility
· Proposal, Award and Project Management: From the first idea, project and financial management, and to the final closure, traditional RMA, researcher development, tools you use, things you have learned.
· Use of AI in Research Management: AI is becoming more and more integrated into technologies we use daily in our work. Considerations within this topic are best practices, uses and applicability related to AI.
· Transnational Collaborations: All aspects of transnational collaborations from the smallest person-person partnerships to major research networking initiatives involving many types and of partners and many countries.
· Sustainability in RMA: This topic is looking for innovative, cutting-edge, outside-the-box ideas related to RMA aspects of sustainable efforts.
· Responsibility, Ethics and Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) in Research and Innovation: Doing excellent research is more than just doing the technical challenge well. Taking into consideration a researcher’s (and the research ecosystem’s) wider obligations to society requires, integrity, honesty, openness, fairness and inclusion.
Level of Experience
The Programme Committee tries to map content to the (subjectively determined) levels of experience that you have indicated. The options are:
- "New to Topic" (no prior knowledge required)
- "Intermediate" (knowledge development)
- "Experienced only" (requiring a considerable amount of previous knowledge)
Some Additional Information
There are some additional pieces of information we need to process your submission
· *Author permission: Tick a box if you have approval from all authors.
· *Additional considerations: The Programme Committee is very keen that your presentation reaches the widest audience to this end, EARMA makes some additional dissemination routes available. Would you like your abstract to additionally be considered for a stand-alone digital or in-person EARMA event?
There are some other additional dissemination possibilities that you can avail of.
· The 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: Ticking this box confirms that you acknowledge that, if your presentation is selected, you must submit the session presentation in a timely manner once requested by the organisers. Timely submission reduces the risk of ‘technical errors’ and things ‘going wrong’. The organisers reserve the right to remove session presentations not submitted in a timely fashion time.
· Video recordings: Tick this box if you give your permission for your session to be recorded and published on the EARMA website as part of the video library. Not all sessions will be recorded.
· Presentations: Tick this box if you agree that your presentation may be shared as a ‘pdf’ on the EARMA website after the INORMS Congress 2025. If you wish to have an updated version of your presentation shared, you will ensure to provide EARMA with that version by the last day of the INORMS Congress 2025.
· 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 EARMA’s terms and conditions.
Page: Content
1. Abstract: A short descriptive piece explaining your presentation, your format choice, and take away messages/learning outcomes (250-350 words).
2. Comments for Reviewers: This is the place to provide additional information about your submission (300 words).
Page: Authors
By default, the submitting author is the main contact for any communications about the abstract. If you want to change this, please contact earma@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 may list up to three (3) authors who contributed to the abstract and will join us at the INORMS Congress 2025.
Non-presenting co-authors: If some or the abstract contributors will not join us at the INORMS Congress 2025, please add them here.
Page: Your Abstracts
On this page you can return to editing, submit, view and view as pdf your abstracts (the ones you are a submitting author for). Remember to submit your abstract when you are ready!
The Review Process
Each abstract will be evaluated by the topic lead (Programme Committee member) and two-three external evaluators who do not have a conflict of interest with this abstract. The topic lead and external evaluators have two-three weeks in late September/early October to complete their evaluation of 20-40 abstracts (number depending on the topic). Once individual evaluations have finished, the topic lead and external evaluators meet to discuss overall ranking. The topic lead then takes this information to the consensus meeting of the Programme Committee, during which the draft programme is decided.
In 2024, the abstracts will be evaluated based on the following criteria:
· The worldwide interest (rather than Europe focus) of the abstract for RMA.
· The practical nature.
· The relevance and timeliness of the content for RMA.
· Overall clarity of the abstract.
· The intended learning outcomes – take away messages.
· Relevance to the INORMS Congress 2025 theme, i.e. sustainability.
· 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 two speakers are required).
· The novelty of the topic: priority will be given to new ideas. However, if the topic is not particularly novel, the abstract will still be evaluated favourably if it can be justified in terms of any of the following:
o essential for the day-to-day work of an RMA
o update to previous knowledge.
o particularly helpful for beginners
EARMA will issue a call for evaluators and, subsequently for chairs, these calls are published in the regular newsletter and on the EARMA website.
Other issues
· Speakers: Please note that speakers need to register by the early bird rate deadline (EBRD) (January 2025). If at least one presenting author of the proposal is not yet registered by the EBRD, the Programme Committee reserves the right to withdraw the abstract from the programme.
· All sessions are open to all participants. Venues vary in size and may not always be as large as you might expect.
· Session Chairs: Once a draft programme is ready, the Programme Committee will launch a call for session chairs. As an author you will have the opportunity to volunteer during the submission process.
· GDPR: The system is GDPR compliant. For more information see Terms and Conditions.
Annex 01: Session Formats
· Oral Presentation (30/20 mins): In this traditional format, the participants will be able to receive updates on current issues or new information, followed by their questions to the speaker. Two presentations will be delivered in each 60-minute programme slot. One session will be 30 minutes and the second will be 20 minutes. Each presentation is required to allow about a third of their period for questions and answers.
· Fifteen Minute Discussion Tables: Within the 60-minute programme slot there will be a maximum of three round table moderated discussions. Each table will be hosted by one or two “presenter(s)” who will moderate a discussion with delegates participating in their table. Host presenters need only have a question and some expertise in that area to provide a 2-minute introduction and moderate a 13-minute discussion (consider preparing some questions). INORMS Congress 2025 delegates will choose a table to start at and spend fifteen minutes there; after fifteen minutes all the delegates will rotate round to the next table, and so on until all the tables have been visited. Each host presenter will cover the same topic up to three times in the session with different groups of delegates. Many presenters find it useful to prepare and bring printed copies 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.
· Poster: Posters are becoming very popular. 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 to appeal to the audience. Poster presenters should be by their posters during the main poster session, but also any other break time to discuss their posters. Posters will be placed at a central spot at the INORMS Congress 2025 venue and a vote for the best poster will be held.
Finally…
Thank you for reading this document and for making your submission. The Programme Committee wishes you every success, and we look forward to meeting you at INORMS Congress 2025.
Please think about joining our Programme Committee, there will be a call for new members later in the year.
