We opened the portals at 10am (UK Time) on Monday 16th January 2023 for members and their guests to submit abstracts for oral and poster presentations, which remained open for 24 hours until 10am on Tuesday 17th January 2023.
Given ongoing challenges with our highly popular EPS submission portals (especially for talk submissions), we will be trialling a new process for talk submissions at the next meeting. The portal will open as usual at 10am (see below for next portal date) but will remain open for a minimum of 24 hours. In order to manage demand, we request a maximum of two talk submissions per lab (no limit on poster submissions or non-member sponsorship).
After 24 hours, we will check whether submission numbers exceed slots available and if so, will conduct a light touch review of submissions (to check eligibility) then select talks using a lottery system. Where possible, talks that are not selected in the lottery will be offered a poster.
If talk slots remain after 24 hours, the portal will remain open until full, and restrictions on the number of submissions per lab will be lifted.
The submissions portals are now closed and we are assessing all submissions via a light touch review (to check eligibility) before proceeding to the next stage, selecting abstracts using a lottery system.
Submission Guidelines
Portal opening guidelines to be considered by those wishing to submit abstracts is that the portal for January meetings will open in early September the previous year (i.e. for January 2023, the portal will open in early September 2022). The portal for the Spring meeting will open in early January and the portal for the Summer meeting will open in early April.
To support a larger number of oral presentations, we will be offering both ordinary talk slots (i.e. 20min talk + 10min questions) and shorter ‘flash’ talk slots (i.e. 10 min talk + 5min questions). Ordinary length talks are well suited to presenting a comprehensive series of experiments or complex data that lead to novel theoretical advances or insights. Shorter talks are best suited to presenting empirical data from smaller/earlier-stage projects. When submitting your abstract, you will be asked to indicate which talk type you are submitting for – please think carefully which is the best fit for your work when planning your abstract.
Abstracts should include a statement of the results of experimental work that has been completed prior to abstract submission, rather than vague generalities describing work in progress. It is expected that presentations incorporate results from some unpublished work. Please see below for the guidelines for Research Plan Posters.
Members are requested to submit abstracts with:
- A title
- Name(s) of authors, and, if none of the authors is an EPS member, the name of your EPS sponsor
- Full postal address of the submitting author
- First author’s email address
- An abstract of no more than 200 words. References should be minimal and do not count toward the 200 word limit. Abstracts should include a statement of the results of experimental work that has been completed prior to abstract submission, rather than vague generalities describing work in progress. It is expected that presentations incorporate results from some unpublished work. When an abstract includes references to other work, these should be given in full at the end.
Submissions for papers or posters will be considered until the programme for a meeting is full.
Please note that the EPS has now adopted an OPT-IN system for printed materials, and thus will no longer send out paper copies of Meeting programmes by default. The full programme will be made accessible online prior to each Meeting, and a larger number of printed copies of programmes will be available for attendees to pick up at Meeting sites. If hard copies are required, would members please update their preferences at https://eps.ac.uk/opt-in-for-paper-programmes-handbooks/ or contact the EPS Administrator with details.
Papers by guests may be submitted, with either sponsorship by a member of the society or if the member is a co-author. In this case, the sponsoring member will be confirming that the non-member can deliver a high-level presentation, and thus should check that the abstract conforms to the conventions set out below before submitting it. The member should undertake to be present when the paper is delivered, or contact the EPS Administrator to organise a replacement sponsor.
Oral Presentations
It is important that speakers being introduced to the Society should be rehearsed in the home Department, both to ensure clarity of presentation and strict adherence to time limits. We allow twenty minutes for the presentation and ten minutes for questions.
Care should be taken in the preparation of slides and overheads. A good rule of thumb is that text in slides should be a minimum of 20 point size. The axes of graphs should always be labelled. As a courtesy to members of the society who are colour blind, figures should be prepared with discriminable black-and-white symbols and line-patterns, or without using red and green colours on the same graph. Photocopying of ordinary, typed material is most unlikely to be acceptable.
Data projectors for showing PowerPoint presentations will be provided at meetings.
Poster Presentations
Posters will normally be maximum size A0 portrait, but please check the Meeting Programme for relevant instructions.
Poster presentations will be held in conjunction with the drinks reception which will be advertised in the relevant meeting programme.
The EPS is introducing the capability to submit and present ‘Research Plan Posters’ at future EPS Meetings.
What are Research Plan Posters?
Research Plan posters give the opportunity to report and receive feedback on plans for studies yet to be undertaken, rather than for work that has already been completed.
There are many potential benefits to researchers at all stages of presenting their work as a Research Plan Poster, in particular that they can:
- Provide an opportunity for feedback from the EPS community on research at a stage that is arguably most useful – i.e. prior to starting any data collection (pilot data is allowed).
- Increase opportunities for collaboration.
- Give the chance to receive advice on how to carry out statistical analysis on early data.
- Promote Open Science, the integrity and the reproducibility of experimental psychology research.
How do I submit a Research Plan Poster abstract?
Please use the same abstract submission portal for all poster abstracts. During the application process, please select that your poster is to be submitted as a Research Plan Poster and tick the declaration that you agree to not collect any data until after the plan is presented at an EPS meeting.
Research Plan titles must be written using the following format: Research Plan – [TITLE].
What should I include in a Research Plan Poster abstract?
Abstracts for Research Plan Posters should describe planned studies – studies that are only planned at the time of submission. Data collection is expected not to start until feedback on the plan has been received at an EPS meeting (pilot data is allowed).
Abstracts must include the following sections:
- Introduction (background, context, reasons for carrying out the study, hypothesis etc)
- Methods (how the hypothesis will be tested)
- Approach for statistical analysis (what are the primary outcomes, how will the data be analysed, what statistical tests will be used etc)