Abstract Submission
Abstracts for oral and poster presentations could be submitted until 30 May 2022.
Late Breaking Submission (Poster Presentations Only)
The late abstract breaking submission (for poster presentations only) is now open and will close 15 July 2022 (NO extension).
Submitting an abstract implies a related registration for the congress according to the current registration fees until 31 July 2022 at the latest.
(Please note: Early registation ends on 31 July 2022, after that date the late registration fees apply.)
Publication of abstracts:
The congress abstracts will be available in the abstract book (online supplement to “Acta Physiologica”), online programme, app and TPS website.
Please note that there will be no printed version of the abstract book (only online, PDF).
Only accepted abstracts from registered participants who paid the the registration fees in full will be published.
You are strongly advised to read the following before submitting your abstract.
(Regular) abstracts can be presented in two ways:
- Oral Communication Presented from a lectern with a set of slides.
To last no longer than 10 minutes, plus five for questions.
If you wish to be considered to give an oral communication, please check the appropriate box when submitting your abstract.
The final list will be selected by the Scientific Programme Committee from the general communications. - Poster Communication Presented from a poster located in the central hub of the congress.
Presenters will be expected to accompany their poster for the full session on the day their poster is scheduled.
Poster Award Competition
Please tick the appropriate box in the abstract submission form if you wish to participate in the Poster Award Competition. You can also check the box if you prefer an Oral Communication. The Oral Communication box has first priority. However, if your abstract is not selected for Oral Communication, you would qualify for the Poster Award Competition if you ticked the box for the Poster Award. Posters will be evaluated by the senior researchers of the individual sessions (usually 10-20 posters). One poster prize will be awarded for each postersession.
Abstract submission information
- Character allowance
- Topics for abstract submission
- Vetting of abstracts for presentation
- What is an abstract?
- Components of an abstract
- The writing process
- Ethical requirements
- Specific details required for experiments involving animals, animal tissues, humans or human tissues
- What makes good tables, figures and references?
Character allowance
The character allowance for a Communication or Symposium abstract is 3000 characters (incl. space characters).
Character count consists of the main body text (including tables). Title, references / acknowledgements, author names and addresses do not contribute to the character count. There is no reduction in character allowance for figures, but for the content of tables. Each special character, space or punctuation mark counts as one character. Any corrections made to an abstract that involve additional text will also be deducted from your character allowance.
Topics for abstract submission
- Respiratory Physiology
- Renal, Epithelia & Membrane Transport Physiology
- Human & Exercise & Skeletal Muscle Physiology
- Education & Teaching
- Metabolism & Endocrinology
- Neuroscience
- Vascular & Smooth Muscle Physiology
- Cardiac Physiology
- Blood Physiology, Oxygen, Stem cells, Regeneration, Molecular Aging
Vetting of abstracts for presentation
What is an abstract?
An abstract is a short summary of your experiment/research. It is a highly structured writing exercise. Like a paper it should contain an introduction, methods, results and conclusions (although these actual headings are not required). Abstracts usually have a proscribed length (3000 characters). This makes them deceptively difficult to write, because they need to convey a lot of information in a very small space. If done well, it makes the reader want to learn more about your research. A sample of a well written abstract that incorporates all the key components and meets all the criteria can be found hereunder.
Components of an abstract
These are the basic components of an abstract in any discipline:
- Motivation/problem statement: What are you studying? Why do we care about the problem? What practical, scientific gap is your research filling?
- Methods/procedure/approach: What did you actually do to get your results? For abstracts there is no requirement to include full experimental protocols. However, sufficient information must be given within the text, or by reference to published work, to indicate how the experiments were performed. In addition, please note the specific details on experiments with animals, animal tissues, humans or human tissues.
- Results: As a result of completing the above procedure, what did you learn? Abstracts must include data and this will be the main component of the abstract. Authors must include within the abstract a clear description of the results and all the appropriate data to support any conclusion they wish to make; an abstract without supporting data will be rejected. If numerical data are presented as mean values, the standard deviations or standard errors should be given; the form used, and the n values must be stated. When statistical significance is shown, the statistical test must be named. For non-numerical data (e.g. Western blots) the number of replicates is required. Data may be conveyed by a combination of Methods and Results ie an outline of the technique used to obtain the data followed by the data obtained. Specific details about procedure and results are omitted unless they are very important. At the congress, authors are expected to present within their Communication all the data described in the abstract.
- Conclusion/implications: What are the larger implications of your findings, especially for the problem/gap identified in step 1?
Many abstracts will also feature tables, figures, abbreviations and references. For helpful hints and specific guidelines see below.
The writing process
It helps, as you write your abstract, to write it methodically, section by section, to make sure that it is complete. At this stage, don’t worry too much about any length requirements for the abstract. After the first draft of the abstract is written, check to see if it fits within any length restrictions you have been given. If it is too long (which is usually the case at this stage of writing), look it over to see where it could be made more concise. For each word or phrase, ask yourself “Is this really necessary? Is there a simpler way I can convey the same meaning?” Don’t use three words where you can communicate the same idea in one. Remove redundancies and unnecessary details, and substitute concise phrases for wordy passages. Keep editing your abstract until it falls within the length guidelines you have been given. Have someone else look over your abstract before you are done. Ask a colleague or supervisor to read the abstract and offer criticism. They can often help pinpoint text that is confusing, wordy or redundant. Finally, make sure to spell check and proofread carefully. A sloppy abstract leaves the reader with the impression that your research might also be sloppy!
Ethical requirements
- For work conducted in the EU/UK, all procedures accorded with current EU/UK legislation.
- For work conducted elsewhere, all procedures accorded with current national legislation/guidelines or, in their absence, with current local guidelines.
- Experiments on humans or human tissue
Authors must tick the appropriate box to confirm that: All procedures accorded with the ethical standards of the relevant national, institutional or other body responsible for human research and experimentation, and with the principles of the World Medical Association’s Declaration of Helsinki.
Specific details required for experiments involving animals, animal tissues, humans or human tissues
For experiments on animals and animal tissues
- abstracts must state the type of animal used (common name or genus) either in the title or text;
- abstracts must include the name, dose and route of administration of anaesthetics used in all the experimental procedures including preparative surgery (e.g. ovariectomy, decerebration);
- for experiments involving a neuromuscular blocker, abstracts must include its name and dose, plus the methods used to monitor the adequacy of anaesthesia during blockade (or refer to a paper with these details);
- when scientifically relevant, but not otherwise, the method of killing.
- Note: In experiments where genes are expressed in Xenopus oocytes, details of oocyte collection are not required.
For experiments on humans or human tissue
- All abstracts must specify, in the title or text, that the work has been done on humans or human tissue.
- Use of non-proprietary drugs or chemicals
- References to non-proprietary drugs should include a brief description of their effects, and also a reference.
What makes good tables, figures and references?
The good features of a table are:
- it is numbered;
- the legend explains key details of the experiment;
- error terms such as standard deviation are clearly stated
- it explains the meaning of unusual abbreviations.
- Tables should provide enough information on what statistical test and significance level were used.
The good features of a figure are:
- it has clearly labelled axes;
- informative legends;
- it has simple symbols/colour codes that can be readily distinguished for different treatment groups;
- its font sizes and line thicknesses are sufficiently large/bold to read;
- it is self-contained.
Abbreviations
All abbreviations must be explained within the text, except those accepted in the field. New abbreviations should be avoided whenever possible. Authors are reminded that a large number of abbreviations within an abstract can detract from the sense.
References
Authors may use either the Harvard (e.g. Smith et al. (2004) within the text, and alphabetically within the reference section), or the Vancouver (numbering from (1) to (5) within the text and in order of citation within reference section) system of citation.
