Acceptance of summaries in series? Is it possible? In which context?

The essence of a scientific event is the sharing of knowledge. It shares this knowledge through the different communications that compose it. In logistical terms, this implies the reception of communications from participants and their validation. Usually the communications are grouped in Oral or Poster (there are many more formats).

In small congresses, up to 250 participants, communications are not normally assigned by different reviewers, and the organizing and scientific commission is responsible for managing the selection process. After a decision is made, the decision is to reject, change the type or accept the papers individually. Finally, in possession of this decision, the participant will confirm his/her participation in the congress.

Usually the acceptance of abstracts is a lengthy process, of appreciation and manual validation. However, it is possible to optimize this process of final validation so that, with one click, it is possible to accept hundreds of abstracts (after the reviewers appreciations).

We estimate that each communication takes about 5-10 minutes in the process of appreciation and revision, so that in a congress with 100 abstracts, between 8 and 16 hours are consumed. Serial validation saves about 3 hours in this final process.

Even in larger congresses with a more advanced review process – with reviewers, the process of final confirmation, acceptance or refusal is usually manual. Here too, serial validation represents a very valuable resource in reducing resources and time spent.

Currently, there are not many applications that do the validation of serial communications so, based on our experience in organizing scientific events, this was one of the components we considered essential when we developed Sci-meet.