Help

Log-in

Log in as a new user if you have not already created a user account, or had one created for you. If you have previously submitted an abstract to this conference you should have a user account. If you are a reviewer you should have received log-in instructions from the site administrator. Your email address acts as a username.

You may use any alphanumeric characters in your password, but not spaces. A minimum of 5 and a maximum of 15 characters are allowed.

Main Menu

New Abstract

Select this button to submit a new abstract.

My Abstracts

Select this button to see the list of abstracts you have submitted to this conference. If the submissions are still open you may edit the abstracts and authors, but if submissions are closed, you will be able to edit authors only. To edit an abstract click on the abstract ID.

Edit Contact

Select this button to change your contact details or set a new password.

Conflict of Interest Declaration

All submitting and presenting authors must submit a Declaration of Conflict of Interest (DCOI) form. You only have to complete the form once, even if you are submitting multiple abstracts, but the system will require you to submit the DCOI before submitting your first abstract. To submit your DCOI, select the My Profile button, from the Main Menu, and then select the link to submit a Conflict Statement.

The first part of the form, you are asked if "I HAVE/HAD relationship with a for-profit and/or a not-for-profit organization in the past two years". If you select NO, then proceed to the second part, on the off-label use of drugs and devices, and answer this question. Finally accept the form and submit.

If you answered yes to the firs question, a new section on Disclosure of Interest will appear, with 7 questions on types of relationship disclosures. Please read each disclosure statement, and if it applies to you check the box, and then provide the name of the organization in the first field, and the name of details of the relationship in the second field. If you tick a box to indicate that you have a disclosure for this statement, then you must enter text into both boxes, Do not leave on blank. After completing the disclosure section, answer the question on off-label use, and the accept and submit the form

You may return at any time up to October 9 to update or amend yourDCOI.

After completing the DCOI the system will return you to the Main Menu, where you should select "New Abstract" to continue with your abstract submission.

Authorization and Declaration

Please read the statements and declarationsYou are asked to give your permission for the conference to publish your abstract if it is accepted. As the submitting author you are giving permission on behalf of all co-authors. If you indicate "no", you can still submit the abstract, but it will not be read by the reviewers. If you clicked no, email the Technical Support with your authorization before the close of submission.

Adding Co-authors

Initially the list of authors and affiliations is blank. The system does not assume that the person submitting the abstract is an author, so for most users the first step is to add themselves as an author. Click the "Add Me As Author" link on the top left, and the system will create an author and affiliation record for you based on the contact details already provided. If you are the presenting author change the presenter pull-down from No to Yes to indicate you are the presenter.

To add additional authors click on the "Add Author" link, and then complete the drop down form as required, and then press the Save button. Each new author you add must have at least one Institutional Affiliation (Organization such as University, Corporation, Society, Government Ministry etc.). If that Institutional Affiliation has already been created select it from the pull-down list, or select "Add Affiliation" to create a new one.

Please provide email addresses for authors if possible. All communication with authors is by email. Even if the co-author is not presenting, having email addresses helps when we create the author index. If R. Smith and R.B. Smith of Imperial College London have the same email address we know they are the same person. If you do not know an author's email address, enter “nil” in the email field.

To add an affiliation to the abstract, click on the "Add Affiliation" link. A drop-down screen will appear, where you will enter the affiliation details. To associate an affiliation with an author, select the Affiliation Pull-down for that author and enter the number for that affiliation. Each author may have up to 3 affiliations, but must have at least one.

Authors from Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, Mexico and the USA will see a state/province field appear after selecting their country, and should select the appropriate entry. Authors from other countries should not see this field.

Repeat this until all co-authors have been entered. There is no limit on the number of authors attached to an abstract.

Adding Corporate Authors

If you have an institutional, group, or corporate author (eg. The New York Aids Research Group), click on the "Add Corporate Author" link, and enter the name of the group. Corporate authors have no institutional affiliation, and can not be designated as a presenter. Usually corporate authors are listed at the end of the list of authors.

Number of Presenters Allowed

Each abstract must have at least one designated presenter. The maximum number of presenters allowed is 2. If you need to change the presenter(s) after the close of submissions you may do so by emailing the Technical Support.

Submission Type

The first selection choice you will see is to identify which type of abstract you are submitting. The rest of the submission form may change when you select a submission type. Note that if you change submission types after completing other fields some of your data may be lost, so check all fields before proceeding. If your meeting has only one submission form, you will not see this selector.

Subject

Choose the subject which most closely matches your abstract from the pull down list. The Committee reserves the right to change the subjects, and move abstracts between subjects as it sees fit.

Requested Presentation Type

Please select your desired presentation format from the choices available. As the number of oral presentations available is usually much smaller than the number requested, those choosing oral will be offered other formats if not accepted for an oral. However the Committee will take note of your preference. If your meeting is using multiple submission types, you may no have Presentation type choices to make on all (or in fact any) of the submission types.

Title of the Abstract

Enter the title of your Abstract. Please Use Upper and Lower Case Letters for your title. DO NOT USE ALL CAPITALS. The maximum number of characters allowed in a title is 150. If you exceed the character count the character counter will turn red. If you try and submit a title that is over limit you will receive see an error message and will be unable to submit the abstract.(Tip, you can copy and paste the Title from your word processor file if you don’t want to rekey it).

Do not use bold in your title. If at all possible try and avoid using subscripts and superscripts in titles. If you have used italics in your title the formatting will have disappeared when you pasted your title in the field. To reapply italics you should add html italics tags <em> and </em>, around the text to be italicized. For example to italicize Campylobacter you would enter: <em>Campylobacter</em>.

Input Body of your Abstract

There are two ways to input the body of your abstract. You can key it into the box or boxes provided, just as you would with a text editor or word processor, or you can copy and paste it from the word processor file you have already prepared.

To copy and paste, open your word processor file, and select the body of your abstract with your mouse (do not include the authors or title, as you have already entered these). Copy the selected text, on a PC press Control C, Mac users use Command C, or select “copy” under the edit menu of your software. After you have copied the text, return to your browser, place the cursor at the top of the input box, and select “paste” from either the edit menu of your browser, or on a PC press Control P, on a Mac, Command P. If you use right mouse buttons to perform the copy and paste you may see a small paste button appear, leading to an intermediate input box where you will have to paste your text and then press OK. This is simply a security feature in your browser intercepting the mouse button paste, and requiring you to manually press an extra OK button. It does not indicate any problem, and has no impact on what you paste.

Subheads

Each box is for a separate subhead, such as Introduction, Methods, Results, Conclusions, etc. Follow to labels to determine which text should go into which box. The system will automatically insert the subhead for you, so don't include this in your text.

Formatting Abstract Characters

When you paste the text into one of the abstract boxes, we try and preserve any character formatting you applied in your word processing file. The copy and paste should preserve bold, italic, underline, superscript (m2) and subscript (CO2). Any other formatting should be ignored (see below for bulleted lists). These character formats will have been translated in HTML mark-up. You can see the html code by pressing the Source button. You can edit the html code directly if you wish, but caution that if you break the tags you may lose formatting. If you do have problems simply delete the pasted text and re-paste.

If character formatting does not copy and paste in correctly, or you are keying directly into the boxes, them you may use the Formatting Bar to correct character formatting. B for bold, I for italic, U for underline, X2 for subscript, and X2 for superscript.

Greek or Math Symbols

Unless your computer has a very old operating system then you should be using Unicode typefaces, and all Greek, math and other symbols should copy and paste into your abstract without difficulty. (The site uses the UTF-8 standard). If you have an older computer, or are using a non-unicode typeface, Greek or math symbols in your abstract may substitute with some other character when you paste the text into the input box. Check to ensure that all Greek, math and other uncommon symbols have been captured correctly.

If you have a character substitution, you can use the provided special character link to apply Greek and math symbols. For example: If you have an old computer, or are using a non-unicode typeface, and had a β (Beta) in your abstract, it will have been replaced with a “b” when you pasted the text in the input window. This happens because your browser can only work in a single typeface at a time, and if it is the old 255 character style typeface, the browser will convert the beta into the default character mapped to the b key in your system – which will be b. To reapply the β, place your curser where you wish to insert a beta, and then click on the Ω button in the formatting bar. A pop-up window will appear with the complete Greek alphabet, common math operands, diacritic characters and other commonly used symbols. To input a beta, double click on the β, and a β character should appear where you had placed your curser. If you look at source code you should see that this has inserted the html character code &beta;, which all browsers recognize as a β.

Users with Asian or Arabic operating systems should pay close attention to Greek and math symbols, as your typefaces may not be Unicode. Use a Unicode typeface if possible.

If you need a character not found in the table, and you can't copy and paste in, email the Technical Support with the details. They will insert the correct character for you.

Bulleted and Numbered Lists

If you create a bullet list or numbered list using the built-in formatting buttons in MS Word, your lists should copy and paste in correctly, and be converted to their html equivalents - an unordered list and an ordered list. If you look at the source code a bulleted list will appear as:

<ul>
<li>Point 1</li>
<li>Point 2</li>
<li>etc.</li>
</ul>

While a numbered list will appear as:

<ol>
<li>Point 1</li>
<li>Point 2</li>
<li>etc.</li>
</ol>

On your screen it should appear as:

  • Point 1
  • Point 2
  • etc.

and

  1. Point 1
  2. Point 2
  3. etc.

If it doesn't look correct on the screen, then something has gone wrong. Try deleting the list and copy and paste again. If it still doesn't look correct, delete the list (check source code to make sure you have it all), and then use the Numbered List and Bulleted List buttons to create the list on the site.

Word Count

As you input your abstract, the system will count the number of words in the abstract, and show the result below the input box. It will also count the number of words in each input box, and place the total at the bottom left of the boxes. If you have exceeded the allowed maximum of 300 the total word count figure will turn red, and you will not be able to submit your abstract. Please reduce the number of words in your abstract until you are below the maximum. If your abstract contains images or tables, each of these will count as 50 against the maximum number.

Why is my count different than shown on screen? All word count algorithms provide slightly different results, so the count you made in your software may be different than the count on this site, particularly when counting lists, and table data. For example in MS Word a bullet character and space after are counted as being part of the next word, and count as one word, while this site counts the bullet character and space after as a word by themselves. Note that in a numbered list, Word counts the number as a separate word. (eg. • point1 counts as a single word in MS Word, but 1. point1 counts as two words). It is the word count on this site that counts, and you must make sure your abstract does not go over this limit.

Note: if you are using bulleted or numbered lists, if you use the html codes for bulleted lists <ul> and numbered lists <ol>, then neither the bullets or the number will count, as they are represented by the html tag <li>, which the algorithm ignores.

Case Reports

Authors submitting Case Reports must include a patient consent form as part of the abstract submission. Use the drag and drop upload at the bottom of the form to upload your consent form.

Submit for Review

After the abstract has been saved, you will be shown a review screen, showing all of the information you have entered, for one last check. If everything is correct, select the “Submit for Review” button at the bottom of the screen. You are now finished and may close your browser.

Save as Draft

If you are not ready to submit, you can save your abstract as a draft, which saves everything to the server, but doesn't commit the abstract, and does not permit the Science Committee to see it. If you save a draft, make sure you come back before the submission deadline and submit your abstract for review.

Please note that the abstract is not finished until you click on the Submit for Review button; before that it is merely saved, but not yet approved for peer review. At close tech support will review all saved but not submitted abstracts, and submit those that appear to be complete.

Logging Out

There is no actual "log out" button. To log out click on the Home Button, or close your browser window or tab.

Inserting Images

If your conference accepts images, and you do wish to incorporate graphics in your abstract, first prepare your file for uploading, ensuring the size, resolution and format are correct. Name your file something meaningful, such as “Smith_R_Fig1.jpg”, not something unidentifiable like “graph.jpg”. Please use an_underscore_instead of spaces in filenames. Then go to the upload graphics section near the bottom of the page. If the upload graphics section is not visible, this means that your conference does not permit the use of images in abstracts.

When ready, upload the graphic file or files simply drag and drop your image file onto the "drop files here" rectangular target area. Your image should start to upload almost immediately, but may take a few minutes depending on the size of the image and your connection speed. When uploaded your image should appear as a thumbnail image above the target. Double click on the image to enlarge the view. Click the Red X to delete the image file. The number of thumbnail images boxes indicates the number of images permitted in a abstract (usually 1 or 2).

If the image does not appear, it means the upload has failed. Try the upload again, and if it still fails, save the abstract without the image, and email tech support.

Note: many firewalls prevent users from uploading a graphic file through their web browser. If you try and upload a graphic, and nothing happens, or you get a strange error message, it probably means your firewall is blocking your upload. If this happens, continue submitting your abstract without the graphic, and then email technical support, citing your name and abstract title, and attach your graphic to the email. Technical support will place the graphic for you. If you cannot attach the graphic to your email, advise technical support, and they will provide instructions.

Preparing Images

The system will actually allow you to upload most formats of image file, as long as it is not an executable file. However some file types, such as tif and eps are not web friendly. The best filetype overall is probably either a jpg or a png, as these offer flexibility in terms of colour depth and resolution, as well as small file size. If your image contains only text, or only a few colors (such as a histogram or a pie chart) a gif file is better. Try and keep file resolutions in the range of 96 - 250 ppi. Too low a resolution will result in poor quality when printed, and too large a resolution will result in a large file size. For most images, about 200 ppi works well. Images should be at least 400 pixels in the smallest dimension, and no more than about 1500 pixels in the largest dimension. Pdf files can be uploaded, but are not really image files, and will not display properly. If you do upload a pdf you will not see image preview, but will see the pdf if you double click the pdf icon displayed. Your pdf will be converted into a png image prior to the start of the peer review, so it is better if you do that conversion before you upload the file. Do not include multi-page pdfs unless directed to by your meeting organizers, as only first page will be converted into a png file.

Word, Excel

Images created in these programs are difficult to work with, and none of them export to a useful file format. However, if you have an image created or even placed in one of these programs, you should be able to copy and past the image into a blank slide in Powerpoint, and from Powerpoint save the slide to any of the desired formats. Make the Powerpoint slide the size you want the final image to be, copy the image into Powerpoint, resize it to fill the slide, and then export the slide as an image.

Equations

Many mathematical applications will allow you to create complex equations and save as an image file or pdf. Unfortunately Microsoft Equation editor does not do either very well. The best way to get an equation out of MS Word is to either create a pdf of the equation, or copy and past it to Powerpoint, and then in Powerpoint right click on the equation, choose Save as Picture, and then save as a png or gif file (not a jpg).

If you are struggling to get an image into one of the desired formats, in a reasonable resolution, email Technical Support for assistance.