How do they choose?

As a speaker, the RTC committee process for selecting abstracts has always seemed somewhat mysterious.  Why did my abstract get rejected for ANZ but accepted for NA? Why did the 3 abstracts I submitted one year all get rejected and then all of them the next year get accepted? I’m sure many of you have your own questions.  This year, as a new committee member it will be my first opportunity to see behind the scenes and be part of that selection process.  I thought it might be interesting to share with the RTC community something about how the process works and asked RTC ANZ Committee Chair, Chris Needham to give us some insight.

After the abstracts are received they are divided up between the committee members.  Each abstract will initially be reviewed by at least 2 committee members.  First we each rate a selection, qualitatively and quantitatively. Weighted scores and comments added to big table of abstracts.  There is a giant spreadsheet to manage this process. …