I’ve wrapped up reviewing all of my assigned abstracts yesterday in one glorious 5+ hour session. With over 350 abstracts proposed and only 90-ish required…well you do the math. About 75% of proposed sessions are rejected.
Why? How? It may seem very mysterious and subjective but it’s really straightforward.
Here’s the multi-step process:
- Personally review assigned abstracts online (not all 350). Basically each session gets a Yes-No-Maybe vote, from at least two reviewers. This leads to the conference calls.
- Series of multi-hour conference calls. Yes-No-Maybe vote based on the comments and questions of the initial reviewers. This leads to the committee workshop.
- Committee workshop. Friday morning. If the session has already received two “No’s” (see Step 1 and 2) then it’s really unlikely to be approved.
- Committee workshop. Saturday morning. Review the Yes and the Maybe. Start to put the “Yes’s” on the wall inside a giant grid and look for gaps in the…