Guidelines and Considerations for Early Career Abstracts

The ASLMS encourages involvement of all Early Career scientists and clinicians. Early Career presenters should first submit to a main session category. If not accepted to a main session, Early Career submitters will have a second opportunity to present in a designated, Early Career session or to submit an ePoster.

DEFINITION OF "EARLY CAREER"

• "Early Career" = Undergraduate students, graduate students, residents, interns, fellows-in-training, post-doctoral fellows, and associates up to 10 years postgraduate.

SUBMISSION PROCESS

• Early Career submitters must first submit their abstracts to a main presentation category (Basic Science, Clinical Applications, Emerging Technologies, Nursing/Allied Health) and indicate "YES" that the presenter qualifies for Early Career.

• Abstracts with Early Career presenting authors will first be considered for presentation in the main session category they were submitted to. If not selected, the abstracts are then referred for a secondary review to the Early Career session or to ePoster.

NOTE - Some Early Career presenting authors may also qualify for an ASLMS Educational Scholarship to support attendance at the Annual Conference. Please see the Educational Scholarship page for application details and deadlines.

DEGREE OF NOVELTY REQUIRED

• All clinical and research topics pertaining to lasers and energy devices in any specialty are welcome. 

• Novelty and quality research will be a priority for acceptance to a main session. If referred to the Early Career abstract session, novelty may not be a primary selection criterion. Instead, abstracts should be interesting and educational for the Early Career audience.

• Case reports, “how I do it”, optimal treatment technique explications, clinical pearls, discussions of adverse events and their management, and appropriate editorials and novel technologies or diagnostic and therapeutic interventions, will be considered.

MULTIPLE SUBMISSIONS FROM THE SAME AUTHORS OR INSTITUTIONS

• While the same resident/fellow may be a co-author on multiple abstracts in the resident/fellow session, we ask that each resident/fellow serve as a presenter only once (i.e., be a subordinate or non-presenting author on other submissions).

• Multiple submissions from different trainees in the same training program are welcome, and will be considered, and the submission of multiple abstracts from a program will not decrease the likelihood of acceptance of a particular abstract. That is, the goal is to have as many resident/fellow presenters as possible, and not to limit presentations to any specific number per program.

NEED FOR SUBSTANTIAL RESIDENT/TRAINEE CONTRIBUTION

• While abstracts need not be novel, they must be the product of significant work by the presenting resident or fellow. Work is defined to include planning, data collection, data analysis, interpretation, and writing.

• At least half of the work of producing the abstract must have been performed by residents and fellows, with the preponderance of this 50% by the presenter. While this criterion is necessarily vague, we ask that submitters respect its spirit.

INCLUSION OF MONITORING SENIOR AUTHORS

• To ensure adequate vetting and quality control, we ask that each abstract submission include at least one author who is a faculty member at the relevant training program, who has had substantial oversight over the abstract preparation process and has reviewed the final product before submission.

• The monitoring senior author should be identified during abstract submission.