All decisions regarding tentative acceptance are rendered in early July.
All sessions that are accepted are initially granted a tentative acceptance. Tentative acceptance allows session organizers to address any concerns brought to their attention by the Scientific Program Committee (SPC). These issues can include the number of presenters, diversity of presenters (affiliations or geography), and more. The SPC also reserves the right to accept a proposal contingent on the Chair and Co-Chair altering the final presentation to the preferred format of the SPC, although the original proposal format suggestion by the proposer is given due consideration before this kind of change is requested.
After a session has been granted tentative acceptance, the session Chair should work with the Co-Chair and all presenters to finalize presentation titles and abstracts—a process known as the Resubmission Phase, which occurs from July to August. Note: for all session types, each session Chair must enter a complete, revised “overall abstract” that fully describes the presentation in detail and incorporates any suggestions from the SPC, as well as entering the individual abstracts for each presenter. Complete instructions are sent in July to all session Chairs for finalizing the sessions.
Final acceptance is granted after a formal round of review of the final session description and individual abstracts by the SPC in mid-September.
The SPC spends many hours discussing and planning the layout of the Monday through Thursday scientific program. Several guidelines are considered during the scheduling:
The SPC considers all these factors and diligently reviews the proposals before finalizing the Scientific Session schedule in late September. When the schedule is released, it is considered final and will not be altered.
While the SPC makes every effort not to schedule two sessions endorsed by the same group at the same time, there are uncontrollable variables that can interfere with the ability to guarantee that sessions on similar topics or endorsed by the same group are not programmed concurrently.
The 165-minute Scientific Sessions are held in the regular morning and afternoon time frames. This limits the time blocks for 80-minute sessions to lunchtime (usually 12:30 pm–1:50 pm) and sunset (usually 5:00 pm–6:20 pm). With the Annual Business Meeting, SOT/EUROTOX Debate, and many SOT Component Group receptions occurring or starting during the sunset time block, the SPC typically prefers to program 80-minute sessions for the lunchtime block.