YSC Abstracts Guidelines

These instructions aim to provide you with guidelines on how to prepare and write a good abstract.

Please note that in order to be able to submit an abstract for the YSC, you have to register for both the YSC and the main PSWC.

What is an abstract?

An abstract is a short statement about your research/work designed to give the reviewer(s) and the congress attendants a comprehensive yet concise understanding of your research/work.

What is an abstract for?

The submitted abstract will have two main audiences, each with unique needs and expectations:

  1.  Abstract Reviewer(s). Based on the submitted abstract, the reviewer(s) will decide if your abstract is accepted for presentation or rejected. The presenting author is invited to indicate a preference for oral or poster presentation. However, the screening officers will make the final decision based on the quality and suitability of the abstracts and availability of space [for the poster] and time [for the oral presentation].
  2.  Congress Attendants. Based on your abstract, they will decide whether or not to visit your poster, ask questions regarding your research and/or attend your possible short oral presentation. Congress attendants may read hundreds of abstracts to determine which posters to see. Since this screening is made quickly, abstracts should include key words on the area of work so that attendants may quickly determine posters of interest.

Overall structure of an abstract

Your abstract must be submitted in ENGLISH. If you are not a native English speaker, you are advised to have your abstract reviewed (for language) preferably by a native English speaker before submission.

Your abstract title should be concise and should not include phone number, email or website addresses. Please consider that the majority of your readers are not native English speakers, therefore avoid any play on words in the title and opt for simple sentence construction;

The abstract should include the following elements:

  • Background information: why is this important? What are the aim and objectives?
  • Methods: this part should explain the methodology used for your work/study (including study design and experimental methods);
  • Results: it should be a summary of the achievements of the work and/or the major findings of the study. Note that all the major findings should be included in the abstract.
  • Conclusion: you should summarize the overall findings, the possible improvements of the methodology and if/how this work is part of an overall strategy /research.

In other words, an abstract should tell the reader WHY you conducted the research, WHAT you did, HOW you did it, WHAT you found and WHAT it means.

Your responsibility

You are requested to:

  • Insure that all listed co-authors have reviewed the abstract, taken responsibility of its contents and accepted to be co-author.
  • Make sure that all your co-authors are listed on the abstract form (on the dedicated page and in the right column for listing co-authors).

Tips for a good abstract

General tips

It is often considered that an abstract should follow the Four C's of abstract writing:

  • Complete: it covers the main part of your research/work.
  • Concise: it contains no excess words or unnecessary information. A good tip to be concise is to write down a first draft and to delete as many unnecessary words and sentences as possible.
  • Clear: your abstract should be easily read, well organised and without too many jargon words (a reader does not want to wade through complicated terms in the abstract). Consider the PSWC Congress attendants (Pharmaceutical scientists) and target your abstract accordingly.
  • Cohesive: that is to say the different parts of your abstract are properly linked.

Presentation

  • Try to avoid abbreviations as much as possible. If you use abbreviations, place them all in parenthesis after the full word the first time they appear in the text. Try to avoid abbreviations as much as possible.
  • Use numerals to indicate numbers (1 instead of one) except if it is the first word of a sentence.
  • Do not include endnotes or graphics/figures in the abstract.
    • Tales are allowed up to a maximum of 3. Tables will only be accepted if they do not exceed 1 MB and are only accepted when saved as image in a .jpg format
    • The mage should have a density of preferably 300 but at least 150 dpi.
    • The images will not be integrated in the text, but will appear underneath the abstract text.
  • Proofread your abstract several times.
  • It is of interest to test your abstract before submitting it. Ask a colleague (or a member of your family) to read it and to tell you what your work was on. If he is not able to explain it clearly, your abstract may need to be revised.

Submission of your abstract 

The submission of the abstracts must be made using the dedicated website abstract on line form. Paper submissions, faxed or e-mailed abstracts will not be accepted.

If you have prepared your abstract in a Word document, make sure that no changes have been introduced through copy/pasting into the submission form. 

By submitting an abstract, the author(s) agree to allow publication of submitted information at the FIP website and in publications. Authors of abstracts invited to present their work through a short oral presentation grant permission to FIP to display their presentation for future distribution.

Requirements for your abstract:

  • The maximum length of the abstract is 1700 characters (including spaces), excluding the title and excluding the name(s) and institutes/companies of the authors and co-authors.
  • Abstracts should preferably contain previously unpublished results.
  • Whenever possible, use non-proprietary (generic) names for quoting a drug.
  • It is not allowed to actively promote commercial entities, products or services on a poster at the PSWC Congress. These direct commercial activities are reserved for the Exhibition.

These requirements for abstracts and the PSWC guidelines for posters are available on the PSWC Congress website.

After submission

After the submission of your abstract, a review process will take place. The goal of such a process is not to set a competition for a limited number of slots but to ensure that all abstracts presented meet minimum professional standards and reflect a good work. Such standards are reflected in these guidelines.
This process review will be applied uniformly to all abstracts.

The most frequent reasons for rejecting an abstract could be:

  • Not properly written or not understandable
  • No new information provided
  • Preliminary work not yet finalised
  • Promotional in nature
  • Previously published
  • Duplicate of another abstract

Congress registration

Abstracts will only be accepted for publication if the presenting author has registered and paid for the YSC as well as for the main PSWC before 1 March 2017. After 1 March 2017 the abstracts of presenting authors not registered and paid will be cancelled; these abstracts cannot be presented and will not be published.

Deadline

1 April 2017!

 

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