If At First You Don’t Succeed – RTC News

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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…

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