Call for Proposals is closed!

<< BACK TO ECSA 2024 WEBSITE

 

HOW TO SUBMIT A PROPOSAL:

Please click "Submit a paper". During the registration process you have to create an account. With this account you can login later, using the login box on the left side, to check your documents, the particpants list or to change your personal data.

If you have any questions, please contact: ecsa2024[at]ecsa.ngo

The registration and submission for the conference is supported by Converia, a conference management application.

 

CALL FOR PROPOSALS:

Introduction

We are delighted that the ECSA 2024 conference will take place on April 3–6, 2024, in Vienna, Austria, hosted by the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences and the Natural History Museum Vienna. For the first time, the ECSA conference will be merged with the Austrian Citizen Science Conference, and therefore offer both English and German speaking sessions and workshops. The theme of the 2024 conference is Change.

ECSA conferences celebrate the citizen science community, offer networking and partnership-building opportunities, and are a biennial highlight in the citizen science calendar. The ECSA conferences are intended for a diverse and vast audience, with the aim of fostering novel connections and cross-pollination across diverse domains of citizen science. Our conferences include a wide range of participants, including citizen science practitioners, researchers, activists, scientists, policymakers, non-governmental organisations, artists, and more.

Change

We are living in a time of rapid change on multiple levels, which some describe as the Great Acceleration in all aspects of life: communication, relationships between people and countries, and environmental changes such as climate change or pandemics. The Oxford English Dictionary defines change as "the act or result of something becoming different", meaning that change itself is neutral. Therefore, change can be perceived differently, depending on one’s point of view. Many changes our societies are facing today have the potential to have far-reaching and potentially irreversible results.

With the motto "Change", we want to highlight the potential of citizen science to facilitate, initiate, observe, document and reflect on change in research and society. We want to discuss both active changes initiated through and the observation of changes monitored by citizen science in all disciplines and by various stakeholders (from citizens themselves to universities’, schools, researchers, NGOs, and museums). Within the realm of citizen science and participatory research, we aim to address these different approaches to change from diverse perspectives. We want to celebrate the many changes - large and small, incremental or significant, on the individual or on a whole society. We also welcome contributions from accompanying research on citizen science and reports from running citizen science projects dealing with change.

The conference welcomes submissions (in the form of abstracts) from both ECSA members and non-members. We especially invite communities that have been underrepresented at previous ECSA conferences, such as makers, do-it-yourself-communities and open science communities.

Please note: All participants of ECSA 2024 have to register for the conference and pay the registration fees*. This includes oral presenters, poster presenters, workshop and training facilitators, and session conveners. If you submit an abstract to ECSA 2024, you acknowledge and agree to pay the registration fee if your contribution is accepted. There will be no possibility to present or convene remotely.

*ECSA members will pay a discounted conference fee. If you would like to become a member, you can join the association via the ECSA website.

Submission instructions

• Length: Each submission should have a maximum of 2000 characters (including spaces). The title should have no more than 100 characters, including spaces. Exception: Focus sessions should have a maximum of 4000 characters since they need to describe in detail what is planned during the focus session (see details below).
• Language: You can submit abstracts in English or German language. All submissions in German will be reviewed by the conference committee members of the Austrian Citizen Science Conference. They will be put together in German-speaking sessions since we integrate the annual Austrian Citizen Science Conference into the ECSA 2024 Conference
• Deadline: The deadline for submitting a proposal is September 30, 2023, 23:59 CEST.
• Review: Proposals will be reviewed by the Programme Committee, and the communication regarding acceptance or refusal will be sent to the corresponding authors in December 2023. We will use Converia for submission and conference management. In the review process, proposals will be accepted or rejected.
• Important, please note: 
  • We expect accepted proposals to be presented by at least one author, who must register for the conference and is responsible for their own travel and accommodation costs. Therefore, we will not include contributions in the programme without at least one author registered.
  • To foster diversity and support early career researchers, a person can only present one conference contribution regardless of the format of the submitted contribution (i.e., you can only give one oral presentation or poster or workshop or training or focus session, but not, e.g., an oral presentation and a workshop. Market place info booths are excluded from this rule, which means you can present at the conference and have a market place info booth as well).

Selection criteria

In selecting contributions, the clarity and effectiveness of communication will also be considered, beyond the scientific quality of your proposal. We, therefore, ask you to prepare your proposal for ECSA 2024 with these criteria in mind and the variety of audiences we want to address.

The conference Programme Committee is evaluating all submissions based on the following criteria:

1. Is the submission dealing with citizen science, either by reporting methods, results, or experiences from a citizen science project, by taking a meta-perspective on citizen science, or by presenting findings of concomitant research on one or more citizen science project? The ECSA Principles serve as a guideline to determine if a submission deals with citizen science.
2. Is the submission addressing the conference motto?
3. Is there an understandable and clear goal of the submission (i.e., is it clear what the authors want to present at the conference)?
4. Only regarding the interactive sessions (workshops, short training, open format and focus sessions):
   1. Are the proposed methods clear, comprehensible, and realistic?
   2. Is the outcome for the participants clear (i.e., are they learning a new method or are they developing something)?
5. Is the submission presenting innovative concepts, methods or results?

The criteria will be evaluated on a 10-point scale, with 10 points being the highest score one can get for each criterion. Your submission needs to get an average of at least 5 points for each criterion from all conference Programme Committee members evaluating your submission to be shortlisted. The conference contributions are selected based on the average scores, starting with the contributions with the highest score. The maximum number of conference slots for the different contribution formats can be found directly in the descriptions of the formats.

Submission formats:

Oral presentation

An oral presentation is a short talk (with or without slides) given by one or two persons in one of the auditoriums. Each talk is 10 minutes long, followed by 5 minutes of discussion. It will not be possible to present remotely. The oral presentations will be located in auditoriums (appr. 200 persons) equipped with a laptop, a beamer and a projection screen. We will have 105 oral presentation slots at ECSA 2024. Details on the oral presentation will be shared with all authors in the acceptance emails.

Poster

A poster combines visual and written elements, printed in a DIN A0 portrait format. Posters must be brought to the conference in printed form. Printing on-site is not possible. There will be two poster sessions: poster session A is scheduled on the 3rd of April, and session B on the 4th of April. Each poster can be set up on the morning of the day the poster is scheduled to be presented during the poster session at the assigned location. During the poster session, the poster authors are expected to be at their poster and answer participants' questions. At the end of the poster session, the presenters must take down their posters themselves. All posters still hanging on Friday, 5th of April, will be disposed of. We will have 80 poster slots at ECSA 2024.
Please note: We encourage poster presenters to upload their poster on Zenodo and share it with the ECSA community previous to the conference. We also offer all poster presenters to send us a 30 second video-pitch until January 31, 2024, that will be shared with all conference participants previous to the conference. Details on the formats will be shared with all poster authors in the acceptance mails.

Short training

A short training is an interactive format where participants learn something new. The trainers use interactive methods to teach new methods or techniques to the participants. A combination of interactive and non-interactive methods is possible if the interactive methods prevail. The short training sessions will be located in seminar rooms (30-50 people capacity), equipped with a beamer, a projection screen, as well as chairs and tables that can be set up freely by the trainers. Please bring your own laptop if you need one. Each training session will be 90 minutes long. Please note: If you plan to invite specific trainers to facilitate your short training, they, too, have to register for the conference and pay the registration fees. In total, we will have 33 slots for short training sessions, workshops or open format sessions at ECSA 2024. Details on the short training will be shared with all authors in the acceptance emails.

Workshop

A workshop is an interactive format where the participants will collaboratively (further) develop something new. The workshop conveners will use interactive methods to facilitate this development. A combination of interactive and non-interactive methods is possible if the interactive methods prevail. The workshops will be located in seminar rooms (30-50 people capacity), equipped with a beamer, a projection screen, as well as chairs and tables that can be set up freely by the trainers themselves. Please bring your own laptop if you need one. Each workshop will be 90 minutes long. Please note: If you plan to invite specific conveners or speakers to facilitate your workshop, they, too, have to register for the conference and pay the registration fees. In total, we will have 33 slots for short training sessions, workshops or open formats at ECSA 2024. Details on the workshop will be shared with all authors in the acceptance emails.

Open format

The open format gives space for focused exploration of topics - surprise us with something new. The open format sessions will be located in seminar rooms (30-50 people capacity), equipped with a beamer, a projection screen, as well as chairs and tables that can be set up freely by the conveners. Please bring your own laptop if you need one. Each open format session will be 90 minutes long. Please note: all involved people have to register for the conference and pay the registration fees. In total, we will have 33 slots for short training sessions, workshops or open session formats at ECSA 2024. Details on the open format will be shared with all authors in the acceptance emails.

Focus session

A focus session is a 4.5-hour format (divided by 2 breaks after 1.5 hours each) dedicated to one specific topic proposed by the focus session conveners. The focus sessions will be located in seminar rooms (30-50 people capacity), equipped with a beamer, a projection screen, as well as chairs and tables that can be set up freely by the conveners themselves. Please bring your own laptop if you need one. During the focus session, the chosen topic can be addressed from multiple perspectives and with mixed formats, e.g., a series of presentations followed by interactive formats. Please make sure that you describe the methods, formats and aim of your focus session in the online form. Please also send a detailed program plan of your focus session including (if applicable) a list of speakers that will attend your focus session as pdf to ecsa2024@ecsa.ngo. Please note: If you plan to invite specific conveners or speakers to facilitate your focus session, they, too, have to register for the conference and pay the registration fees. We will have 3 focus session slots at ECSA 2024. Details on the focus session will be shared with all authors in the acceptance emails.

Marketplace info booth at the Citizen Science Festival (only on April 6)

ECSA 2024 offers the possibility to be part of the Citizen Science Festival to be held at the Natural History Museum Vienna on April 6, 2024, from 10 am (10:00) to 5 pm (17:00). Attendees are invited to submit proposals to present their projects in an interactive format (e.g., science show, exhibit, game, quiz, or experiment) during the festival day. Each project will be assigned to an info booth. The standard equipment consists of a table (140 x 70 cm), 2 chairs, and a pinboard (148 x 120 cm). Socket and Wi-Fi are available. Details on the marketplace info booth will be shared with all authors in the acceptance emails.