Convening a panel is a great opportunity, but also a serious responsibility – to presenting colleagues, the conference, the field. We have tried to itemise below the various aspects of convenors’ work we’d like you to keep in mind over the conference process. Please get in touch if you have questions or need further clarification on any of this.

The call for papers has been launched as a fully open call, meaning that all panels are open to all proposals, not only known colleagues from the convenors’ previous networks. If your panel proposal has pre-identified particular papers or presenters, we would ask you to redraft the language so that you can consider other papers that might be submitted to your panel in this open call. Anyone already contacted about presenting in your panel must also submit their proposal at this stage, in order to be considered. 

We would like you to:

• ensure you’ve read the Call for Papers page
• ensure you’ve read and remember the Convenor requirements on the info page
• facilitate publicising the call for papers from your end
• be prompt on marking up your papers (but only once the call closes on 26 January – please do NOT mark any before the deadline!)
• communicate closely with your authors and discussants/chairs, answering their questions, reminding them to register, figuring out the best sequence of presentations, advising newcomers on the length of presentations, discussing scheduling, keeping your eye on author and discussant/chair registrations and marking up and informing us of withdrawals.

Panel details

To view your panel, go to the RAI 2024 website and click on the login link (upper left corner), using your email and password when prompted to enter the platform. We suggest ticking ‘Remember me’ to stay logged in, if using your own computer, as this makes life easier later.

Once logged in, ‘Log in’ becomes ‘Logged in’ with a drop-down menu. Select ‘conference’ there and scroll till you see your RAI panel title. Click the title to drill down into the detail: title, abstracts and, listed below, any paper proposals.

If you update any fields, remember to click the ‘Save’ button. At this stage the ‘status’ of all proposals is ‘Pending’.

Marking up your panels once the CFP closes

Please do not make any decisions about which proposals to accept before the CFP ends (26 January).  Given that most colleagues work to the deadline, do not worry unduly if your complement of papers seems a little low – most proposals arrive during the final 24 hours of the call.

You can view and even edit individual paper proposals by clicking the eye/pencil icon in the paper titles. However, to read all the proposals you have received, click the ‘Download Paper Review Sheet’ button at the top of the page, to download a PDF of all the proposals.

The CFP is public, so you may receive proposals from people you do not know: please treat all proposals as equally as you can, and do not only accept the proposals you have solicited directly.

At the bottom of the page you will see five coloured boxes with options for the papers:

All the papers will start in the grey “Pending Papers” box. You can drag and drop papers to the different boxes depending on your decision, then click on “Save” to finalise the decision. You can also click on “Reset/Refresh” if you want to start over. Please drag the papers into the order in which you initially wish them to be presented.

Accepted and Rejected are self explanatory, to indicate if you wish to simply accept or reject a paper.

Withdrawn is for when authors inform you or us that they are no longer able to proceed with that proposal or attend the congress. They do not always email us with this news so if you receive such information later in the process, please remember to move their papers to ‘Withdrawn’, so that we know, too.

Transfer is for papers you would like to accept but don’t have space for, or don’t wish to accept perhaps because they aren’t on your theme, but feel should be included somewhere in the congress.  We will try to rehouse the transfer papers in other panels.

Please mark up all proposals by 9 February, do not leave any as ‘pending’. After moving all papers, click on the ‘Save’ button beneath the list.  All accepted papers will immediately show on your public panel page on the congress website, beneath the panel abstract.

Emailing authors – VERY IMPORTANT!

When you mark up a paper, the decision will show in the author’s Cocoa. However Cocoa does not send an email to the author alerting them of the status change, so please do your colleagues the courtesy of sending them an email informing them of your decision.

To make this easier click the ‘Send email’ button at the top of the panel edit page and choose which subsets of authors you wish to write to, and which method you wish to use to generate an email.

Subsequent actions

When all convenor decisions have been made and transfers done, we will allocate your panel the appropriate number of sessions.

If you are aware of any limitations to the timetabling of your panel, please then state those in the ‘Requested timing’ field of the panel edit page. Note that we are already aware via our software of participants’ dual roles as convenors, presenters, chairs or discussants.

Once we’ve allocated your panel the requisite number of sessions, please return to the panel edit page to drag papers into the different sessions and/or to update the presentation order.

As convenors you have editorial control over your contributors’ papers. We will not proof the abstracts, so please ensure that both your authors and yourselves check their abstracts once you’ve accepted them.

Prior circulation of papers

RAI does not require prior circulation of papers; however if you wish to do this for your panel, the panel page can help avoid a lot of emailing to and fro: each author can upload a PDF of their paper (not of their abstract!) into their paper edit page and this is then available to co-panelists for download from your panel page on the site. If you subsequently wish these to be available more widely, please let us know so we can alter their visibility to delegates or public.