First Call for Symposia to ICE2020Helsinki

Submit symposium proposals by 30 October 2018

General information for symposium organizers 
The ICE2020Helsinki congress will run from 19 to 24 July, 2020, and will be arranged in sections representing major fields of entomological interest. Each section will include a number of symposia.

The ICE2020Helsinki congress intends to attract world-leaders as symposium organizers who will be able to identify cutting-edge topics and to assemble the best-available established researchers, and excellent younger researchers, to present their work. Each symposium will have at least two organizers, one of which will be ‘local’, and one will be designated as being in charge of the symposium. The symposium organizers will decide which contributions are most suited as poster presentations or as talks. The organizers will function as moderators during the oral presentations.

Symposium presentations will be 15 minutes each (including time for questions), allowing for the possibility of one ‘double-presentation’/keynote talk of 30 minutes (i.e. 20 minutes for the talk and 10 minutes for questions/discussion). There will be eight presentations per symposium (or seven if a keynote talk is included). Oral presentations will be given daily from 9:00 to 11:00, from 13:00 to 15:00, and from 15:30 to 17:30. Plenary presentations will be scheduled from 11:00 to 12:00. Topic-specific, 5-minute, separate ’pitching talks’ (4 minutes for the talk and 1 minute for turn-around time), may also be arranged during or at the end of each regular symposium session. The ‘pitching talks’ will be videotaped, streamed to large screen(s) in the poster/exhibition area, and stored on the congress website for later access (if the individual presenters agree to this.)

Concerning financial arrangements, the policies used at ICE2016 in Orlando, Florida will be followed: each contributor will have to pay his/her own registration fees. Symposium organizers will be encouraged to raise funding from sponsors, foundations, and institutions for their symposia. These funds, up to a limit of €5,000 (US$6,000) per symposium will be used to pay the expenses associated with organizing and running each symposium, including support for the symposium organizers and for the speakers. Funding from sponsors in excess of €5,000 per symposium will be allocated by the ICE2020Helsinki organization for general expenses (e.g. rental of facilities, equipment, support-personnel, and to provide some recompense for participants and students from designated countries). The general ICE2020Helsinki congress organizational funding will not be used to support symposium organizers or the invited speakers. Formal acknowledgements of sponsorships (at the venue or in the Congress website and publications, for example) by ICE2020Helsinki will be appropriate to the levels of sponsorship received.

Symposium organizers will be encouraged to initiate and arrange for publication of the proceedings in suitable journals, in special issues of journals, and/or in books that highlight advances in the topics presented at the congress.

Submitting symposium proposals

Proposals to organize a symposium at ICE2020Helsinki should be submitted by the on-line submission system (https://submit.peerageofscience.org/conference/ICE_2020). Proposals should include:

  • a brief background/justification of why the chosen topic is timely, interesting and appropriate;
  • the names of the proposed symposium organizers (naming the lead organizer);
  • a preliminary, and perhaps incomplete, list of speakers and the provisional titles of their talks;
  • tentative plans for symposium sponsorships; and
  • plans in respect of publication of the symposium proceedings.

Please submit your proposals by 30 October 2018. Decisions about acceptance of the symposium proposals will be announced after consultation with the ICE2020Helsinki Scientific Committee and the Section organizers. Further calls will be made later, upon advice from the ICE2020Helsinki Scientific Committee and the Section organizers.

Invitations to potential speakers

Once a symposium has been accepted, symposium organizers will invite their selected speakers to participate. All presenting authors must be registered congress participants, and only one presentation per participant will be allowed (but registered attendees may be non-presenting contributors to any number of talks/posters.)

Promoting the symposia

The ICE2020Helsinki organizers will announce and advertise all accepted symposia in the congress website, and in other congress communications (ICE Newsletters, etc.). Symposium organizers will be expected to promote their symposia by any appropriate means (e.g., special events or meetings, personal websites, working-group websites, etc.).

Proposals for contributed papers by individuals

Individual scientists who are registered to attend ICE2020Helsinki may submit proposals for inclusion of their oral presentations. If time allows, selected, cognate talks will be grouped into “Contributed paper symposia” or incorporated by the symposium organizers into their symposia.