Completion of the Symposium Abstract Book

The abstract book has finally arrived! An abstract is a brief overview of a researcher's presentation or research paper and so the Symposium Abstract Book is a compiliation of every single presentation at this year's event.

To most, it may look like ‘just a book’ but for us, it means so much more. The abstract book is a blueprint of the world of MND research at this exact moment in time demonstrating exactly how far we have come in a year. This year’s book includes a gleaming array of overviews from 100 platform and 291 poster presentations which really demonstrate the true international collaborative research effort into MND. To us, receiving the finished abstract book is a momentous occasion to be celebrated, but, the journey of the abstract book begins a lot earlier than this.

In February we opened up our online abstract submission system where researchers, health and social care professionals and clinicians submitted their abstracts for consideration up until Friday 15 May. This may seem like quite an early deadline for a symposium that is held in December, but there was a lot of work to be done and not a second was wasted.
This year, we received a jaw-dropping 417 abstracts by the deadline. All of which were individually reviewed for their integrity by an international group of MND experts collectively known as the Programme Committee who, as the name suggests, compile the programme for the symposium. Once the Programme Committee have reached a decision, their verdict on whether each individual abstract should be accepted or rejected and whether it is accepted as a platform, poster, or a work in progress (which is not published in the abstract book) presentation was disseminated to the authors – a feat not to be reckoned with I assure you!

We then had the mountainous task of collating and editing the abstract book. First, we had to decide upon an order for the abstracts – this included putting each abstract into a specific place where it fits best. We then proof read the abstracts (yes, all of them) for spelling and grammatical errors a total of three times. This takes a considerable amount of time and needless to say our eyes are quite sore by the end of this endeavour! We then finally gave the publishers a thumbs up to create the abstract book and waited in anticipation for it to arrive.

On Wednesday 11 November 2009, half a metric tonne of abstract books were delivered to our door – that’s the same weight as an average sized horse!

So, we finally get to hold the piece de resistance in all its glossy glory. Some of us in the research development team daren’t open it yet though. The last thing you want to do at this stage, after investing so much time and energy, is open it up on a random page to see a spelling mistake staring you in the face. It would be quite disheartening to say the least!

Symposium delegates will be given their own copy of the abstract book in December and hopefully they will all treasure their copy as much as we do.