Your abstract is the only piece of your work which conference organisers look at to make a decision on whether it should be included in their conference or not. Then, if successful, participants will only have your abstract to read to decide whether to attend your session or not at the actual conference.

The purpose of an abstract is to summarize the main points of the research you are going to present. You need to convince the conference organisers that your research is relevant and valuable for their conference. The abstract needs to be focused and clear in explaining your research. Your abstract should contain these main elements: topic and title, the purpose of your research, your method, your results and your conclusion.

  • Abstract Topic: How will your topic fit into the conference theme?
  • Abstract Title: The title needs to be interesting and grab people’s attention. It should state your topic clearly. Ideally, your title should be 12 words or less for impact.
  • The Purpose/Problem: This section should summarise the background to your research and title. Why is your research important?  What are the difficulties in this area? If you have one, you should include your research question here.
  • Method or Design: This is where you should describe how you approached solving the problem you encountered. What design did you use for your study? What were the parameters of your study?
  • Predictions and/or Results: You can explain here what your predictions were for your study. If you have any results, include a summary of the main points in this section. What trends did you discover?
  • Conclusions and/or Summary: Do your results mean anything? Are they specific or can they be generalised? Will they contribute to your field in any way? Summarize your findings in a clear and concise way.

Other Tips

  • Ask a friend to edit your work – someone else’s opinion is always helpful to ensure you have not overlooked something obvious.
  • Be concise – There is a limit of 250 words for the abstract so make sure you cut out any words or phrases which are not needed. Keep sentences short. The VIDM conference is interdisciplinary – try to stay clear of jargon specific to the field you work in.
  • Prepare early – if you prepare early then you have plenty of time to review and edit your submission. We get a lot of submissions so cannot accept late submissions – submit your abstract early to ensure you meet the deadline in good time!

Availability

The VIDM conference runs over 24 hours covering all world time zones. We often have two sessions running at the same time. It can be quite complicated to prepare the conference timetable and take all this into account. You need to be clear as to which times you could present and which time zone this is in. The more flexible with your time you can be, the easier it can be to fit your presentation in to the timetable if you are successful. We need the earliest to the latest times you could present.

Category 

This allows the organisers and participants to determine whether you are presenting some research, a study or facilitating a discussion around a topic or paper.

Format

The VIDM is proud of the diverse nature of its conference. You need to decide whether your abstract is for a presentation, a discussion forum, a student café etc.

Keywords

These help participants to find your work once it is published or in a conference timetable. They also give a flavour of what your presentation/research is going to cover. The words you choose should accurately reflect the content of your presentation.