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Glossary

What Is Abstract Submission?

2 min read
Diverse audience members seated in blue and teal chairs at a conference, wearing identification badges and casual attire.
Reviewers usually score abstracts blind; at ASCCP, three reviewers rate each one from 1 to 5.

Abstract submission is how researchers apply to speak or show a poster at a conference. Each author answers your call for abstracts with a short summary of their study, called an abstract. A review committee scores each one and decides which become talks or posters.

What goes in an abstract

Most abstracts follow the sections of a short research paper: background, methods, results and conclusions. The submission form also collects the title and each author's name and affiliation. Forms often add a topic, a talk or poster preference and a conflict-of-interest disclosure.

Two people in professional clothing holding and reviewing white conference program booklets with blue design elements.
Many calls cap an abstract at 250 to 350 words; EAACI counts characters instead and allows 2,500 including spaces. Photo by Rdne

How abstract submission works

The whole process, from your call to the presenters' final files, is often called abstract management. It usually runs in five steps:

  1. Call for abstracts. You publish the topics, the word limit, the format rules and the deadline.
  2. Submission. Authors submit abstract text and author details in an online form before the deadline.
  3. Review. Reviewers score each abstract against several set criteria, usually without seeing who wrote it. At ASCCP, a US medical society, three reviewers rate every abstract from 1 to 5.
  4. Decisions. The program committee ranks the abstracts by score and assigns each accepted one to a talk or a poster.
  5. Final files. Accepted presenters register by a set date and send their slides or e-poster. A presenter who misses the registration date can lose their place in the program.
Colleagues in business clothing conferring over an open notebook, phones, and a laptop in a hotel event lobby.
Acceptance starts a second job for the organizer: every accepted presenter now owes you slides, an e-poster, or both. Photo by A Darmel

Word limits and deadlines

Many calls cap an abstract at 250 to 350 words, not counting the title and author list. Some count characters instead: EAACI, the European allergy society, allows 2,500 characters including spaces, about 350 words.

Large international congresses often close their call about nine months before the event. Decisions follow one to three months later. Smaller meetings can run much tighter: the Canadian Nutrition Society closed its 2026 call on January 31 and sent decisions on March 11, eight weeks before its May conference.

What it means for the organizer

Once decisions go out, your job shifts to collecting slides and e-posters from every accepted presenter and getting each abstract into the conference program. With Submitto, presenters send their files through one link, and you see who has not sent theirs yet.

FAQ

Questions, answered.

What is the difference between a call for abstracts and a call for papers?

Often there is none. Many conferences use both names for the same process: authors send a summary and a committee picks the talks. The difference is whether you also expect a full written paper. Some calls for papers ask for one, at submission or after acceptance, so it can be published in the proceedings. This is common in engineering and computer science. A call for abstracts asks only for the summary.

Can an abstract be changed after the deadline?

Usually not. Most meetings review, schedule and publish an abstract exactly as it was submitted. The American Society for Mass Spectrometry, for example, tells authors to put new or updated results in their final talk or poster. Authors send small fixes, such as a typo or a change of presenter, to the organizer by a set date.

Are conference abstracts published?

Often, yes. Accepted abstracts appear in the online program and the abstract book, and many medical and scientific societies also publish them as a supplement to their journal. Some only publish abstracts that were presented: EAACI publishes an abstract in its journal only if it was presented and the presenting author registered.

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Sources

Built from the best abstract submission resources, including: