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The Organizing Committee estimates a total attendance between 5,000 and 10,000 at the Congress in Florence. About 50 scientific sessions will be held daily from 21 to 28 August 2004, for a total of about 350 sessions.

Scientific Program
The Scientific Program is divided into Symposia, Topical Sessions and General Sessions. IGCP Project 433 final project meeting is scheduled as the General Session G - 20.11

General Sessions are open to all interested participants, and therefore include only volunteered oral as well as poster presentations.

As a rule, all the sessions will have a half-day duration, and will include up to ten standard oral presentations. Standard oral presentations have a 15 minute duration, including time for questions. However conveners may wish to program a half-hour keynote presentation and/or allot the final 15-minutes to discussion. Shorter and longer sessions of five and twenty standard oral presentations are possible, but these will be scheduled only if the number of abstracts submitted is very large. Any change of format will be arranged if necessary on instruction of the Scientific Program Committee immediately after the deadline of abstract submission (i.e. January 10, 2004). This implies that, until January 10, conveners should arrange their work in terms of half-day sessions.

The Scientific Program Committee advises the conveners of general sessions begin to encourage the submission of volunteered abstracts. The 32nd International Geological Congress is using a new abstract management system in which the submission, review process, and final construction of the technical program is handled electronically (by accessing the congress web site).

Abstract submission
Authors may submit abstracts for oral or poster presentations to the 32nd IGC from May 01, 2003 to January 10, 2004, indicating two sessions in priority order. Each abstract must be submitted by the person who is going to make the oral or poster presentation (presenter). Each presenter can submit only one abstract for volunteered oral presentations, but there are no restrictions for invited oral presentations. Of course, a person who is not the presenter may be co-author of more that one abstract. There are no limitations on the number of posters submitted.

All abstracts must be submitted electronically. Only the presenters who do not have internet access, can submit their abstract on a paper form. Paper forms for the 32nd IGC can be obtained from the Scientific Secretariat: Phone/Fax: +39 055 2382146, casaitalia@geo.unifi.it.

Review process
Each of the almost four hundred sessions planned will be overseen by two or three conveners, who are expected to co-chair the sessions. The conveners of each session are responsible for selecting the abstracts submitted for oral and poster presentations. All the conveners are allowed to manage the system, but the corresponding convener (indicated with an asterisk before her/his name in the Scientific Program) is the only one allowed to close each step. Closure by the corresponding convener must therefore be preceded by a joint decision among all co-conveners. A special time slot has been reserved for poster presentations on the afternoon of each day after the end of the oral sessions, with the express purpose of focusing attention on this important form of communication.

The abstract review processes will take place from January 11 to February 29, 2004. Following the completion of the review, the electronic system will inform each presenter of acceptance, session allocation, and mode of presentation of his/her abstracts.

Presenters of accepted abstracts must meet the payment deadline for Congress registration fees of March 31, 2004. In the case of non-payment, abstracts will be canceled from the Scientific Program and Abstract Volume. The Scientific Secretariat will only consider motivated written requests to pay after the deadline.

To prevent "no-shows", conveners are asked to alert two or three poster presenters so that they will be ready to present their poster orally.

Presentation Modes
Oral presentation. Within General Symposia, 15 minutes (12 minutes plus three for discussion) will be allocated for standard oral presentations.

Poster presentation. A special time slot has been scheduled on the afternoon of each day with the express purpose of focusing attention on this important form of presentation. Posters should be set up for display on the day when the related oral session is scheduled. The presenters must stand by the poster booth during the poster session, which will be held from 5.00 to 6.30 p.m., and are also encouraged to be present during lunch time (12.45 - 02.15 p.m.).

Subsidies
IGCP Project 433 will provide some financial support to members of the project whose oral or poster presentation are accepted by the Scientific Committee of the Congress. Authors of abstracts submitted for the General Session G - 20.11 should sent a copy of the abstract and a request for support to Edward Lidiak (egl+@pitt.edu) and Manuel Iturralde-Vinent (iturralde@mnhnc.inf.cu) in due time.

Proceedings
IGCP Project 433 intend to publish a volume containing the contributions submitted to the session. Additional contributions besides the ones submitted to the session will be accepted, in order to reach an adequate number of manuscripts and to cover the whole profile of the project.

This page last modified: March 10, 2003