Guidelines for Organizers of Special Sessions at Meetings of the Acoustical Society of America

Thank you for your willingness to organize a special session at a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA). This document contains information to assist you in planning the session. Please contact the ASA office if you have questions or need further information: Acoustical Society of America, 1305 Walt Whitman Road, Suite 300 Melville, NY 11747-4502; Tel: 516-576-2360; Fax: 631-923-2875; Email:asa@acousticalsociety.org.

Brief Description of the Technical Program Organizing Process

Chair of the Technical Committee arranges for the session to be listed in the Call for Papers for the meeting.

Special Session Organizer is responsible for providing title and description of scope of session, inviting speakers to participate in the session, providing invited speakers with information about deadlines and other details of their participation and for conveying information about the organization of session to the sponsoring technical program organizer (TPO) to the Technical Program Organizing Meeting (TPOM).

Technical Program Organizer (one is appointed to represent each of the ASA’s Technical Committees) assigns abstracts into special and contributed sessions using the abstract platform, prepares a strawman schedule of their TC’s schedule and attends the virtual organizing meeting (TPOM) to review the technical program of the meeting.  The representative arranges special sessions following the wishes of the special session organizer, where possible. 

Move to separate line:  Technical Program Chair of the Meeting is responsible for the overall organization of the technical program for the meeting including enforcing the deadline for receipt of abstracts and making final decisions on all aspects of the technical program. 

Move to separate line: ASA Office is responsible for receiving all abstracts, special session planning forms, and distributing to Technical Program Organizers. After the TPOM, arranges for the data export to be sent to AIP Publishing for production and publishing the meeting program.  Arranges for the creation and distribution of electronic acceptance notices.                                               

Specific Responsibilities of Special Session Organizers

1. It is the responsibility of the special session organizer to contact the people he/she wishes to invite to participate in the session and thereby determine the feasibility of organizing the session. Typically, you will indicate your initial interest to organize a special session by providing a proposed title of the session at a meeting of ASA held one and one-half years prior to the meeting at which your special session will be held . Final special session plans including the final title, proposed descriptive sentence, and organizers and their email addresses must be submitted one-year before the meeting at which your special session will be held. For some meetings it is necessary to follow an extended planning period, therefore on some occasions you will be asked to submit special session plans following an extended schedule.
2. Within one month after that meeting you will receive information from the ASA regarding the planning of your session including a planning form that must be submitted immediately after the abstract deadline date. You will also be asked to provide a list of invited speakers in preferred order.  Upon receipt of this letter, you should contact your invited speakers to remind them of the deadline for receipt of abstracts and send them the document that contains specific instructions for invited speakers. You will also receive instructions on how to access the abstract database to monitor the invited and contributed submissions to your session.
3. Two weeks prior to the deadline for receipt of abstracts you should remind invited speakers of the deadline date for submission of abstracts and that they should submit their abstract to the ASA by that date and send a separate copy to you.
4. At the deadline for submission of the planning form (usually one day after the deadline for receipt of abstracts), you should send the form and list of speakers in preferred order to your Technical Program Organizer representative to the TPOM and to the ASA Office. The ASA office will let you know if any of your invited speakers have not submitted abstracts or locate missing submissions of authors who you know submitted their abstract before the deadline date.
5. Procedures for the production of the meeting program have changed significantly since the ASA began to accept abstracts electronically. Submission of abstracts after the deadline may result in delays in the production schedule and in the printing and mailing of the meeting program. Therefore, only the Technical Program Chair of the Meeting can authorize the acceptance of abstracts after the deadline date. You must contact the Technical Program Chair of the meeting to determine whether a late invited abstract can be accepted. Late abstracts should not be sent to the representative to the TPOM since they cannot be added to the program at the TPOM without prior approval from the Technical Program Chair.

ASA Meeting Registration Policies

1. Invited speakers who are members of the Society must pay the appropriate meeting registration fee.
2. Invited speakers who are not members of the Society may register for one-day–the day they are scheduled to present their papers–without charge. Invited speakers who wish to participate for more than one day must register at the registration fee set for Nonmember Invited Speakers for the meeting.
3. Student members of ASA are required to pay the reduced registration fee set for the meeting.
4. Students who are not members of ASA are required to pay a reduced registration fee.
5. Support of travel for invited speakers and/or support to cover expenses for any special audiovisual equipment in connection with an invited speakers’ presentation must be discussed with the Chair of the Technical Committee sponsoring the session at the meeting prior to the meeting at which your special session will be held.

Further Information

Questions regarding the planning of special sessions should be directed to the ASA office at Tel: 516-576-2360;  E-mail: asa@acousticalsociety.org. You will be referred to the appropriate person(s) in the planning process.