Call for Abstracts for the ASH Meeting on Lymphoma Biology

The American Society of Hematology (ASH) Meeting on Lymphoma Biology will be held Thursday, August 6, through Sunday, August 9, 2020, in Chantilly, Virginia. The goal of this meeting is to present the best new scientific research in the area of lymphoma biology.

The ASH Meeting on Lymphoma Biology Steering Committee encourages all interested individuals to attend the conference and to submit an abstract for poster and/or oral presentation.

The Steering Committee seeks original papers that address scientific questions, demonstrate new research/developments or contain original scientific results specifically related to lymphoma biology. Abstracts submitted to this meeting are eligible for submission to the 2020 ASH Annual Meeting.

All abstract submissions must be made electronically through ASH's online abstract submission system. The site will open on March 25, 2020. The abstract submission deadline is May 20, 2020, at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time.

Key Dates

Eligibility

To submit an abstract, research and/or studies must fit into one of the ASH Meeting on Lymphoma Biology 2020 Abstract Review Categories.

Any of the following criteria will make an abstract ineligible for presentation at the ASH Meeting on Lymphoma Biology:

• Data are publicly available via major search engines (such as PubMed, Google Scholar, etc.).
• Data are accepted for publication before the abstract submission closing date.
• Data have been or are to be presented at a meeting of 1,000 or more participants before the ASH Meeting on Lymphoma Biology.*
• Contact by corresponding authors, presenters, and co-authors made to known or potential reviewers to promote or otherwise attempt to influence the outcome of the review process.

* Abstracts accepted for presentation or publication for the ASH 2019 Annual Meeting are exempted from the above restrictions.

Note: Abstracts submitted to the ASH 2020 Meeting on Lymphoma Biology are eligible to be re-submitted to the 2020 ASH Annual Meeting.

Abstract Submission Policies

• The presenting author must be one of the co-authors listed on the submitted abstract and serves as the primary contact for all correspondence regarding the abstract, unless otherwise specified under the “Contact Information” section of the online abstract submission system.
  • The presenting author is responsible for:
    • Ensuring that all authors have read the abstract and agreed to be co-authors. Failure to get approval from all authors will result in rejection of the abstract.
    • Notifying all co-authors of any additions, deletions, and changes to the program, as may be communicated by ASH.
    • Obtaining all co-authors’ conflict-of-interest disclosure and copyright transfer information.
    • Forwarding all correspondence to all co-authors, including ASH policies and guidelines and the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) Standards for Commercial Support for Continuing Medical Education (CME).

Conflict-of-Interest Disclosure Policy

• ASH is committed to ensuring the integrity of its scientific, educational, and research programs. The ASH Conflict-of-Interest Policy requires disclosure of any financial or other interest that might be construed as resulting in an actual, potential, or apparent conflict.
• ASH abides by rules formulated by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) that require that you disclose any relevant financial relationship you or your spouse/partner have had within the past 24 months. For this purpose, "relevant financial relationships" are those from which you have received or may receive financial benefit, and which are related to the CME content.
• As a continuing medical education (CME) provider accredited by the ACCME, ASH must ensure balance, independence, objectivity, and scientific rigor in all presentations at the ASH annual meeting.
• The presenting author will not be considered for an oral presentation if he or she owns or is employed by a commercial interest. Please note, a commercial interest is defined as any entity producing, marketing, re-selling, or distributing health care goods or services consumed by, or used on, patients. By completing this section of the online abstract submission, you agree that you have read the ASH Conflict-of-Interest Policy and that you understand and support its intent.
• This policy is not intended to prevent a presentation; it is merely intended to openly identify potential conflicts so that audience members may form their own judgments about the presentation with a full disclosure of the facts.
• Abstracts will not be considered for the program without completion of disclosure information for all authors.

Responsibilities of the Presenting Author

• The presenting author is responsible for obtaining disclosure information from all co-authors.
• All authors and co-authors are required to provide any relevant information concerning personal or professional circumstances and relationships that might reasonably be expected to affect the author's view on the presentation.
• This includes relationships with pharmaceutical companies, biomedical device manufacturers, or other companies whose products or services are related to the subject matter of the presentation topic. If no relevant relationships exist, this must be stated as well.
• As stated above, the presenting author will not be considered for an oral presentation if he or she owns or is employed by a commercial interest. Please note, a commercial interest is defined as any entity producing, marketing, re-selling, or distributing health care goods or services consumed by, or used on, patients.

Authors' Consent and Waiver of Claims

• The presenting author is responsible for obtaining disclosure information from all co-authors.
• All authors and co-authors are required to provide any relevant information concerning personal or professional circumstances and relationships that might reasonably be expected to affect the author's view on the presentation.
• This includes relationships with pharmaceutical companies, biomedical device manufacturers, or other companies whose products or services are related to the subject matter of the presentation topic. If no relevant relationships exist, this must be stated as well.

When to Disclose

Please disclose any relationships or circumstances that might affect or appear to affect the research presented. These relationships include:

• You or any individual with whom you directly share income;
• Any financial relationships and activities that supported the work, which were paid to you or your institution.

What to Disclose

You must disclose the relationship and state the name of the company for each of the following areas in which you maintain a relationship. Exact dollar amounts are not necessary. You will have the option to note if there is no information to disclose or to provide disclosure information pertinent to the abstract. Disclosed information pertinent to the abstract may include the following areas:

• Employment
• Consultancy
• Ownership interests (including stock options) in a start-up company, the stock of which is not publicly traded
• Ownership interest (including stock options, but excluding indirect investments through mutual funds and the like) in a publicly traded company
• Research funding (paid to you or your institution)
• Honoraria directly received from an entity
• Patents and royalties
• Paid expert testimony
• Membership on an entity's board of directors, speakers’ bureau, or its advisory committees
• Any other financial relationship

Off-Label Use

You will be required to note whether your presentation will include discussion of off-label use of products. If so, you must provide a brief explanation.

Embargo Policy

• Abstracts submitted to this meeting are embargoed from the time of submission. This means that the data in the abstract cannot be presented at a meeting with 1,000 or more participants and/or be published once submitted for the ASH Meeting on Lymphoma Biology until the meeting is concluded.
• If the Embargo Policy is violated, the abstract may be withdrawn by ASH from presentation at the ASH Meeting on Lymphoma Biology. Read the Society's Embargo Policy for more information.

Abstract Submission Guidelines

• Abstracts should be written in clear and concise English, so that reviewers are able to focus solely on the scientific merits of the submission. We encourage non-English-speaking authors to have their abstracts checked for grammar and spelling prior to submission.
• It is assumed that the presenting author will have adequate command of English to present and to respond to questions.
• The abstract must address scientific questions, detail clinical observations, or contain primary scientific data.
• All research and studies reported in submitted abstracts that involve human and animal subjects must comply with the guiding principles for experimental procedures found in the Declaration of Helsinki of the World Medical Association.

Clinical Trial Abstracts

• If submitting work concerning a clinical trial, providing the clinical trial registry number is required.
• Interim analysis of a prospective randomized clinical trial will be considered only if it is performed as planned in the original protocol and is statistically valid. If your abstract involves interim analysis, use the Interim Analysis of a Clinical Trial section of the abstract form to explain the details of your study. The reviewers will have this information available during their evaluation.
• Data from the long-term follow-up of previously presented clinical trials may be submitted only if significant new information can be shown. In this case, please use the Updated Analyses section of the abstract form to explain the significance of the new data. The reviewers will have this information available during their evaluation.

Abstract Review and Selection Process

• After the submission deadline, all completed and eligible abstracts will be made available to the ASH Abstract Reviewers for blinded review and scoring, and final decisions will be made by the Steering Committee. Abstracts will be evaluated and scored solely on their scientific merits. Incomplete abstracts will not be reviewed.
• The same study must not be submitted as multiple abstracts. Abstracts that are simply different versions of a single study will be rejected.
• Abstracts deemed exceptional in initial review will be passed on to the ASH Meeting on Lymphoma Biology Steering Committee for further consideration for an oral presentation that would be part of an invited session.

Notification of Abstract Decision

• Notification regarding acceptance or rejection of abstracts will be sent to the presenting author by June 16, 2020 via e-mail; therefore, an accurate e-mail address is critical. If your abstract is accepted, the e-mail will specify whether it is accepted as poster or oral presentation. If you have not received an e-mail notification by June 18, 2020, contact [email protected]. Rejection notifications will also be sent at that time.
• To ensure that you are able to receive e-mail correspondence from ASH, please make sure that your e-mail software can receive mail from the hematology.org domain. You should add [email protected] to your address book. In the event that you don't receive a confirmation e-mail from the abstract system upon submission, you must contact your system administrator and make sure that the hematology.org domain is added to your e-mail address whitelist.
• The decision of the ASH Meeting on Lymphoma Biology Steering Committee regarding acceptance and presentation of abstracts is final.

Presentation and Publication

• All submitted abstracts will be considered eligible for poster presentation. Poster Sessions allow the viewing of a poster illustration of the abstract. Authors are expected to post and remove posters at designated times and to be at their posters to answer questions during the time designated for poster presentations. The author’s attendance during poster presentation time will be monitored.
• The presentation at the meeting must reflect the submitted abstract. In particular, the abstract title, authorship, and scientific content of the presentation at the meeting must match the submitted abstract, although updates on results may be added.
• All abstracts accepted for presentation will be made available only to registered attendees as part of the meeting program.
• Abstracts will not be published or made available to the public in any form.

Abstract Withdrawal Procedures

• If an abstract author decides to withdraw an abstract for any reason:
  • When it is before the abstract submission deadline, the submitting author can withdraw the abstract in the online submission system.
  • When it is after the abstract submission deadline has passed, authors must request to withdraw abstracts via submitting an email to [email protected]. Once an abstract is accepted, a written request to withdraw must be submitted no later than June 23, 2020, to [email protected] if the author decides to withdraw the abstract for any reason. Abstract withdrawal requests received after the deadline will be considered on a case-by-case basis.
• ASH reserves the right to withdraw abstracts that are in violation of the Society’s policies and guidelines, such as those that have been previously published or presented (except at the most recent ASH annual meeting), have been deemed scientifically unsound, or have been found to include inaccurate data, etc.

How to Submit an Abstract

The abstract submission site is open March 25 - May 20, 2020.

All abstracts must be submitted by May 20, 2020, at 11:59 p.m., Pacific Daylight Time. Submissions that are incomplete by the deadline will be rejected.

• Abstracts must be submitted online through the official online abstract submission system. E-mails and word processing files not submitted through the online submission system will not be accepted.
• There is a $60 non-refundable handling fee for submitting an abstract. Payment must be made by credit card; Visa, MasterCard, and American Express are accepted. Purchase orders and checks will not be accepted. The abstract submission fee does not include registration for ASH Meeting on Lymphoma Biology; therefore, all authors planning to attend the meeting must register for the meeting.
• Once you have submitted the title page information, a draft of your abstract will be saved, and you will be able to return to edit and update it at any time until May 20, 2020, at 11:59 p.m. PDT. You will receive an e-mail providing a link to your submission.
• Abstracts cannot be submitted and will not be reviewed without proper payment and completion of all steps of the online abstract submission program.
• Any technical questions regarding the submission process should be directed to [email protected].

Preparing an Abstract for Submission

Selection of Abstract Review Category

• Authors must indicate during online submission the appropriate review category (one only). Please refer to the list of abstract review categories, which provides detailed descriptions of each category, to assist you in selecting the correct abstract classification. Read through all of the categories and select the category most closely associated with your abstract.
• Note that the abstract will be reviewed in the category you selected; there is no re-classification once submission has closed.
• Abstracts submitted to the wrong category are scored in that category and usually fare poorly.

Contact Information

• Your name, degree, institution, address, phone number, and e-mail address must be provided. As the corresponding author, you will receive all future correspondence from ASH.
• The corresponding author should be the first author (presenter) of the abstract, unless otherwise noted during submission.

Co-Authors

• Names of co-authors and institutions must be provided. The program will automatically place an asterisk (*) after the name of each non-member author. Changes will not be made to the spelling of authors’ names after the submission deadline; please proofread your co-authors’ names carefully.

Copyright Policy

Authors assign copyright of the abstract to ASH upon submission (unless one of the authors is a U.S. Federal employee—in such case, ASH does not hold copyright) for use in the Meeting on Lymphoma Biology meeting materials. Authors retain copyright for all other uses after the meeting.

Abstract Title

• The abstract title should be brief and clearly indicate the nature of the abstract.
• The abstract title must be in title case. Capitalize all nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, and subordinate conjunctions (i.e., as, because, although). Except for the first word of the title, lowercase all articles, coordinate conjunctions (i.e., and, or, nor), and prepositions, regardless of length. Also, lowercase “to” when used as an infinitive.
• Additionally, keep letters lowercase if the lowercase letters have a specific meaning, such as pH or NaCl.
• Do not put a period at the end of the title.
• For example: Somatic Mutations in Schinzel-Giedion Syndrome Gene SETBP1 Determine Progression in Myeloid Malignancies

Use of Product Names

• Non-proprietary (generic/scientific) names should be used and should be lowercase.
• If necessary, you may include a proprietary name in parentheses directly following the generic name after its first mention in the body of the abstract; the first letter of the name of a proprietary drug should be capitalized. ASH reserves the right to replace proprietary names with generic names to adhere to this policy.

Abbreviations

Use standard abbreviations. Place abbreviations in parentheses immediately after the first mention of a term or phrase; the abbreviation can then be used throughout the abstract.

Abstract Body, Tables, and Figures

• Abstracts will be typeset from the text submitted by the author without copyediting changes. It is the responsibility of the author to proofread the abstract carefully.
• The entire body of the abstract, excluding tables, must not exceed 3,800 characters. Spaces are not included in this number. Title, authors’ names, affiliations, figures, and tables are not included in the character count.
• The abstract may be structured (i.e., abstracts divided into sections using terms such as Introduction, Methods, Results, Conclusions, etc.) or unstructured.
• Do not use bold type or underline formatting. Italic type is acceptable.
• Text may be in multiple paragraphs.
• Special Greek and mathematical symbols are available in a character map within the submission system.
• Use numerals to indicate numbers, except when beginning sentences.
• Any tables and figures that you wish to include must be uploaded as a single image. Do not paste a table directly into the text of the abstract, but rather include it as an image in the appropriate place and use the Upload method to submit your abstract. To convert a table to an image, we recommend taking a screenshot of the table. If using a PC, use the Snipping Tool or the Print Screen button. If using a Mac, press Command-Shift-4.
• Any references should be noted as citations within the text and not as footnotes at the end.

Lymphoma Biology Abstract Awards

ASH supports awards for high-scoring abstracts submitted by hematologists-in-training. All hematologists-in-training, who are both first-or-last author and presenter of the abstract, may request to be considered for a Lymphoma Biology Abstract Award.

To request award consideration, identify yourself as a hematologist–in-training (undergraduate student, medical student, graduate student, resident physician, or post-doctoral fellow) and opt-in to the award process in the online abstract submission system.

Eligibility

• Undergraduate students, medical students, graduate students, resident physicians, and post-doctoral (MD or PhD) fellows who are both first-or-last author and presenter of the abstract are eligible for a Lymphoma Biology Abstract Award.
• Lymphoma Biology Abstract Awards are merit-based awards in the amount of $500 offered to trainees with high-scoring abstracts.
• Award recipients must attend the meeting and present their abstract to receive their award.

Note: Abstracts that receive a Lymphoma Biology Abstract Award at the ASH Meeting on Lymphoma Biology are also eligible for Abstract Achievement Awards if re-submitted to the ASH Annual Meeting.

Electronic Signature

Completion of all required disclosure information in the online abstract submission system serves as an agreement and is accepted in lieu of a faxed signature. It certifies the ASH abstract submitter's understanding of the rules for participation contained in the online abstract submission program and affirms that:

1. All authors approve of submitting this work for presentation;
2. The author(s) assign(s) copyright of the abstract to ASH upon submission (unless one of the authors is a U.S. Federal employee—in such case, ASH does not hold copyright) for use in the Meeting on Lymphoma Biology meeting materials. Authors retain copyright for all other uses after the meeting;
3. All authors have read the ASH Abstract Conflict-of-Interest Policy and have acted in accordance with that policy;
4. The author(s) agree(s) to materially confine the presentation to information in the abstract, if accepted for presentation. If an author has more than one abstract accepted, each presentation will be materially confined to the information in the abstract selected for the specific session;
5. The presenting author will be available to present the abstract if selected for the program. The author(s) will immediately notify ASH if the presenting author must be changed; and
6. The data in the abstract are not publicly available via major search engines; have not been accepted for publication before the abstract submission closing date; nor will they be materially presented at a meeting of 1,000 or more participants (excepting abstracts accepted for presentation or publication for the 2019 ASH Annual Meeting) before the ASH Meeting on Lymphoma Biology.

Sample Abstract

Questions?

Send related correspondence and questions regarding abstract submissions or notifications to [email protected].

Registration and Accommodations

• Please note that submitting an abstract does not register you for the ASH Meeting on Lymphoma Biology.
• Register online through the ASH website.