Programme Organization

Programme organization for the EGU General Assembly and main tasks of chairs and conveners

The overall workflow of the programme organization for the EGU GA, including the main tasks of the Subdivision (SD) chairs and conveners, is reported below. The Programme Group (PG) for the Hydrological Sciences (HS) Division is formed by the Programme Group Chair (the HS Division President), the HS Division Vice-president and all the HS SD chairs (Science Officers). The PG aims at a well-balanced programme at the GA, with scientific sessions covering the main topics in hydrological sciences. It works closely with other EGU divisions to avoid overlaps and to co-organize interdisciplinary sessions.

In order to help conveners who wish to organize a session at the EGU General Assembly inside the HS Division, the topics covered by the subdivisions are presented here.  

The PG of the HS Division is happy to help and advise at all stages, so please do not hesitate to contact us.

The deadlines below are approximate only, as they change every year. Specific guidelines and deadlines can be found at the EGU General Assembly website (here).

Skeleton programme (June)

The skeleton programme is prepared by the Programme Group and uploaded in the website by the Programme Group Chair (HS President). It includes the sub-programme groups (SD titles and numbers) and, where relevant, sub-themes inside the subdivisions.

Public call-for-sessions (from end of June until beginning of September)

All EGU members are invited to propose a session in the skeleton programme. This includes the call for Scientific Sessions (oral and poster session, poster-only session or PICO session), Short Courses, Union Symposia (US) and Great Debates (GDB). Conveners use the Copernicus Office Meeting Organizer online system for session proposal.

When submitting a new session, conveners are advised to get in touch with the HS SD Chair of the subdivision where the session is to be included. Together, they can better evaluate how the content of the session proposed fits the topics of the subdivision, and if it is not already covered in the overall programme. Conveners can also indicate other programme groups for co-organization, or whether their session might be considered for Inter- and Transdisciplinary Sessions (ITS).

We strongly encourage the team of conveners of a session (a minimum of 2 to a maximum of 5 conveners per session) to reflect multiple countries and institutes, different career stages (including early career scientists) and gender diversity.

At this stage, sessions are proposed, but they are not yet part of the final programme. Sessions have first to be accepted by the PG of the HS Division. We therefore advise conveners to wait until the opening of the Call-for-abstracts (October) before advertising their sessions and soliciting abstracts.

Session programme finalisation (September/October)

The EGU Programme Committee builds the session programme from the session proposals. Session may be accepted, rejected or merged if they focus on similar topics. When suitable, it may be considered moving a session proposal to a different HS Subdivision or EGU Division. Conveners are informed of acceptance of their session by email.

Call-for-abstracts (mid-October to beginning of January)

Conveners are invited to advertise their sessions, trying to target the specific audience of colleagues that may be interested in the topics covered by the session.

Conveners can also identify solicited abstracts. They should aim for one solicited abstract per session (the maximum number of solicited presentations is one per time block). Conveners should not be authors of solicited abstracts in their own session. Solicited abstracts can be for poster, PICO or oral presentations. Authors of solicited abstracts do not receive discounted abstract processing charges, registration fees, or travel reimbursement. Additionally, conveners should keep in mind that an invited abstract is not guaranteed an oral presentation. The actual selection of oral presentations takes place during the Presentation Selection phase in February.

Support application and ranking (December)

During the initial period of the abstract submission, authors are able to submit their contributions together with a support application. Conveners are kindly asked to evaluate and rate those applications in order to provide the support selection committee with their preferences for whom should be granted financial support. The EGU support selection committee will consider this ranking and other priority factors in their final decision. Applicants will be informed accordingly.

Abstract deadline (Beginning of January)

Before the deadline, conveners should verify that all abstracts that they expect from colleagues are uploaded and, if this is not the case, solicit them to upload their abstract before the deadline. Conveners should also have in mind that solicited abstracts must also be submitted in time, following the EGU general guidelines.

At the end of the abstract submission phase, sessions with five (5) or less abstracts will automatically be cancelled. Authors of abstracts in withdrawn sessions will be given the opportunity to send their abstract to another session.

Abstract implementation, sessions merging and tagging (January)

During the implementation phase, conveners are asked to review all abstracts submitted to their session, including those suggested to be transferred from another session to their session. They have to decide if they accept or reject the abstracts. They can also transfer abstracts that do not fit to the content of their session to another session. Conveners are strongly advised to get in touch with the SD Chair if they need help with their decisions.

In addition, during this phase, conveners may upload late contributions which were directly sent to them by email. Late contributions uploaded by conveners have an increased abstract fee and also need to be paid (authors should then urgently take care of the abstract fee payment following the instructions they will receive from the system). After the late contributions deadline, abstracts cannot be accepted anymore.

The outcome of this phase is the final list of active contributions to be scheduled in the session. Sessions that received few submissions at the end, or are very similar in scope, can be merged. If this is the case, it is important to conveners to be in close contact with the HS SD Chair to find the best way to proceed in the sessions merging phase.

Finally, in the session tagging phase, conveners are asked to provide their scheduling requests. These may include requests for no-overlap, back-to-back scheduling, a specific lecture room size or day of the week, or any other information that conveners consider to be useful. This information will guide the HS PG Chair (the Division President) when building the final programme for the division.

Although we do our best to meet the maximum of requests, conveners should keep in mind that it is not always possible to satisfy all the requests given the large programme of the HS Division, with parallel sessions over the entire week. Additionally, the HS PG Chair has also to consider constraints due to logistic issues and needs from other divisions and the EGU Programme Committee.

Presentation selection (February)

The EGU programme committee will schedule the sessions and allocate the oral, poster and PICO blocks to all sessions. Conveners will be informed accordingly and asked to:

• Subdivide the abstracts into oral and poster presentations (for PICO sessions, the abstracts are already marked as PICO).
• Define the ordering of the talks and posters or PICO presentations.
• Assign the status of "solicited" to solicited oral, poster or PICO abstracts.
• Identify one or two (preferably) chairpersons for every oral, poster or PICO time block. Chairpersons do not necessarily need to be from the session conveners’ team.

Conveners are expected to follow the general EGU guidelines and rules for presentation selection. For each oral block, for instance, they should include at least two early career scientist abstracts marked with "ECS". Also, conveners should not be oral presenters in the sessions they convene.

Duties on the weeks just before the conference and during the conference

Just before the GA, SD Chairs and Conveners should pay attention to some important issues:

• Nomination of judges for the Outstanding Student Poster and PICO (OSPP) contest: conveners have to define three judges per poster or PICO submitted to the OSPP contest in their session. Ideally, this should be done before the GA to avoid last minute nominations. They should not hesitate to contact their SD Chairs if they need help.
• Handling withdrawn abstracts: the EGU programme committee kindly asks authors to withdraw abstracts as early as possible when they realize they will not be able to present the work. Early withdrawal allows conveners to still fill a possible gap in their oral programme. It also helps the conference organizers to reduce the number of empty poster boards.
• Session modifications: conveners can log in and edit chairpersons, add public information to their session to be shown to the people reading the online programme. If conveners need to modify the session programme after the uploading of the final meeting programme (e.g., to fill a gap in an oral session due to a last-minute withdrawn abstract), they should contact directly the EGU programme committee (SD Chairs and the HS President cannot modify the final online programme).
• Contact your authors and chairpersons by email: when logged in, conveners can find the mailing list of their corresponding authors for any final information they would like to provide. For instance, conveners can contact their authors and make sure that they are all attending. They can also let them know of any key planned events associated with their session, HS Subdivision meetings, HS Division medal and ECS award lecturers, short courses, etc.

At the GA, conveners are kindly asked to:

• Check that the chairpersons for their session (oral, PICO, or poster) are in place.
• Make sure microphones are used and everyone can hear and be heard.
• Invite attendees to include the official hashtags for EGU and the HS Division when sharing they experience and points of view at the conference on Twitter and elsewhere on social media.
• Keep sessions on time.
• Make sure that there is a professional and respectful conduct of chairpersons and all attendees during the sessions. EGU rules of conduct are listed in the GA website.

Conveners are also invited to attend the SD meetings and the HS Division business meeting for feedback on the GA and information.