Abstract guidelines for authors

Overview

Guide to submitting

Number of submissions

There are no restrictions on the number of abstracts you can submit or on the number of abstracts you may present.

Word limit

There is a limit of 450 words for the text of your abstract submission.

Tables

Tables are optional but please note only one table is permitted per abstract. Tables must be referenced in the abstract and have a title. Please ensure that a legend is included where necessary and any symbols/keys are explained.

When including a table it is recommended to save the table as an image (JPG) and then upload it into the abstract body using the 'Add an image' button. Click here for instructions on how to upload a table as an image

Figures

Figures are not permitted

References

Please do not include references in your abstract. Should your abstract be accepted, and references are included, they will be removed when the abstract is published. Please include your references in the slides of your oral presentation or your poster presentation.

Special characters and formatting

To ensure that special characters will be published correctly, please click here and enter the character(s) by using copy and paste (Internet Explorer 5.5 and higher). If you are experiencing any difficulties inserting them into your abstract, please contact the events or technical team (see point 14 for contact details).

Title

Do not put your title in quotes, use acronyms or include abbreviations or information in brackets. Do not use bold or italics and please do not include tradenames.

Abstract titles will be published and printed in uppercase in the abstract book, however they may be sentence case if printed in the printed conference programme.

Authors

Please enter all authors' full first and last names in the order they should appear, in the heading of the abstract. You will also need to include their email addresses so they can be informed the abstract has been submitted on their behalf.

If you (the Contact Author) are not the Presenter on an abstract, you will need to provide full contact information of the presenter.

Institution

Enter all department and institutional affiliations (Department, Institution, City, (State) and Country). For example Rheumatology, King’s College London, London, UK. Should these be incomplete you may be contacted by our copy editor to provide them.

Disclosures and conflicts of interest

When completing the author information, you will be asked to enter any relevant, direct or indirect, financial or personal disclosures. You do this by clicking ‘add’ in the table shown under ‘additional information’ in the author section.

For each disclosure please describe the conflicts in full, including description and company names, and use the initials of the author. For example: ‘D.P. has received funding for research from Roche, Pfizer and BMS’.

Funding statement

Details of all funding sources for the work in question should be included at the end of the abstract body. The following rules should be followed:

• The full official funding agency name should be given, i.e. ‘National Institutes of Health’, not ‘NIH’ (full RIN-approved list of UK funding agencies)

• Grant numbers should be given in brackets as follows: ‘[grant number xxxx]’

• Where individuals need to be specified for certain sources of funding, the following text should be added after the relevant agency or grant number 'to [author initials]'. For example: ‘Funding statement: This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health [AA123456 to C.S., BB765432 to M.H.]; and the Alcohol & Education Research Council [hfygr667789]’

Ethical approval and informed patient consent

All abstracts in which experiments on patients or healthy volunteers, patients' case histories or use of genetic material are reported should have approval from the relevant institutional review board(s)/ethics committee and informed consent from participants.

Patient consent

We follow the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors' (ICMJE) guidelines for reporting about patients. Patients have a right to privacy that should not be infringed without prior informed consent. Identifying information should not be published in written descriptions, photographs and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) has given written informed consent for publication.

Informed consent for this purpose requires that the patient be shown the manuscript to be published. Identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential, but patient data should never be altered or falsified to attain anonymity. We understand that complete anonymity is difficult to achieve, and informed consent should be obtained if there is any doubt.

For example, masking the eye region in photographs of patients is inadequate protection of anonymity. For abstracts that contain detailed patient information about a living individual, the patient’s explicit consent must be obtained before submission. It is the submitting author’s responsibility to obtain a signed patient consent form from each patient.

This form needs to be retained by the submitting author in the event that it should be needed. By submitting this abstract, the author confirms that this requirement has been met where appropriate. For case reports that contain detailed patient information about a deceased patient, written consent should be sought and obtained from the patient’s next of kin.

Pre-submission abstract proof

Carefully check the proof of your abstract. Make sure all special characters and formatting displays properly in your proof. If you find errors, return to the appropriate page by clicking on the page name in the sidebar menu, and make your corrections.

Submitting your abstract

If you haven't completed all required sections/items you won't be able to submit your abstract. When all required information is entered, you will see a ‘Complete’ message in the ‘review my work’ section.

You can opt to send an email confirmation of your submission. Once the abstract is complete it will be submitted for review (after the deadline). Please be aware you can edit your abstract(s) until the submission deadline.

Technical support

Oasis technical support is available Monday to Friday from 09:00-17:00pm CT (15:00-23:00 GMT). Should you need technical assistance, please email support@abstractsonline.com or call (+001) 217 398 1792. For any other questions or comments, please contact our events team, events@rheumatology.org.uk or via phone (+44) 207 842 0900.

Awards

By submitting your abstract, if eligible, your abstract will be automatically considered for our awards, of which the applicable ones are:

• Young Investigator Award

• Nurse and allied health professional Award

• Paul Bacon Vasculitis Award

• BSR/Versus Arthritis joint student award

• Paediatric and adolescent rheumatology award

Publication and copyright

All abstracts accepted to BSR 2024, whether oral presentations or posters, will be published in the Rheumatology journal online supplement. It's permitted to resubmit an abstract published by BSR as an encore abstract at another event.

You're required to add a statement indicating this is an encore abstract and the original abstract was submitted and published for the British Society for Rheumatology Annual Conference 2024, and to add a web link to the original abstract.