Call for Abstracts

First Coast Infectious Disease/Clinical Microbiology Symposium

16th Annual Meeting
January 30-31, 2009
The TPC Sawgrass
Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida

You are invited to prepare and submit an abstract for the 16^th Annual First Coast Infectious Disease/Clinical Microbiology Symposium. We are also accepting abstracts of work presented at other scientific meetings within the past year (February 2008-January 2009). Work that will be presented at another meeting after January 2009 will not be accepted. Abstracts that are accepted will be presented in a poster session at the Symposium.

Submission deadline: November 15, 2008 (abstracts must be postmarked by this date)

Types of Information that may be Presented:

Work presented at a previous scientific meeting between February 2008 and January 2009.
Interesting and/or unusual case study
Comparative evaluation of methodologies
Basic and/or clinical research
Epidemiologic studies

Preparing the Abstract:

An abstract is a short description of your work and should contain all the elements necessary to define your goals and results to the reader. It is not meant to be a lengthy description of your work.

Key Elements:

Title. The title should clearly identify the content of your abstract. All words, except prepositions should be capitalized.

Authors and Affiliations. All authors should be listed as follows: First name, middle initial and last name. Please provide each author’s institution and affiliation. Do not use department or division names or street addresses. An example is provided below:

Yvette S. McCarter¹ and Noel R. Gomez²

¹University of Florida Health Science Center/Jacksonville, Jacksonville, FL and ²Shands Jacksonville Hospital, Jacksonville, FL.

Abstract Text. The text should contain the following key points (with the exception of case studies): Background (the problem under investigation or the hypothesis), Methods (experimental protocol used), Results (key points and data derived from experimentation) and Discussion/Conclusions (Summary of findings). Abstracts will not be edited for content and will be printed as received. Ensure that typographical and grammatical errors are corrected prior to submission. To ensure consistency, abstract text should be typed in Times New Roman font with a character size of at least 10 points.

Abstract Submission:

Abstract Format:

When preparing the abstract set the margins in a Word document as follows:

Top margin – 2 inches
Bottom margin – 4 inches
Left margin – 1 inch
Right margin – 1 inch

This will create a 6.5 by 5 inch block of space in which to enter your abstract information. Information must fit within this block of space. Information should be entered as follows:

Title
Authors and Affiliations
Abstract Text

An example is provided (see Sample Abstract).

Contact Information

Please provide the following contact information along with your abstract:

Name
Address
Telephone number
Fax number
Email address
Indicate whether this work is new or has been presented previously. If the work was presented previously, please indicate the scientific meeting at which the work was presented.

Abstract Submission

Deadline for Abstract Submission Receipt: November 15, 2008 (Abstract must be postmarked by this date)

Submit your abstract via mail or email (preferred) to Yvette McCarter at:

yvette.mccarter@jax.ufl.edu

- or -

Department of Pathology

University of Florida Health Science Center/Jacksonville

Department of Pathology

655 W. 8^th Street

Jacksonville, FL 32209

Abstract Acceptance and Notification:

Abstracts received by the deadline will be subject to peer review. The main factors that will be considered for acceptance include: quality of the work, significance of the topic to the membership, content of the abstract and adherence to submission criteria. Abstracts may be rejected by the reviewers for the following reasons:

o No hypothesis

o Inadequate experimental methods

o Lack of data

o No summary or conclusion

o Promotional in nature

o Poorly written

Notification (letter or email) of acceptance will be sent to submitters no later than November 25, 2008.

Abstracts that are accepted will be published in the Symposium abstract book. It is expected that accepted abstracts will be presented in poster format at the Symposium on January 30-31, 2009.

Poster Information:

The poster board used at the Symposium will be 4 ft x 6 ft

For information on poster preparation, contact:

Yvette McCarter at (904) 244-6684 or yvette.mccarter@jax.ufl.edu

Questions:

Any questions regarding abstract preparation or submission or poster preparation should be directed to Yvette McCarter at (904) 244-6684 or yvette.mccarter@jax.ufl.edu.

Revised 7/03/2008