Proceedings Guideline
Introduction
For ALL IMC presentations (poster or lecture), a paper for the IMC Proceedings is mandatory. Only in case of a specific reason, e.g. information of confidential kind related to submission in a professional journal, exceptions will be honorated.
If you intend to have a presentation at the IMC, please:
- Remember the purpose of the IMC: the IMC is an annual meeting of the most active amateur meteorworkers and professionals with the purpose to inform each other about the ongoing work directly related to the activities of the amateur community.
- Do not register a presentation without having a topic: registrations such as 'TBD' will be removed.
- You can register a presentation at any time, with your IMC registration or at any time later. Deadline for the registration of presentations is May, 2nd 2016.
- It is strongly recommended to have your paper ready before the IMC and submitted in order to allow the editors to discuss any issues with your paper during the IMC. Deadline to submit 2016 IMC papers is 30 June 2016. Respecting this deadline is just a matter to start working on your paper in time. Help the editors of the Proceedings and do not cause delay!
- More lecture time may be sollicited than available. The SOC may propose to consider a poster rather than a lecture. Presentations that are not in line with the aim of the IMC may be rejected.
All messages regarding the IMC program and the IMC Proceedings should be addressed to the Local Organization Committee.
Proceedings are a crucial key to justify the efforts invested in a conference. Timely publication of the papers is essential. We insist not to postpone your paper. Delivery of papers before the conference is very much appreciated.
Topics
Presentations should be related to the domain of meteor astronomy, off-topic items cannot be admitted seen the specific aims of the conference.
Lecture
For each lecture presented at the IMC a paper for Proceedings is mandatory. Only in case of a specific reason, e.g. information of confidential kind related to submission in a professional journal, exceptions will be honorated.
All presentations must be registered by mail. No unannounced topics will be admitted at the conference. All presentations must be in English. Due to the overwhelmingly amount of registrations, it is already clear that more lecture time is solicited than available. Lectures have a minimal duration of 10 and maximum 30 minutes, this duration must always include 2-3 minutes for questions or comments. Although the SOC will do its upmost best to accommodate all, they may propose to consider a reduced time slot or in some cases also poster rather than a lecture. The length of the talks will likely be harmonized as much of possible. Presentations that are not in line with the aim of the IMC may be rejected.
Poster
For each poster presented at the IMC a paper for Proceedings is mandatory. Only in case of a specific reason, e.g. information of confidential kind related to submission in a professional journal, exceptions will be honorated.
Many contributions are not suitable for a lecture and therefore the poster session offers a valuable alternative to present topics without the constraints of an oral presentation.
The poster session is dedicated to technical, scientific topics only. Non-scientific exhibitions cannot be included in the poster session but may be admitted at some space dedicated for non-scientific displays. All new poster presentations (titles and abstracts) must be registered by mail. No unannounced topics will be admitted at the conference. All presentations must be in English.
Instructions for all authors
- For each lecture or poster presented at the IMC a paper for Proceedings is mandatory. Only in case of a specific reason, e.g. information of confidential kind related to submission in a professional journal, exceptions will be honorated.
- The quality control of the IMC as a scientific and technical conference may exclude questionable or off-topic presentations.
- People with a presentation who did not manage to deliver their paper before 30 April are recommended to deliver their paper before the IMC. If you have for some reason problems with this deadline please contact us to agree another deadline in our planning, otherwise send your paper in to the 2016 IMC Proceedings editors.
Papers should be submitted as Word Documents based on the official IMC2016 template.
You can either modify the template and save it as a document (.docx) or apply this template to an existing .dotx document.
Feel free to contact us if you need help.
Please, note:
- There is no formal page limit, but contributions should be concise. Most contributions fit within 4 pages (as printed in the proceedings’ style), few exceed 6 pages. If you think you need more pages and can justify this, please contact The 2016 IMC Proceedings editors.
- Convey content. Your contribution must have a purpose, and the text of your contribution should make that clear to the reader. Just a title and a collection of pictures with captions, for example, is not acceptable.
- Writing style should be formal and scientific. Avoid mixing in your own emotions in your writing, prefer written language over spoken language, and avoid abbreviations such as “don’t” or “can’t” but write “do not” and “cannot.” Scientific writing furthermore requires that statements not substantiated in your paper are supported by properly cited references. These general principles also apply to papers that are more descriptive by nature.
- Use simple language. The larger part of the IMC audience does not have English as native language. Make your paper accessible to as many interested persons as possible by avoiding long sentences, difficult grammatical constructions, or fancy words. Also, avoid needless words. If you can convey a thought in five words rather than ten, go for the former.
It is always a good idea to browse through previous IMC Proceedings to get a better feel of what is expected of you as an author. You can find preview articles of the IMC 2014 Proceedings at http://www.imo.net/imc2014/proceedings.
Your paper should contain the following elements
1. Title
The title of your contribution is preferably identical to the title of your talk/poster, although this is not a requirement. Notwithstanding, the contribution must of course deal with what you presented in your talk or poster. A good title is neither too short nor too long and should be telling. From the title, readers must get a representative idea of what your contribution is about. “Fancy” or “clever” titles must be avoided. Do not capitalize each word in your title (in other words, write your title as if it were a normal sentence in a text).
2. Authors
Immediately under the title comes the list of all contributing authors. Each author must be identified with his/her full first name and last name (middle names and/or initials are optional). Please be careful not to misspell the names of your co-authors, especially if they contain characters which have accents on them. Do not use "et al." in the heading of your article.
3. Affiliations/addresses and email addresses
The affiliations/addresses and email addresses follow immediately under the list of authors. Use superscript numbers to link each author to his/her correct affiliation and/or address. Under the affiliation or address, mention the email addresses of all authors with that affiliation, in the same order as in the author list.
Notice that, for at least one author, an affiliation or address and an email address is required.
4. Abstract
The last part of the contribution’s header is the abstract. It contains typically five to fifteen lines explaining (1) what the paper is about, (2) which results or type of results are described in it, and (3) what is generally concluded from them. Unless explicitly building on previous work, avoid citing references in your abstract. Ideally, your abstract should be able to stand alone. Mind that the content of scientific publications is often described by giving title, authors, and abstract of each contribution.
5. Introduction
The actual paper typically starts with an introduction. This introduction must introduce the subject of your contribution by providing the necessary context. You should aim at writing this introduction in such a way that a serious meteor amateur, irrespective of his specialization in meteor astronomy, can understand it. (The later sections can of course be more technical). The context you describe here may contain some historical background, give a description of the problem in general terms, and compare with other relevant work in the literature. In all cases, the introduction should clearly state the aims of the contribution.
6. Technical/detailed sections
The Introduction is the first in a series of numbered sections.
After the Introduction, some more technical or detailed sections will follow. Section headings must be representative for the content of that section, but should also be short. Preferably a section heading should fit on one line, but certainly not require more than two lines.
You may also use subsections, provided the organization of the paper benefits from it. As a general rule of thumb, avoid sections or subsections that are unreasonably short. Subsections are best avoided in very short contributions, and “sub-subsections” are to be avoided altogether. Remember, the purpose of sections and subsections is to organize the paper so that its structure becomes apparent to the reader, and not to hide its structure from the reader!
The rules for capitalization of the title also apply to section and subsection headers.
7. Concluding section(s)
In one or more concluding sections (Discussion, Conclusions, Future work, …), the authors should reflect on the meaning of their results, provide a short summary of what they have accomplished, and optionally discuss ongoing and future work.
8. Acknowledgments
This is an optional unnumbered section in which the authors can thank persons or institutions who provided help in either writing the paper or doing the work described in the paper. If this work is part of a project sponsored by a third party, and you must acknowledge this support, this is the place to do so!
9. References
The references are also listed in the very last section, which is also unnumbered. References should be relevant to the text of the paper, meaning that each and every reference must be cited in the paper! Even if you want to add some references providing further background information to the interested reader, they should be cited, for example in the Introduction, where you might say “The interested reader is referred to … (followed by the references concerned). Uncited references will be removed in the editing process!
References are cited by the author’s last name (if there is only one), both authors’ last names (if there are two), or first author’s last name followed by “et al.” In each case, the year of publication follows. Distinct references for the same claim are separated by semicolons.
This is a (fictitious) example of how to do it:
Many authors have shown this (Asher, 2011; 2012; Arlt and Rendtel, 2009; Brown et al., 2010).
An alternative way to cite references is the following:
This has been shown by Asher (2011; 2012), Arlt and Rendtel (2009), and Brown et al. (2010).
Depending on whether the authors are part of your sentence or not, you choose the latter or the former form.
References should conform the following format:
In the bibliography, references must be ordered alphabetically on the full list of authors. If two references share exactly the same list of authors, they should be ordered according to the year of publication. References with the same list of authors and the same year of publication should be distinguished by adding a lowercase letter to the year of publication, e.g., 2012a, 2012b, etc. This letter must, of course, also be added in citations of this reference.
10. Figures
As must be the case for references, figures should be relevant to the paper you are writing. Hence, each and every figure must be referred to in your text! Figures are numbered consecutively (Figure 1, 2, 3, and so on). Always refer to a figure by its number! Never use “the figure above” or “the figure below” as the precise location of the figure in print may change due to the editing.
Your figures may be in full color, which is now for the on-line version, but mind that the Proceedings are printed in black-and-white, and that there is invariably a loss of quality in the printing process. Therefore, make sure your figures are of good resolution, not too dark and of sufficient contrast. Be aware that very fine details will get lost. In particular, pay attention to the readability of text and numbers, in particular along the axes of a graph. Mind in particular that many screenshots we receive do not meet these minimal quality requirements!
We can deal with most common formats for figures, although jpeg and png are preferred.
Each figure should have a figure caption beneath it explaining what the figure represents. Make sure to explain the symbols used in the figure.
11. Tables
Just like figures, tables must be relevant: each and every table must be referred to in your text! Tables are numbered consecutively (Table 1, 2, 3, and so on). Always refer to a table by its number! Never use “the table above” or “the table below” as the precise location of the table in print may change due to the editing.
The sample article gives a very general idea how a table looks like in the style of the IMC Proceedings. Notice that no vertical lines are used to separate columns! For more complex tables, we refer to the preview contributions of the 2014 IMC Proceedings.
Each table should have a caption, which should appear above the actual table. Make sure all symbols used in the table heading are explained in the caption, unless they are standard, such as “ZHR”.
12. Responsibility of the author(s)
The copyright for the paper remains with the author. Although the editors will inform the authors about any problems with the content and suggest corrections, the content of the papers remain the responsibility of the author. Mistakes in the English language will be corrected during the editing procedure. The authors are strongly recommended to have their paper checked by a native English speaker before delivering the paper. All communication between the editors and the authors are limited to the main author, no copies or discussions will be supported with any co-authors.