■ Session Proposal Guidelines

*The deadlines had been extended to Feb 17th in consideration of any difficulties caused by the massive earthquake on the weekend.

Session Proposals

The sessions include three types: symposia, workshops, and forums. All types of sessions will be held online in real time via Zoom Video Webinars or Zoom Meetings.
Please register for them after reading the following explanations carefully, referring the latest information on the ESJ68 official website.
Proposals for Symposia and workshops must be submitted by 11:59 p.m. (JST) on Monday, November 2, 2020. The registered contents will be used for the program and abstract. No changes and additions to proposals will be accepted after the deadline.
Organizers, co-organizers, and all speakers should register as participants before submitting proposals for sessions. We would appreciate that you take care of this matter as early as possible. Membership IDs can be found in the membership search functions on “My page” in the registration system.
For the symposia, we will provide real-time support for Zoom operations by a professional operator to facilitate the sessions online. For the workshops, we will not support for Zoom operations, and organizers should try to keep an optimal operation.
After the deadline for the session proposals, organizers will be notified via email about the tools they can use (Webinars or Meetings) to receive questions (verbally with a microphone or by text). The deadline for responses will be scheduled for February 15, 2021, and the organizers should consider this information to hold the sessions.
Rehearsals for the sessions using Zoom will be scheduled before the meeting period. The rehearsals of all sessions (including workshops) will be held with a professional operator. Please take advantage of the advice given by the operator.

Symposia

We invite the ESJ members to propose symposia for the ESJ68. Symposia are the scientific centerpiece of the meeting. Each proposer should carefully read and understand the following points. Each symposium will be scheduled to last around 3 hours.

[About proposals]

Meeting participants prefer to join symposia on various subjects, and also expect new topics not yet covered in recent ESJ symposia. The Annual Meeting Planning Committee encourages members who have no or little experience as symposium organizers to submit their proposals.
To promote interdisciplinary exchange, it is possible to invite non-ESJ members as symposium speakers with no registration fees.
The Ecological Society of Japan encourages the use of English language (including in combination with Japanese) in the symposia to promote research exchange with international students and participants from abroad.
For symposia held in Japanese, please do what you can to make the symposium more accessible for non-Japanese speakers (e.g., the bilingual slides). The bilingual slides are a good way to encourage the participation of non-English speakers in the English symposia.
The Annual Meeting Planning Committee will not get involved in the contents of the symposia. However, proposals can be declined if the contents of symposia include criticism from specific people or organizations.

[Organizers]

Organizers can register via the registration system by Monday, November 2, 2020. There was an earlier deadline (already closed on August 31, 2020) for organizers inviting guest speakers sponsored by Ecological Research (ER).
Organizers must register all information relevant to the presentation. The organizer should prepare the presentation information (title, speakers’ names, and affiliations: both in English and Japanese) and the membership IDs of all the organizers and the speakers (login IDs for guest speakers).
Please visit the registration site and register the title of the symposium, abstract (within 200 words in English) and some information of the presentation. Note that all speakers’ registered information will be set in this format. No proposal changes will be permitted after registration.
As the previous conference ESJ67 in Nagoya was canceled due to COVID-19, we are pleased to announce free admission to ESJ68 to the non-member speakers that were invited to ESJ67. Please note that we decided to relax the normal regulation that restricts non-members to be invited for a second consecutive year.
If you plan a symposium on a same theme proposed in ESJ67 (Nagoya), please include research progress since then. We cannot accept applications with same titles or abstracts from ESJ67.

[Speakers]

Speakers are limited to the ESJ members who have applied for a membership by Monday, November 2, 2020, and completed the payment by February 15, 2021 (except for guest speakers).
Please pay the registration fee by March 1, 2021, via the registration page, unless you are a guest speaker.
Speakers should inform the organizers of their presentation information (title [within 150 characters in English], name and affiliation of the speakers and co-authors) and the membership IDs of the speakers (login IDs for guest speakers).
Register the abstract (within 200 words in English) by Monday, February 15, 2021.

[Limitations on submitting proposals]

Symposium organizers (including co-organizers) are limited to the ESJ members. Non-ESJ members cannot be symposium organizers.
An organizer or a speaker of a symposium is unable to become an organizer or a speaker in any other symposium (“speaker” means the main speaker of the presentation).
An organizer or a speaker of a symposium is unable to become an organizer and/or a speaker of a workshop, or a speaker of oral or poster sessions.
 Overviews, comments, and opinions without the submission of an abstract are not counted as presentations. Therefore, symposium without a registered abstract are not counted as speakers.
At least two speakers are required to apply for the organization of a symposium. If you have only one speaker, please apply for the organization of a workshop.

Workshops

ESJ68 is calling for workshops. Please feel free to apply for organizing workshops, referring to the following information. The workshops are planned to be around 90 minutes long.

[Organizers]

The organizer should prepare each presentation’s information (title, speakers’ names and affiliations) and the membership IDs of the organizers, co-organizers, and the speakers. However, the registration of the membership IDs is not necessary to the speakers who will express their opinions and comments without an abstract registration.
Please register the title of the workshop, abstract (within 200 words in English), and each presentation’s information. Note that speakers’ registered information will be set in this format. No proposal changes will be accepted after registration.
Explanations, comments, or opinions that are not associated to a submitted abstract are not counted as presentations. Thus, organizers that invite commentators without an abstract registration should disclose them on the abstract of sessions.
Speakers that will participate as commentators without an abstract registration are also required to register to the meeting or use a workshop ticket. Registrations on the days of the meeting will not be allowed, thus, organizers should notify about this to the participants.
If you plan a workshop on a same theme proposed in ESJ67 (Nagoya), please include the research progress since then. We cannot accept applications with the same titles or abstracts from ESJ67.

[Speakers]

Workshop speakers are limited to ESJ members who have applied for membership by Monday, November 2, 2020, and completed the payment by February 15, 2021. Non-ESJ members are not allowed to be invited speakers (presentations with no abstracts). However, it is acceptable that non-ESJ members express opinions or comments.
Please pay the registration fee by March 1, 2021, via the registration page.
The speakers that express their opinions and comments without the abstract registration are also required to register for the meeting or use a workshop ticket. Registration on the days of the meeting will not be allowed, and participants must complete the required procedures on the online registration system by February 15, 2021, and make payment by March 1, 2021.
Please inform the organizers of your presentation information (title [within 150 characters in English], names and affiliations of speakers and co-authors) and the membership IDs of the speakers by the deadline. (Those who will express their opinions and comments without an abstract registration do not need to provide membership IDs.)
Overviews, comments, and opinions without submission of an abstract will not be counted as presentations; therefore, they are not subjected to limitations due to duplicate presentations. However, please note it is not possible to adjust their schedule to avoid overlap with Symposia.
Please register the abstract (within 200 words in English) by Monday, February 15, 2021.

[Concept and application limits]

The ESJ has traditionally considered workshops as opportunities for participants to discuss unconventional topics and launch new fields in Ecology.
For the workshop, both the registered overview and the abstracts of individual presentations are published in the program and the abstract book.
Organizers, including co-organizers, need to be ESJ members. Non-ESJ members cannot become organizers.
Speakers, including invited speakers, need to be ESJ members. However, non-ESJ members can make comments and/or express opinions without registering any abstract.
Workshop speakers and organizers can be speakers at either oral or poster sessions, but are not allowed to be organizers or speakers of symposia and/or other workshops.

The differences between symposia and workshops are outlined below.

	Symposium	Workshop
Concept	Principal meetings	Free discussion about various topics
Time	Around 3 hours	Around 90 minutes
Priority ranking in securing a timeslot for meeting	Top priority	Lottery (if any)
Date and time	Time at which audiences easily gather	Time when there are no symposia (e.g., evening)
Involvement by the Annual Meeting Planning Committee	No (only in the case of any libel or slander directed toward specific persons or organizations)
Qualification of organizers	ESJ members
Presentations by non-ESJ members	Encouraged (Invited speakers are exempt from the registration fee.)	Not approved (Comments and opinions with no abstract registration are approved.)
ER-invited speaker	Approved (More than one speaker, but limited.)	Not approved
Real-time Zoom operations supported by a professional operator	Supported	Not supported
Presentations of oral and poster sessions by the speakers	Not approved	Approved
Presentations in other meetings by organizers and speakers	Not approved
Deadline for application	November 2, 2020 (For ER symposium, August 31, 2020)
Deadlines for registration of overview of the meetings, all speakers, titles	November 2, 2020
Publishing contents in the program and abstract book	Both overview of the meeting and abstracts of presentations

Forums

Forums are organized by the committees of the ESJ and are aimed at inviting broad opinions of ESJ members on ecology-related issues in which the ESJ is engaged. The ESJ addresses, promotes, and shares information among ESJ members and develops agreement within the ESJ via widespread discussion. ESJ members can attend forums for free regardless of registration for attendance. Organizing and providing topics for forums are exempted from the “one presentation rule.” Representatives of each committee can register for forums. The ESJ office interviewed the organizers of forums in August. Proposals will be received only from those who planned to organize a forum during the interview (please submit the proposal by September 15, 2020). The proposals will be considered by the board of directors and the final decision will be made for each proposal after an adjustment between the Annual Meeting Planning Committee and the Organizing Committee of ESJ68.Organizers may be asked to revise the proposal or style of forums. Each forum will be opened for one and a half hours.

Notice:

Non-ESJ meeting participants (those who pay the registration fee) can attend to the forums.
Non-ESJ members who have workshop tickets cannot attend to the forums.
Non-member speakers invited to the forums can attend only forums for free. To attend other sessions (e.g. symposia, oral and poster sessions), they are required to pay the registration fee.

Oral and Poster Sessions

ESJ members are invited to give a presentation during either oral or poster sessions. Choose your preferred presentation type (oral or poster). However, due to limitations in the number of system accounts and time, we might ask you to change your presentation type.
In ESJ68, we decided to limit the number of applications for the Poster Presentation Award to 500 in order to ensure a sufficient number of judges. The number of general poster presentations is not limited.
Oral presentations consist of sessions in both Japanese and English. The sessions in English include presentations entered for the English Presentation Audience Award. Oral presentations can be given in English during Japanese oral sessions.
We also encourage speakers in Japanese to include English along with Japanese, even if only in some parts of their presentation files, to improve scientific communications with participants who are less proficient in Japanese.
When applying for a presentation, please choose sections from the list below. This will allow us to assign slots and times for oral presentations and allot poster presentations appropriately by topic. Please indicate your preference (in order from first to third) from the section list in the registration form in the online system.
Plant community/ Plant population/ Plant ecophysiology/ Plant reproduction/ Life history of plants/ Microbial ecology/ Landscape ecology/ Succession and regeneration/ Animal–plant interactions/ Evolution/ Biodiversity/ Mathematical ecology/ Animal community/ Animal reproduction/ Animal population/ Life history of animals/ Behavior/ Conservation/ Ecosystem management/ Invasive species/ Material cycling/ Education and popularization of ecology.
English oral section including presentations entered for the English Presentation Audience Award will be integrated by the Planning Committee in accordance with the numbers of presentations in each section.
If you plan an oral or a poster presentation on a same theme proposed in ESJ67 (Nagoya), please include research progress since then. We cannot accept applications with the same titles or abstracts from ESJ67.

Notice:

Speakers (i.e., the main contributors at oral or poster presentations) must be ESJ members (co-authors do not need to be ESJ members).
Speakers should register their presentation by November 2, 2020, and complete the payment by March 1, 2021, via the online registration system.
Speakers should provide the presentation titles (within 150 characters in English) and author names when applying for a presentation.
Speakers should submit an abstract (within 200 words in English) via the online registration system by February 15, 2021.
Each ESJ member is allowed to serve as the speaker for only one oral or poster presentation (but can co-present more than one).
Organizers and speakers of symposia cannot give oral and poster presentations.

Preparing Oral Presentations

Oral presentations will be held in real-time using a Zoom Meetings with a session of questions and answers.
Speakers are required to show their presentation slides from their own computer. Therefore, there are no restrictions regarding the type of operative system, file format, or presentation file size.
The sessions of questions and answers will be conducted verbally via Zoom. In addition, speakers can use the comment function on each presentation page of the conference portal site to share questions and answers in text form. Please use the conference portal site appropriately if speakers have questions that could not be answered during the presentation.
ESJ68 will be held online, thus, before the first meeting day, please do a thorough test on how to use Zoom, and also test the stability of the internet connection you will use. For the optimal operation of the oral presentations, we plan to set up rehearsal opportunities with a professional support staff before the period of ESJ68. Detailed information will be announced on the official conference website.
If you are worried about any aspect of your real-time presentation at the appointed day, such as your internet connection or the operation method, please consider choosing a poster presentation alternatively. Please note that we will not be able to provide refunds, even if there is any problem with your presentation due to your personal environment or preparation status.

Preparing Poster Presentations

The poster presentations will be held on a ESJ68 portal website prepared as the venue where participants can freely view the poster files uploaded to the site. Questions and answers will be conducted using the comment function provided for each presentation.
We will set a core time for the poster presentation sessions on the ESJ68 portal site. Speakers should respond to the questions and comments during the core time. In addition, you can use a Zoom Meetings (for example) prepared by yourself to make presentations, ask or answer questions in real-time as appropriate. Feel free to use the comment function for URL announcements.
Please prepare the poster file in PDF format without any embedded audio or video. The file size should be 10MB or less. There are no specifications regarding the appearance of the poster file, such as size or the number of pages, but please keep in mind that the research content can be understood without any oral supplementary explanation.
Please do not set a security password of PDF. Hyperlinks may be invalid depending on the creation environment.Animated gifs cannot be used. Please create with a still image. It is recommended to create charts in a single color. Gradation may not be expressed depending on the creation environment such as the software used. When creating with the macOS version of Illustrator, save it as a "highly compatible PDF". Otherwise, it may not be displayed properly.
There are two ways to upload the poster file: (1) pre-upload from the online registration system and (2) direct upload by the speaker to the portal site. For the pre-upload (“option 1”), it is necessary to submit the file by February 25, 2021, because the file download and text copy protection settings will be set at that time. If “option 2” is used, download prevention and other settings will not be enabled, and you can upload files yourself at any time after the portal site is opened. However, if you do not upload the file by the poster presentation core time, the presentation will be treated as cancelled. Please be prepared as early as possible.
To ensure an adequate number of judges, the maximum number of poster award applications will be set to 500. Applications will be made on a first-come-first-served basis, and when the capacity is reached, the applicant will be asked to choose either a general poster or an oral presentation. There is no upper limit on the number of applications for general posters.
To improve scientific communication with participants who are less proficient in Japanese language, we encourage Japanese speakers to present in English and, even for the presentations in Japanese, we encourage the inclusion of English contents along with the Japanese.

English Presentation Award

　The ^8th English Presentation Award (English Presentation Award, EPA) has been cancelled considering the excessive workload expected on the judges over the online meeting. We will instead hold the English Presentation Audience Award (EPAA) based on online voting by the audience during the meeting. Your participation will be much welcomed.

Aims of the award

The English Presentation Award (EPA) aims to promote English presentations in the ESJ annual meetings and to offer all participants more opportunities to interact with international students and visiting researchers in Japan. The EPA sessions are also meant for students and early career researchers to improve their scientific communication skills that are particularly useful in international meetings. The new EPAA takes over these missions and intentions of the EPA.

The EPA is not a competition for language skills such as English fluency. Rather, the applicants are meant to compete in the research contents and the skills and attitudes with regard to presenting their works. The winner(s) is selected based on popular votes by the audience in each category.

Eligibility requirements

The eligibility for the EPAA is the same as that for the EPA. Namely, the eligibility is limited to ESJ members who are undergraduate or graduate students or early-career researchers who have received a PhD degree within 5 years, as of March 2021. Work time of parental leave or family leave is not included in this 5-year limitation. Past EPA winners are also eligible to apply. Please note that the eligibility might be revised in ESJ69.

Judgment criteria

In each category, the winner(s) is selected based on popular votes by the audience who watched the presentation. Details will be announced on the official ESJ68 website. On the Confit Publication, which is used as a portal site for the ESJ68, there will be a "Like" button for each presentation. The audience can hit these buttons to vote. We ask the audience to judge the presentations based on the research contents and presentation qualities, not the English fluency. The speaker(s) receiving the largest number of votes in each category wins the EPAA.

Participants will be able to apply for the EPAA through our online registration system, as was the case for the past EPAs. The system is expected to open around the end of September. Please visit our official ESJ68 website for the latest information. The EPA working group is looking forward to your application.

Poster Award

The ESJ will give awards to young researchers who present outstanding posters. Please refer to the following qualification requirements. Details on poster presentations will be given on the ESJ68 official website. Please prepare your poster regarding the points outlined on the website.

Poster Award Qualifications

The following criteria will be applied to the primary author of the poster presentation:

Students (undergraduate, graduate, and PhD candidates) without a doctoral degree as of November 2, 2020, are eligible to apply for ESJ68 poster awards.
Previous poster award winners cannot apply for the award(including those from joint annual meetings with EAFES).

Poster Award Criteria

The following are the evaluation criteria for the selection of outstanding posters. Please prepare your poster in consideration of these points.

(A) Clarity of the poster

In a poster presentation, it is important to display the contents of your research concisely. The following features are required: 1) precise title, 2) simple abstract, 3) efforts to draw attention, 4) efforts to convey the outline. Figures and tables should be easy to read. Overloading with information should be avoided. An outline should be comprehensive and understandable without explanation. For fairness, please do not change the title of your presentation after the submission.

(B) Quality of the study

The presentation will be evaluated based on 1) novelty and innovativeness, 2) quality and quantity of data, 3) validity of analysis methods, 4) rationale of discussion and conclusion.
We have excluded presentation technique, which was an evaluation criterion in past meetings, because outstanding posters are understandable by observation alone. Another reason for the exclusion is to alleviate the burden on judges who must review many applications.For items that are difficult to assess only visually, judges may evaluate by asking questions.
Because the ESJ is promoting international communication, we also consider those who are non-Japanese language speakers. During the review process, only poster contents are evaluated, irrespective of the language. However, if two or more posters have tied scores, priority will be given to posters understandable not only in Japanese but also in English. Being understandable in English means a poster with (at least) the title, introduction, and conclusion written in English, or with a translated supplement provided so that the research outline can be understood by non- Japanese speakers.
Presenters who selected a presentation language as “English” or “Bilingual” on the registration system are asked to make their posters with English contents.

Career Explorer (CE) Mark

If you are a student or postdoctoral fellow searching for a research job, you may display the Career Explorer (CE) Mark in your oral or poster presentation. Download the CE Mark file from The Japan Society of Applied Physics website (in Japanese) and display it on the title page of your oral presentation or near your poster title. ESJ68 participants have permission to use the mark.

Color Universal Designs (accessibility for colorblind people)

Prevalence of colorblindness is fairly high: one in 12 Caucasian (8%), one in 20 Asian (5%) and one in 25 African (4%) males are red-green colorblind. Dr. Masataka Okabe (Jikei University School of Medicine, Japan) and Dr. Kei Ito (The University of Tokyo, The Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences, Japan) have therefore promoted Color Universal Design. When preparing your presentations, please refer to the following website: http://jfly.iam.u-tokyo.ac.jp/color/.

Call for Proposals for the Ecological Research Symposium (ER-Symposium)

We invite proposals for the ER-symposium at the 68th annual meeting of the Ecological Society of Japan (ESJ68), which will be held in March 2021.

The ER-symposium is a symposium that invites outstanding overseas researchers with free entry for attending the ESJ meeting. Invited speakers are asked to contribute to the journal Ecological Research (ER).

As you can see in the homepage, we are planning to accept more than one overseas speaker to ESJ68 as ‘ER-invited speakers’.

The ER-invited speakers are provided free entry. ER-invited speakers are requested to submit an article to ER after the meeting. The article should be related to the symposium. The accepted manuscript will be published as open access whose costs will be owned by the Society.

We look forward to receiving applications from organizers who are planning to invite overseas speakers to ESJ68. Please read the ER-Symposium guideline below.

（Call for Proposals for the ER-Symposium）

The ER-invited speakers can participate in all meetings and the banquet for free.
The ER-invited speaker is requested to submit at least one article (review paper or special issue paper) to Ecological Research. The accepted manuscript will be published as open access whose costs will be owned by the Society.
The number of ER-invited speakers is limited to one per symposium.
ER-symposium language is English only.
Any nationality is acceptable for the ER-invited speakers.
Symposium proposals are reviewed by the symposium committee of ESJ 68. The number of symposiums is one or more (two symposiums were adopted as ER-symposium for ESJ 67).
The ER-symposium encourages invitations of overseas researchers who have not previously been invited as the ER-invited speakers in the past ESJ meetings. The speakers who have been invited to ER-symposium in the past will be given low priority. However, this does not apply to the ER-invited speakers of the previous ESJ 67. Contributing an article to Ecological Research by the ER-invited speakers is considered as a key requirement of being designated as the ER-symposium. Plans to re-invite previous ER-invited speakers who have not contributed to the ER may be rejected. When submitting a proposal, the organizer should make sure that all the candidate speakers agree with this requirement.
All proposals for ER-symposium must be sent to the ESJ office (esj_sympo@mail.esj.ne.jp) by e-mail before 23:59 (Japanese standard time) on 31 August 2020. Judgment for adoption as ER-symposium will be made in September 2020, and the result will be noticed before the end of the month.
The ER-symposium proposal must contain:
1. Title and abstract of the symposium, and a list of Authors.
2. The name of the candidate ER-invited speaker
3. The following information: how the ER-invited speakers add value to the symposium (or why the symposium will lose value without the ER-invited speakers), what merit ESJ members can receive from articles submitted to ER that are written by the ER-invited speakers, and any other points that qualify the candidate as the ER-invited speaker of the symposium.
4. An outline of the article(s) that will be submitted to ER.
5. A list of publications of the candidate ER-invited speaker (up to 5 papers) with the number of citations per each paper.
Note that the publication list is used as a reference by the symposium committee to confirm that the speakers invited by Ecological Research undoubtedly fulfill the information requested in (3).

Supplement:At the ESJ68 symposium, there is a system called "the invited speaker" other than "the ER-invited speaker". Under the system of "the invited speaker", you can invite superior non-ESJ members (in and outside of Japan) as guest speakers for whom the meeting entrance fee is waived. There are no restrictions on the number of people for the invited speaker system. If you are not adopted for the ER symposium, the "the invited speaker" system applies.

Reference: Call for Proposals for the Normal Symposium (common to ER-Symposium)

Only ESJ members can be symposium organizers (including co-organizers).
To deepen exchanges with various academic research fields, organizers can invite non-ESJ members as guest speakers. The invited speakers are provided with free entry. However, the same non-ESJ member cannot be invited as a speaker for two consecutive years.
As the previous conference ESJ67 in Nagoya was canceled due to COVID-19, we are pleased to announce free admission to ESJ68 of nonmember-speakers invited to ESJ67. Please note that we decide to relax the regulation that one you cannot invite non-members for the second consecutive year in normal rules.
If you plan a symposium on the same theme as ESJ67 (Nagoya), please include research progress since then. We cannot accept application with the same title and abstract of ESJ67.
The duration of a symposium is c.a. three hours.
The deadline for abstract submission for each talk is the same as that for the oral/poster presentation submission.

If you have any questions about applying to the symposium, please check the inquiry page:
http://www.esj.ne.jp/meeting/68/contact-e.html

We look forward to receiving applications from potential organizers.

Chief of ESJ68 Symposium Committee,
Mayumi Yoshimura