Organizing your symposium using PACS In this document are screen shots of the various screens that you might see while organizing your symposium using PACS. The screen shots were made from the Firefox web browser using a Macintosh computer. You may notice some slight differences if you use a different browser or computer. Note: This document contains some screen shots from the 242 nd national meeting and some from the 243 rd national meeting. Your windows will vary slightly from those shown here. Sign in to PACS with your ACS ID and password. The login address is: http://abstracts.acs.org Begin by reviewing your submitted papers. REVIEWING ABSTRACTS This is a critical step in your role as an organizer. Yours are the eyes that will most carefully check to see that this paper belongs in the program. You need to be aware of all of the following for each paper in your session. Is the paper appropriate to the session or does it need to be moved elsewhere? o If it needs to be moved, contact one of your meeting co-chairs. Check for special equipment needs. o If there are any, contact your co-chairs. Read the comments to organizers. This is important. o Be sure to address any issues that the author has brought to your attention. Check that the Preferred presentation method is consistent with your session. Check that the title is in sentence case, no bold, no period. Check the abstract body for style and format. If changes need to be made, you will edit the abstract.
1. To review abstracts, on the Symposium Organizer Tasks dashboard, under Review, click Decisions. You should now see a screen something like this: 2. Enter the Session Code for your session into the Look for text box and then select Session Code in the drop down menu after the word in and then click GO. For example, if your session is CHED040, you would see something like: This is your opportunity to review each abstract and accept those that are right for your program. You should contact your program co-chair about papers that you do not believe are right for your session. Do not reject them. Leave that for the program chairs.
3. To review an abstract, click on the abstract number. This will open a popup window like this: 4. Confirm each of these points for each abstract: Is the paper appropriate to the session or does it need to be moved elsewhere? o If it needs to be moved, contact one of your meeting co-chairs. Check for special equipment needs. o If there are any, contact your co-chairs. Read the comments to organizers. This is important. Be sure to address any issues that the author has brought to your attention. Check that the Preferred presentation method is consistent with your session. Check that the title is in sentence case, no bold, no period. Check the abstract body for errors in style and format.
Common Errors in Abstracts That Organizers Can Repair During the review process you will likely discover minor edits that you should handle. NOTE: You will need a list with abstract number for each document that needs to be corrected. The most common errors are misspellings, improper case for titles, and formatting issues in the abstract body. For example, abstract #10088 above exhibits several of these issues. During editing (instruction below) you will manually delete the hard returns in the abstract body and correct the case of the title. OTHER COMMON ERRORS IN ABSTRACTS Many people write their abstracts using Microsoft Word for spell checking, grammar checking, word counting, and because it's the most common way for them to type. However, if they do a very natural "Copy/Paste" of their Word content into a PACS data entry window, they create a text window that is filled with Microsoft formatting codes that need to be deleted. To make matters worse, the author won t even notice this because the codes are only revealed after they complete their data entry! Consequently, we need to clean up a number of these. For example, I just did a copy/paste with this block of text from Word: There is continuing and building interest in exploring how best to improve safety education in academic chemistry programs at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. However, this is what was stored in the window, and what is displayed in the document: @font-face { font-family: " "; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria Math"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.msonormal, li.msonormal, div.msonormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; fontfamily: Cambria; }.MsoChpDefault { font-family: Cambria; }div.wordsection1 { page: WordSection1; } There is continuing and building interest in exploring how best to improve safety education in academic chemistry programs at both the undergraduate and graduate levels In this case you will need to manually delete the Microsoft codes from the abstract body. These issues can all be handled by editing the abstract.
5. If the paper has no serious issues, you may accept it by changing the Disposition drop down menu to Accept. (Note: You can accept a paper that you intend to edit.) 6. After you have made a list of the abstract number for the papers that need to be edited and have accepted the papers, Click SAVE at the bottom of the screen to complete your review. EDITING AN ABSTRACT There are numerous reasons why you might want to modify an abstract. The most obvious is the title. ACS style requires titles to use sentence case rather than title case. For example, in the listing above, abstract 10088 uses title case. To edit abstract 10088, proceed as follows. 1. First be sure that you ve written down the abstract number. You ll need that! 2. Click Home in the blue bar across the top of the screen. 3. Click Documents under Administration in the Symposium Organizer dashboard. This will take you to a screen that looks something like this.
4. Enter the abstract number into the Look for textbox and press GO to search for that document ID. The result screen should be something like this: 5. Click on the Document ID number and wait for a few moments. The screen should change to something like this: ~~~ ~~~ snipped the middle to save space ~~~ ~~~
6. Click the Edit button at the bottom of the screen. You will now see something like this: 7. Click on the area that needs editing. For example, click on Abstract Title. At this point, a new window will open with something like this: 8. Make the changes in the Abstract Title screen 9. Now fix the abstract body, by clicking Next 10. When you are finished making corrections, click Save 11. Close the window to get back to your original window 12. Click Home in the blue bar at the top of the screen
ORGANIZING YOUR SESSION WITH YOUR ACCEPTED PAPERS 1. On the Symposium Organizer Dashboard, under Session Assignment, click Assign Abstracts. You should now see a screen something like this: 2. Click on the name of the session that you wish to organize. Be patient. It takes 5-10 seconds for PACS to process this click and move to the next screen. Note that you may need to scroll down on the screen to find your session. Or you may need to click the Next link in the black bar at the top of the screen to move the screen to the next set of sessions. In this handout, assume that you wish to organize General Papers After several seconds the screen should look something like this:
3. Click the Edit button found after the Session Information box. After several seconds the screen should look something like this: Other than adding Moderator or Organizers, you probably will not need to modify any information on this screen. Your program co-chairs will handle all other changes. If you do make any modifications, please let your program co-chairs know what you ve done. The meeting co-chairs will assign the session date and start/end time after you are completely finished with your own organizing. It s fine to communicate your preferences to the co-chairs; however, please remember that we need to fill our program from Sunday through Thursday. Important! If a presenter asks what date your symposium will take place, please explain that this information will not be available until next month. The only exceptions are General Posters (Sunday night), General Papers (Thursday) and the High School Program (Sunday).
4. Immediately beneath the Session Information box you will find another box listing all of the abstracts that are currently submitted to your session. Scroll down and you will see a screen like this: To organize your session you may need to perform any or all of the following actions: Divide session into half-days if more than nine abstracts were submitted Add program activities (e.g. Welcome, Intermission, Closing remarks) Change the order of activities DIVIDING SESSION INTO HALF-DAYS If you have more than nine papers, you will need to divide your symposium into multiple halfday sessions. For reference, the half-day sessions are laid out as follows: The standard talk time slot is 20 minutes (15 for "talking" and 5 for questions). Minimum number of papers for a half-day session is five. Maximum number is nine. With nine papers there will be two 10 minute breaks o (i.e. 3 papers, break, 3 papers, break, 3 papers) On Sunday Wednesday o morning session starts @ 8:30 AM, done by noon o afternoon session starts @ 1:30 PM, done by 5:00 PM On Thursday, starts @ 8:00 PM and 1:00 PM. We can tweak as needed. For example, award addresses can go 45-60 minutes. To divide a large session into several half-day sessions, follow these steps: 1. First you will remove the papers from the large original session so that they can be reassigned to new smaller sessions. Click Assign Abstracts from the dashboard. Click on the session that you are dividing into small sessions. You will see a screen like this:
2. Click Edit. Next select the checkboxes for the papers that you wish to move into a new session. 3. Now click the Remove item button (the minus symbol icon on the lower left of the window). 4. Important! To complete the process, click Save.
5. Next, click Assign Sessions on the left of the screen. You should see the papers that you have removed from your larger section in the list. 6. Select the checkboxes for these papers and then click Assign. You will be taken to a new screen that allows the actual creation of the new half-day session.
7. On this screen you will need to do the following: a. Provide a session code. Use the same code as the original section appending a sequential letter. For example, CHED017 becomes CHED017b, CHED017c, etc. Please don t insert spaces between the CHED and the number. Also note that case counts in PACS use consistent case. b. Provide a title. This is usually the same as the title of the original section c. Set the session type. Typically this will be Oral. d. Assign the organizers. Check with your meeting chairs if you have problems with this. e. Assign the moderator. 8. Finally, Click Save. Note: if you need to divide your program into more than two sessions, follow the instructions above for each of the new smaller sessions. ADDING PROGRAM ACTIVITIES If you are not already in the Edit mode, you need to get there by following these steps. 1. From the Dashboard, click: Session Assignment Assignment Abstracts 2. From the Assign Abstracts window, click: the title of your symposium and wait 3. Beneath the Session Information box, click: Edit Now you re ready to continue. Click the Add Program Activity button. A popup screen will appear:
You can select one of the predefined activities or add a custom activity of your choice. In this demo we will add four activities, one of which is a custom activity. Select radio button next to Introductory Remarks Click Add Click Add Program Activity Select radio button next to Intermission Click Add Click Add Program Activity Select radio button next to Concluding Remarks Click Add Click Add Program Activity Select radio button next to the blank box In the blank box enter a name, e.g. Workshop Activities In the duration box enter a time, e.g. 45 Click Add Click Save to make your changes permanent. The screen should now look like this:
If you accidentally add a program activity that you didn t intend to add, you can use the Remove Item button to handle that scenario. For example, to delete the Workshop Activities from the session, do the following: Select the checkbox to the left of Workshop Activities Press the Remove Item button WARNING! Surprisingly, this button does not ask you to confirm your deletion. PLEASE BE CAREFUL. Do not use this on an abstract unless you are absolutely certain that the abstract needs to be removed from the entire ACS program. Usually abstracts are moved to other areas rather than deleted by organizers. CHANGING THE ORDER OF ACTIVITIES You can move the activities to their correct order. For example, the Introductory Remarks should be first on this list, the Concluding Remarks should be last, and so forth. To move the Introductory Remarks to the first position on the list, do the following: Select the checkbox to the left of Introductory Remarks Press the Move Item Up/Down buttons until the activity is where it belongs De-select the checkbox Note that you will probably also wish to change the order of abstracts, to put them into a logical order for your session. IMPORTANT! Click the Save button when the order is correct.