Record-Breaking Number of Abstracts Submitted for SBM2020

Dear SBM Members,

Thank you all for submitting your work for presentation at the SBM 2020 Annual Meeting! It was another record-breaking submission year, thanks to you. We greatly value your hard work and continued attendance at the meeting, where important networking and future planning is maximized.

Some of our members have voiced concerns about the abstract review process, and we wanted to provide some contextual information that might help settle any confusion. Acceptance decisions are primarily driven by the overall scores and recommendations provided by expert reviewers and a topic area chair in each of 31 topic areas. For session types that have fewer available programming slots, such as panel discussions and symposia, we also take into account the content of submissions, to optimize diversity of topics across the accepted symposium and panel sessions.

The overall rejection rate for submissions this year was 20% (excluding rapid posters, which are still under review), with the rate being higher for panels, symposia, and pre-conference courses--approximately 40-50% rejection rate, depending on the session type. Paper/poster submissions has a rejection rate of 14%. Therefore, competition was very high among all the excellent submissions. The rejection rates are higher this year mostly due to a greater number of submissions. We had a record breaking number of submissions, including the rapid abstracts, with a total of 1,921 submissions! Further, SBM membership has grown from about 2,100 to nearly 2,500 since just 5 years ago.

Although these growing pains are expected, the Program Committee is considering possible changes that would protect higher acceptance rates. These changes each have advantages and disadvantages, however, and member input will be an important part of the process we take before making any changes. For example, we could increase the number of rooms used for oral presentations (panels, symposia, and paper sessions). This would increase the number of acceptances for those sessions, but there are some disadvantages of this, including more competing sessions at the same time and potentially greater competition for attendance at each session. Because we have to contract conference venues years in advance, adding extra rooms will be quite difficult or impossible for the foreseeable future. Extending the conference an extra day, another option, has been met with resistance by SBM members, according to the results from several membership surveys. We will continue to brainstorm ideas, and we will seek your feedback. So please stay tuned and get involved!

Finally, if your submission(s) were not accepted this year, please do not let that deter you from attending the Annual Meeting in San Francisco! Our science remains strong, and we think you will get much value from attending. We have exciting keynotes and master lectures scheduled, and many formal and informal opportunities for networking.  We sincerely hope to see you in San Francisco and hope you continue to submit your best work to SBM!

All our best,

The SBM 2020 Program Committee: L. Alison Phillips, PhD (chair), Dori Steinberg, PhD (co-chair), and Eric Hekler, PhD (past chair); and SBM President Michael Diefenbach, PhD