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Learning Series: Generating an Abstracts Book

Your entrants are submitting presentations and short summaries of the topics they want to present at a conference. This means you’ll have dozens or even hundreds of 100-200 word summaries with countless authors, each pressing your organization to compile an abstracts book to arrange it all in a neat, meaningful way.

While this may sound overwhelming, it’s not if you break down each part. OpenWater removes the guesswork and challenges from the process to ensure you have all the raw materials necessary to assemble your book.

In this article, we’ll discuss:

• What an abstracts book is
• The different components of an abstracts book; and
• How to create your own abstracts book using abstract software

What is an Abstracts Book?

An abstracts book is a printed program book or PDF of all the presentations at your conference. The book is often combined with an online gallery to offer entrants and attendees a visual representation of what’s to come at the conference as well.

And, though this concept may sound a bit archaic considering the electronic nature of conferences today, abstracts books remain an industry standard. This means that regardless of your industry or conference, you’ll need a book.

There are 3 Components in Any Abstracts Book

Abstracts books have 3 distinct components: (1) The abstracts listing, (2) the disclosures form, and (3) the speaker index. Each is important for different reasons and precision is key for your book to be a success.

Abstracts Listing

The abstracts listing contains the each abstract’s chronological information to provide visitors with the list of all speeches to come with supplementary information. The abstracts listing includes:

1. Abstracts ID Number – Each abstract will have a unique identification number.
2. Session Title – This is the name of the presentation.
3. Authors and Affiliations – This includes each author who contributed to the presentation in the order of importance. References to each author’s affiliation will come below.
4. List of Affiliations – Affiliations should be listed in the order of importance for each author and if there are overlapping affiliations, they should not be duplicated.
5. Abstracts Content – This is the actual abstract and should contain between 100 and 200 words so visitors have a general idea of what’s to come in your presentation.

Disclosures Form

Disclosures forms reveal potential conflicts of interest an author might have due to how they were funded. This includes:

1. Author Name – The name of the author reporting the disclosure.
2. Paper ID(s) – The ID number of the reporting author’s paper.
3. Type of Disclosure – This will tell the reader whether the author is an employee of a company with a potential conflict or has received money from a certain organization that may be a potential conflict.
4. Company Affiliation – This is the author’s affiliated company.

Speaker Index

The speaker index is an alphabetical list of every speaker in the conference. This allows visitors to attend all of a speaker’s talks if they so choose. The speaker index structure is much simpler than the other sections and includes:

1. Author name
2. Presentation IDs the author is listed in

Creating an Abstracts Book

With so many specifications, many organizations feel overwhelmed at the prospect of assembling an abstracts book. However, the process can be simple if you break it down step-by-step:

1. Send a PDF of your current abstracts book format
2. We build a custom report in our abstracts book software to correctly compile all the information
3. Create formatted files for the abstracts listing, disclosures form, and speaker index
4. Deliver raw materials you will then use to create the final book.

Every Customer Demands a Different Format

Though the process of creating an abstracts book may follow the same steps for each customer, the outcome is different depending on each customer’s needs. For example, you may want to display presentation times instead of presentation IDs in your book. You can see what that looks like in the example below.

Or, maybe you don’t want the abstracts content in your abstracts listing at all. If that’s the case, we can remove it. The idea is that the abstracts book conforms to the demands of your conference. In doing so, you’ll have a valuable resource visitors can turn to throughout your conference for the information they need.

Generate Your Abstracts Book With OpenWater

If you’re planning a conference and need an abstracts book and want a precise, clean, efficient outcome, OpenWater can help. Contact one of our team members today to learn more about pricing and how we can return your raw files within one week, including all revisions.

To learn more about generating an abstracts book, check out our help center article here.

Kunal Johar

Kunal Johar is the OpenWater platform evangelist. He currently manages our development teams and enjoys diving into the fray. Find him in our community chat room.

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