8th FORUM - Invitation for abstract submission

8th Forum on Companion Animal Medicine
March 10-12, 2017
Exhibition & Conference Center HELEXPO, Maroussi, Athens

 

Invitation for abstract submission

The Hellenic Companion Animal Veterinary Society (HCAVS) invites you to submit abstracts for free communications or short reviews at the 8th Forum of Companion Animal Medicine, which will be held in Athens, Greece, from Friday 10th to Sunday 12th March, 2017. Abstracts should be based on original studies, retrospective studies or case reports and will be considered for oral or electronic poster (e-poster) presentation. Short reviews may also be considered for presentation. The abstract content should be relevant to companion animal medicine; in addition, the content of short reviews (maximum number of authors 2) should be consistent with the major thematology and not be overlapping with any invited review of the congress. Veterinary students may participate as co-authors in free communications and can present e-posters, but are not eligible for oral presentations.

All abstracts should be submitted electronically by November 11, 2016 to the following email address: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. The abstract file should be named using the first author’s surname and a short title of the presentation (e.g., “Williams-Feline hyperthyroidism”). After your abstract is successfully submitted, you will receive an acknowledgement by email within two working days. If you do not receive such an acknowledgement, please contact the congress secretariat at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. The abstracts will be reviewed by the Scientific Committee and the authors will be notified for the decision and the possible need for a text revision by December 16, 2016. Upon submission, the authors of free communications should state whether they prefer their abstract to be presented as an oral or an e-poster presentation. The Scientific Committee reserves the right to change the way an abstract will be presented (oral instead of e-poster and vice versa), depending on the scientific content of the abstract and the number of abstracts that have been accepted for presentation. For each accepted abstract it is required that at least the presenter (oral presentations, short reviews) or one of the authors (e-poster presentations) be pre-registered in the Forum.

The duration of oral presentations and short reviews will be 8–12 minutes and 15-20 minutes, respectively, depending on the number of abstracts that will be presented. The authors will be notified for the duration of their presentation.

E-posters should be submitted in electronic form according to the specified instructions (please see below).

All abstracts accepted for presentation will be published in the Conference Proceedings in electronic form. The Scientific Committee will select the best oral presentations (one from an academic institution and one from a private practice), which will receive a prize on the final day of the Forum.

Instructions for writing an abstract

• Abstracts should be written in “Times New Roman” font size 12, with 1.5 line spacing and 3.5 cm margins on each side, with full justification and paragraph indentation. Abstracts should be carefully checked for spelling errors because they will be published as submitted and should be 150-200 words and 400-500 words for the free communications and the short reviews, respectively, excluding the title, the author information and up to five references for the short reviews. Tables, graphs and figures are not allowed.
• For each abstract, the first line should include the title, which should be written in bold lower case letters, and the second line should include the author name(s) in lower case letters. If the authors are more than one (all should have a significant contribution to the study), the name of the presenting author (oral presentation, e-poster or short review form) should be underlined. The authors’ credentials should be listed two lines below (e.g., Private Practitioner, Assistant Professor, PhD, PhD student, veterinary student, etc) along with the institution or office information, which should be separated using superscript numbers. The abstract should start two line spaces below.
• Each abstract should include the following sections: (a) Introduction, in which the purpose of the study should be clearly stated, (b) Materials and methods or clinical case(s): animal handling should be in agreement with the national and international regulations, (c) Results: in the case of clinical cases a sufficient follow up is required, and (d) Conclusions. Short reviews do not typically have sections, the references are inserted at the end of the main text and they should be in accordance with the instructions to authors provided by the «Hellenic Journal of Companion Animal Medicine» (H.J.C.A.M.). Abbreviations should be explained in parentheses the first time that they are mentioned in the text.
• Abstracts that do not adhere to the above mentioned guidelines will be returned to the authors for revision and resubmission or will be rejected.
• Abstract templates for free communications or short reviews can be found in the following links

SHORT REVIEW TEMPLATE     FREE COMMUNICATION TEMPLATE

Instructions for the electronic submission of manuscripts

Each abstract submission should be accompanied by a letter in electronic form that should include:

a) the authors’ preference with regard to the way the free communication will be presented (oral or e-poster presentation) and an agreement that the abstract may be presented in a way different than the one proposed by the authors (poster instead of oral and vice versa) at the discretion of the Scientific Committee,

b) a statement that the submitted abstract is a research study, a retrospective study, a case report or a short review,

c) if the abstract has been presented or published or submitted for publication in a journal (print or electronic); studies that have not been previously presented or published are preferred,

d) the approval number by the authorities (for research studies that involve experimental animal use),

e) if there are special audiovisual requirements (for oral presentations and short reviews), and

f) the corresponding author’s information (email, mailing address, phone number, mobile phone number)

A template of the letter can be found here.

Instructions for e-poster presentations

The 8th Forum of the HCAVS will accept only e-poster form presentations. Therefore, all abstracts approved for presentation in the poster session should be submitted in electronic form (e-poster). E-posters offer a flexible form of presentation, which aims to offer increased legibility and readability while allowing the author an interactive relationship with the audience.

Throughout the course of the 8th Forum, the e-posters will be displayed on TV screens placed in a specially designed area of the Forum’s venue; each screen will display more than one e-poster (circular presentation).

Design – Preparation

E-posters will be displayed on full HD (High Definition) screens with 1920*1080 pixel resolution, with a ratio of 16:9 widescreen. The minimum diagonal measurement of the screens is 42”' inches (can also be 47” or 50”), and this allows displaying presentations in aspects with similar dimensions to those of the printed form.

The presentation should be in A UNIQUE SLIDE and should be created using the PowerPoint program. The final file should be in .ppt/.pptx format to allow the processing of the file, if necessary, for its optimal display. As presentations at the 8th Forum will be static, no videos, moving images, hyperlinks and/or slide transitions are allowed, as they will not function. Sound files are also not supported.

Pages must be oriented vertically. The optimum size for the presentation of e-posters, based on the above, is: width 50cm & height 90cm. [the above dimensions can be set in the PowerPoint program (2007), from the tab design / page layout / adjust].

The instructions are indicative and if your e-poster is designed in dimensions similar to these, the letters and images will definitely be visible.

We recommend selecting distinct colour combinations for your presentations. Please use the .jpeg or .png format in 72 or 96 dpi resolutions for embedded images, to achieve high image quality and a small file size.

Note: Due to the incompatibility and differences between the requirements of operating systems, formulas created in Windows cannot be displayed in MAC OS, or even in PowerPoint. For this reason, it is recommended that you save formulas as images.

Fonts: To ensure the correct display of files, please select fonts that are included in the MS Windows operating system. Indicatively, you can choose amongst the fonts Arial, Times New Roman, Tahoma, Trebuchet Ms, Calibri, Book Antiqua, Verdana, Palatino Linotype.

Structure and font size: The structure of the presentation will follow the structure of oral presentations, as described above.

Slide Title: Any font size larger than 42 is large enough to clearly display the title. The recommended size is 60.

Main Text: The recommended font size is 32, for increased text legibility. Sizes of 32-36 are ideal for the main body of the presentation.

Text in tables or diagrams: It is recommended that you use fonts of the same size as the main text.

Comments, observations & references: It is recommended that you use font sizes from 23 to 26 for comments or observations in images, tables or others, as well as for references. The final presentation files should not be “locked” (through password encryption, file access protection or other application), in order to allow the Conference's Organizing Committee to set final adjustments for the circular presentation.

Submission of e-posters

If you are informed that your work has been accepted for presentation at the Conference as an e-poster, you should send it electronically (in .ppt/.pptx and .pdf format) by e-mail to the following e-mail address This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. by 10/2/2017, indicating the code assigned to your work in the title.

Sending the e-poster in .pdf format together with the .ppt/.pptx file is required in order to allow the Conference's technical secretariat to control the accurate display of the .ppt/.pptx file.

Presentation of e-posters

At least one of the authors of each abstract should be present at the e-poster presentation area, according to the schedule of the Organizing Committee, to address possible queries from the attendees. The time, duration and day of presentation will be communicated to the authors after the scientific programme is finalized and posted on the website of the HCAVS.

The duration of the presentation of each e-poster will be 10 minutes. The poster titles and the authors presented per TV screen will be available adjacent to each screen.

E-poster template

An e-poster template in .pptx format will be available online after reviewing of all submitted abstracts by the Scientific Committee will be finished (December 16)

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