Free Communications Call for Abstracts – 2012

for the
National Athletic Trainers’ Association Annual Meeting & Clinical Symposia
St. Louis, MO – June 26 thru 29, 2012

ABSTRACT SUBMISSION PROCESS – READ BEFORE SUBMITTING YOUR ABSTRACT

Thank you for your interest in the NATA Research and Education Foundation Free Communications Program. Our goal is to provide a forum where researchers and clinicians can disseminate research and clinical case studies. However, NATA Research and Education Foundation expects abstracts to meet a minimum level of scholarly and academic rigor and only accepts high quality submissions for oral or poster presentation.

Please read all instructions carefully as most rejections result from improperly structured abstracts or failure to include required elements such as measures of disperson for example. Abstracts are printed in the annual Supplement to the Journal of AthleticTraining and must therefore be submitted in publishable quality and in a specific format and free of copy editing mistakes. The Free Communications Committee has made an extensive effort to provide instructions and examples for investigators to follow. Because of the vast number of submissions, abstracts not submitted in the proper format or those with copy editing mistakes will be rejected. Because of limited time and resources, corrections cannot be sought for individual abstracts. The links below provide detailed instructions and examples.

The NATA Research and Education Foundation provides two different submission options. The first is the traditional, or Peer Reviewed Track which is available to anyone. The second option is only available to undergraduate or masters level graduate students and is call the Student Exchange Track. The Student Exchange Track offers an opportunity for undergraduate and master students to present their research results at the NATA Annual Meeting. The main distinction between the two tracks is the level of review applied to each. The level of scientific review applied to submissions for the Peer Reviewed Track is rigorous. Abstracts rejected from the Peer Reviewed Track will not be transferred to the Student Exchange Track. The Student Exchange Track will allow students an option to share scholarly information without being subjected to a rigorous scientific review of the content of the abstract. Submissions for the Student Exchange Track must pass only a mechanical review, and all will be presented in Poster format at the NATA Annual Meeting. The reasons for adding the Student Exchange Track are to encourage more students to participate in the Free Communications Program, and to afford more of our younger members the opportunity to participate in a forum for information exchange at the national level.

The following chart provides details comparing the features of each track. Be sure you understand the features of each track before making your selection below. Please call the NATA Foundation office (972-532-8847) with any questions.

DEADLINE FOR ABSTRACT SUBMISSION IS NOVEMBER 15, 2011.

Select the link below for the instructions for the track you prefer and to submit your abstract.
(Submission link appears at the bottom of each instructions page)

PEER REVIEWED TRACK INSTRUCTIONS

STUDENT EXCHANGE TRACK INSTRUCTIONS