It is important to us at the Welsh Stroke Conference that everyone who contributes abstract(s) for presentation understands our marking process. Therefore, please find below a description of how your abstract(s) will be reviewed:

– Firstly, following submission, your abstract details and those of all submitting authors will be collated by our conference organiser.
– After the closing date for submissions we will allocate the abstracts to a team of research academics, clinical academics and clinicians to be judged anonymously.
– Each abstract will be marked by two individuals with the mean average of these marks being calculated. The two markers will review the abstracts independently with no discussion prior to mark allocation.
– In the event of any conflicts of interest, the marker will declare this in advance to ensure a limitation on bias.
Once all marks have been collated an adjudication meeting will take place where any disparate marks are discussed. The chair of the conference organising committee will have the final word if needed.
– Abstracts will be rejected if they are below the minimal accepted score unless there are comments from the markers that suggest benefit of inclusion.
– Successful abstract authors will be invited to submit a poster to the conference and to participate in a poster tour. You will be assigned a poster tour on one of the two days of the conference. Details about this will be made available separately.
– The top 5 abstracts will be invited to present their work on the podium.
– Posters will be marked separately to the abstracts and the winner of both the best poster and the best platform presentation will receive a prize and certificate. The winners will be announced at the conference.
– Please note that the poster prize is based on the poster itself and not the poster tour. The purpose of the poster tour is to offer a forum to discuss your work, engage with the delegates at the conference and to receive peer feedback from the poster tour lead.