What is the cancellation policy?

Cancellations And No Shows

Before register an accepted abstract, presenters should be reasonably confident that they will attend the meeting and make the presentation as scheduled.

Cancellations and failures to give scheduled presentations without any notice are disruptive and leave gaps in the program that are a source of frustration for attendees. Therefore, the ICNS enforces the following penalties for avoidable situations which result in gaps in the meeting program, except in extenuating circumstances (medical issues, family emergency).

No Shows

Failure to give a scheduled presentation without any notice is especially disruptive to the meeting. The no show penalty is one (1) year presentation ban for presentation types that were missed (podium, poster).

Any abstract with the penalized author listed as the presenting author will not be accepted for the following year’s conference. This penalty applies only to the presenting author, not to any coauthors. The ban is for presenting a formal talk or poster only. The presenting author can still organize a session, be listed as a coauthor, and attend the conference.

Bear in mind that you can always present your work via skype, or send us your poster. This alternative solutions are available so we believe that presenters shouldn’t have any problem in delivery their work to ICNS attendees.

Extenuating Circumstances

We realize that sometimes unforeseen events outside of a presenter’s control prevent them from presenting as scheduled. For example, a flight cancellation, medical condition, or family emergency may suddenly disrupt a presenter’s plans.

No show penalties may not be applied to presenters with sudden and unavoidable reasons for not attending the conference (medical issues, family emergencies, unforeseen travel problems, and similar situations outside of a presenter’s control).

We realize that in the cases of no shows, sometimes a presenter’s immediate problems cannot be communicated to the ICNS staff until after the scheduled presentation time has passed. We will be lenient for such situations if we receive some sort of explanation from the presenter, even if the message is sent after the presentation would have occurred. For other cases, where there is not a compelling reason and no notice was received, the no show penalty will be enforced.

How to Cancel a Presentation

To cancel, presenters should send an email to the organising committee, with WITHDRAW in the subject line, and include the full name of the abstract in the body of the email.

This is the clearest way to communicate your cancellation. Messages and notes passed in person on the meeting site are highly unreliable! Email is by far the best method for letting us know what has happened.

We may not be able to respond during the conference but we will save all such messages for processing after the conference.