YSOPP Guidelines

General Information

The general aim of the "Young Scientists' Outstanding Poster Paper (YSOPP) Award" is to help to increase the general interest in the poster sessions at the EGU General Assemblies and to enhance their visibility, to further improve the overall quality of poster presentations and most importantly, to foster the excitement of younger colleagues in presenting their work in form of a poster

The awards are presented by the Divisions of the Union, but not all Divisions are presently making this award. The Divisions presenting this award for the EGU General Assembly 2008 are:

• Interdivision Sessions (IS)
• Division on Atmospheric Sciences (AS)
• Division on Biogeosciences (BG)
• Division on Climate: Past, Present, Future (CL)
• Division on Cryospheric Sciences (CR)
• Division on Geomorphology (GM)
• Division on Hydrological Sciences (HS)
• Division on Natural Hazards (NH)
• Division on Ocean Sciences (OS)
• Division on Solar-Terrestrial Sciences (ST)

Procedure for Application

Eligible for this award are MS and PhD students as well as recent graduates (conferral of degree after 1 January of the year preceding the conference, i.e. 2008 for the meeting in 2009) presenting their thesis work provided they are the first author and personally present their poster at the conference.

With the "Notice of Schedule" authors will be informed about the final status of the presentation of their paper: oral or poster. Young scientists meeting the criteria above and having been selected to present a poster may register to participate in the YSOPP Award contest of their respective Division by using the link indicated. Thereby, registration with COSIS and the abstract ID-Nr. of the respective presentation are required. The students name will then be forwarded to coordinators of the respective Division together with the e-mail address, poster title, abstract, abstract ID-Nr., session nr., poster board nr. and 'on-display' time.

Procedure for Selection

The coordinator sends out an email to all conveners giving them the names of the posters to be judged in their session and asking them to nominate two judges per poster before the meeting. The conveners obtain prior consent from the judges and may choose to do part of the judging themselves. The coordinator nominates two additional judges. To avoid potential conflicts of interest, judges should not be involved in the advising of that student in any way.

Each coordinator will prepare appraisal forms for each paper stating the title of the paper, the student's name and the name of the referee plus a number of criteria which are to be judged by the referees regarding the scientific quality, the poster design and the ability to answer questions etc. with marks from 0 to 10. The conveners collect the forms at the facility desk in the poster area and hand them to the judges during the poster session. The judges nominated by the coordinator collect their forms directly from the facility desk.

The judges will evaluate the respective posters and fill in the appraisal forms. Each judge is expected to actually speak to the student during the poster session. This produces an additional bonus of getting some extra attention for each student. The judges are asked to work confidentially. The judges then return their forms to an inbox at the EGU facility desk in the poster area during the meeting or, if needed, by mail to the coordinator. The students are encouraged to submit a handout of their poster to the coordinator (either during the meeting or by mail directly after the meeting.)

After the meeting the coordinator will analyse the appraisal forms and compile a short list (about 20 posters) and a proposal of the ranking. A jury consisting of the chairs of the technical committees and the coordinator as the chair of the jury will select the top five posters and these will get an award. The final decision should be made not later than about two months after the meeting.

Award Presentation

Each awardee will be notified after the decision has been made. The names will be published on the EGU homepage and the awardees will get the opportunity to post their posters electronically. The names will also be published in the EGU newsletter, and they will receive a conference fee waiver for the next EGU General Assembly 2009. At the business meeting of the respective Division held at this General Assembly each awardee will receive a certificate of the award and will be invited to submit a paper to one of the EGU journals, termed the YSOPP paper.