Proposal Submission Guidelines

Proposal Submission Guidelines

Proposal Guidelines

If you are contemplating submitting a proposal to present at a NARST conference, please read these Instructions first!  

NARST conferences are based on peer-reviewed, formal proposals describing either an individual paper or a pre-organized session.  With the exception of administrative sessions, all papers and pre-organized sessions are submitted using a form on the Oxford Abstracts proposal submission and review system.  

The proposal submission form contains all the information you will need to submit your proposal. Please read the guidelines below before you begin entering your proposal information, and follow the instructions for each field in the submission form.  If you have not followed instructions, you will be asked to correct your proposal information before it can be reviewed. 

You may pause proposal submission at any time by clicking on Submit.  All information will be saved, and you can return to the proposal later to complete the submission.  


Who must submit a full proposal?

Most submissions require that you upload a full proposal as a PDF file.  Please read the following to determine whether you must prepare and upload a full proposal.

  • Stand-Alone Paper, Interactive Poster Paper, Roundtable, and Work-in-Progress Roundtable proposals require preparation and submission of a full proposal, uploaded as a single PDF file.  The proposal describes a single paper, and will be reviewed.  
  • Symposium: A Symposium is a pre-constructed session that typically involves discussion rather than individual presentations. The Symposium organizer(s) must prepare and upload a full proposal PDF that describes the entire session.  The full proposal will be reviewed.  A Symposium may include a series of short presentations to provide context for the discussion.  These short presentations are not submitted separately and are not reviewed. 
  • Related Paper Sets:  A Related Paper Set is a pre-constructed session of 4 or 5 topically related individual papers.  Related Paper Sets require multiple submissions, but only one proposal PDF file.  
    • Session proposal submission: The organizer(s) of a Related Paper Set must prepare and submit a full proposal PDF describing the entire session. The session proposal will be reviewed.  
    • Individual paper submissions: Additionally, each paper within the session must be submitted via this form, but these submissions will not include a proposal PDF, and will not be reviewed.  These individual paper submissions are used to collect information about the authors, their affiliations, the paper's title, and the paper's abstract. The lead organizer is responsible for making sure that the lead author of each paper completes their submission.  The session proposal will not be considered complete until all of the individual papers also have been submitted. 

Administrative Sessions are submitted via a separate form.  Rather than a proposal PDF, the form asks for a description of the session.  If you are planning to submit an Administrative Session, please contact Paul Kemp for the submission form address, and follow the instructions on that submission form. A call for Administrative Session submissions will be issued in late July. 

Proposal Preparation Guidelines

Your proposal should be single-spaced with 1" (2.54 cm) margins all around.  The font must be no smaller than 12, and the document should be prepared using US letter dimensions (8.5" x 11").  

Stand-Alone Paper, Interactive Poster Paper, Roundtable, and Work-in-Progress  proposals: The maximum length is 5 pages, not including cited references.  The proposal should describe the key findings and features of the study.  All in-text citations should be included in the reference list and references must be in APA format. 

Symposium and Related Paper Set proposals: The maximum proposal length is 10 pages, not including cited references.  All in-text citations should be included in the reference list and references must be in APA format.  

  • For Symposium proposals, include a description of the overall session topic or issue and indicate how the session will be organized (e.g., a panel discussion followed by breakout groups).
  • For Related Paper Set session proposals, begin with a summary of the entire paper set describing how all of the papers are related, and then provide brief details of each individual paper, integrated into a single proposal document.

All Proposals

The proposal submitter is usually the presenting author or a session organizer.  Proposal reviewers will be asked to comment and score the proposal on the review criteria listed below, so it is important for the proposal to consider each of these criteria.  Within each criterion, the specific questions asked of reviewers will vary with the type of proposal.  

  • Subject/Problem
  • Design or Procedure
  • Analyses and Findings
  • Contribution
  • General Interest
  • For Roundtable and Work-in-Progress Roundtable proposals, the reviewers will also consider this question: Did the authors clearly articulate what they wish to discuss at the Roundtable?  Be sure to address this in your proposal.  
  • For Related Paper Set proposals, reviewers will be asked to give the session a Cohesiveness Score indicating the degree to which the individual papers contributed to a cohesive whole. 

Double-blinded peer review

All proposals submitted to NARST go through a double-blinded peer review: authors are not identified to the reviewers, and reviewers are not identified to the authors.  Proposal authors must remove any identifiers in the proposal pertaining to the authors, the institutions involved in the study, the titles of research grants, or any project identifiers.  Proposals that contain identifying information must be replaced with an anonymized version. 

For more information about preparation of an anonymized proposal, refer to the Frequently Asked Questions document on the NARST website.

Limits on First Authorship, Presenting Authorship, and Session Organization

NARST recognizes the value of conference participation to professional reputation and advancement. To ensure an equitable distribution of opportunities to present papers or organize sessions, NARST limits the number of times a person can appear as first author or session organizer. Additionally, NARST limits the number of presentations delivered by an individual.

An individual may be:

  • First author or presenter of only one stand-alone paper or paper within a related paper set, AND
  • First author or presenter of only one interactive poster paper, AND
  • First author or presenter of only one roundtable paper, AND
  • Organizer/Co-organizer of only one symposium, AND
  • A non-presenting co-author on any number of stand-alone, related paper set, roundtable, and/or interactive poster papers.

Presentation Scheduling 

As you prepare to submit a proposal, please consider the following.

Every effort will be made to avoid scheduling a presenting author to appear in two different rooms at the same time; resolving such scheduling conflicts will be a high priority.  

Because many papers are multi-authored, and authors may contribute to multiple papers, it is impossible to avoid all scheduling conflicts for non-presenting authors; resolving such conflicts will be a lower priority.  

Resolving any requests to schedule a paper or a pre-constructed session at a specific day/time will be a lower priority.  

To submit a proposal for the 2027 NARST Annual International Conference, please refer to the link on the conference web page.