The last step of Path A. Conversion turns accepted abstracts into the presentations, posters and sessions that the rest of the platform works with — the same objects you would have created by hand.
What conversion produces
- Accepted oral becomes a presentation in draft, not yet scheduled into a session. The presenting author becomes its speaker; other authors become co-presenters.
- Accepted poster becomes a poster in draft, carrying its track across. The presenting author becomes the primary author.
- Accepted paper on demand becomes an on-demand paper in draft, carrying its track across. The presenting author becomes the primary author, and every author gets upload access — any of them may supply the video.
- Accepted session proposal becomes a session — unscheduled, chaired by the proposer, carrying the session description — containing one presentation per talk, in the order the chair arranged them. Each talk's presenting author becomes that presentation's speaker and the rest become co-presenters.
The abstract's sections are flattened into the new item's abstract text, keeping the section headings, so the accepted text travels with the item.
Any supporting files attached to the submission travel too, as a file group called "Abstract Materials" on the new item. They are kept separate from the presented file, so a figure submitted with an abstract can never be mistaken for the poster itself.
Everyone named as an author gets an account if they did not have one, and the appropriate role. From that moment they appear in their own participant hub with the next thing they owe you — usually uploading a file.
Who can be converted
An abstract is eligible when all of these hold:
- It is submitted, not withdrawn.
- Its decision is an acceptance.
- That decision has actually been sent to the submitter, and the staged decision still matches what was sent.
- The submitter has not declined.
Notably, a submitter who has not yet confirmed can still be converted. Confirmation is a soft gate — you are warned, not blocked — because programs frequently have to be built before every last acceptance has been answered.
Converting is a one-way door
Once converted, an abstract's decision is locked and the submitter can no longer decline it — they are in the program. The link between the abstract and the presentation, poster or paper it became is permanent and unique, so the same abstract can never be converted twice, even by two people clicking at the same time.
Delete the presentation, poster, paper or session that was created. That releases the link and returns the abstract to a convertible state, at which point the decision becomes editable again. This is the intended escape hatch — there is no separate "un-convert" action.
Extracting a talk from a rejected or waitlisted proposal (Chapter 10) gives that talk its own life in the program. Treat the proposal's decision as settled at that point: if the committee later accepts and converts the same proposal, the extracted talk would appear in both places, so review the program after any such reversal.
What happens next
Converted items are ordinary program content from here on. Schedule the presentations into sessions, give posters their board numbers, and let the file collection, review and delivery products in the following chapters do their work. Nothing downstream knows or cares that the content arrived through a call for abstracts.