Content review of what speakers actually upload. This is a different thing from abstract review, does a different job, and runs on different machinery — the distinction matters, so it is drawn out below.
Use this where the slides themselves must be checked before they are shown — accredited education, regulated therapeutic areas, sponsor compliance, or simply a scientific committee that wants sight of the decks.
How it differs from abstract review
| Abstract review | Review & Approval | |
|---|---|---|
| Judges | A proposal, before it is accepted | The finished file, before it is presented |
| Question | Should this be in the program? | Is this content acceptable as it stands? |
| Outcome | A recommendation feeding a committee decision | Approved, approved with changes, revision requested, rejected, deferred, or flagged for discussion |
| Rounds | None — judged once | Up to three by default; the speaker revises and resubmits |
| Reviewers | One to five per abstract | One, or several with a majority or unanimous rule and a manager override |
| Assigned by | Abstract, track, or automatically | Whole show, track, session or individual presentation |
The two coexist happily. A congress can review abstracts in the spring to build its program and review the resulting slide decks in the autumn, with the same or entirely different reviewers.
The workflow
- Assign reviewers, individually or as a review team, at whatever level suits — an entire track to one panel, a single sensitive presentation to a named expert.
- Reviewers are notified when a file is uploaded against something assigned to them, so they review current material rather than an empty placeholder.
- They record an outcome, with feedback for the speaker.
- On revision requested, the speaker is emailed, sees the request in their hub, uploads a new version, and a new round opens.
- On approved with changes, the speaker is asked to acknowledge the changes, and you are told when they do.
Settings worth knowing
- Exemptions — a whole track, a session or a single presentation can be marked exempt. Use it for keynotes and anything a committee has already cleared.
- Blind review — hides speaker identity from reviewers.
- Lock after approval — prevents a speaker replacing an approved file with something unreviewed. Recommended wherever review is a compliance requirement rather than a courtesy.
- Reviewer decline — reviewers may decline individual items, or the entire event; a manager can clear an event-level decline.
- Automatic reassignment — off by default. When on, an assignment untouched for N days is moved to another reviewer, and both the original reviewer and the managers are told.
- Reminders and overdue notices — the same shape as upload reminders, plus an optional daily digest to managers of what is late.
- Speaker withdrawal — whether a speaker may withdraw their own presentation, and whether they must give a reason.
One questionnaire system, four uses
Questionnaires are not specific to content review. The same builder produces every scored or structured form in Rostrum, and each one is typed by what it is for:
- Content review — what reviewers answer about a presentation (this chapter).
- Abstract scoring — what reviewers answer about a submission (Chapter 09).
- Submitter questions — extra questions asked at abstract submission (Chapter 06).
- Session feedback — what delegates answer about a session (Chapter 21).
An event's questionnaires are gathered on their own Questionnaires tab, so you can see and manage all of them in one place rather than hunting through the product that uses each one.
The organization template library
Above the event sits a library of reusable templates belonging to your organization. Build a scoring form once — your society's standard six criteria — save it as a template, and start from it on every event afterwards. Rostrum also ships read-only starter templates for abstract scoring, submitter questions, content review and session feedback, which you can duplicate and adapt.
Templates are copied, never linked. Starting from a template gives an event its own independent questionnaire, so editing it never disturbs the template or any other event that used it. That is deliberate: a live event's scoring form should never change because someone tidied up the library.
Seeing where you stand
The Review Center's control center lists every presentation with its review state, who holds it, and how long it has been there. Reports summarize progress by track, session and reviewer, and export for the committee meeting.