Session Role Types and Limits

Role Definitions

Organizer (Minor Role)

What is your responsibility? You are logistically responsible for submitting pre-formed panels in the online submission portal.

• Communicate with participants and get their commitment prior to submitting session
• Create session in submission system
• Ensure session follows participation guidelines
• Edit session in system and submitted it through the online submission portal
• Communicate any changes and eligibility requirements to session participants
• Applies to: 
  • Oral presentation sessions
  • Roundtables / town halls
  • Conversations or debates
  • Interviews
  • Podcasts
  • Installations

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Chair (Minor Role)

What is your responsibility? You supervise actual sessions.

• Play a critical role in ensuring sessions benefit panelists, audience, and the profession alike.
• Responsible for facilitating the introduction of session participants to the attending audience.
• Chairs (particularly when different from the session organizer) should communicate with participants at least one month in advance, acquainting themselves with their backgrounds and their intended presentation, and informing them of the time limit for their talks.
• Manage time for each session, and ensures the discussion is polite and productive.
• For oral presentations, make sure no presenter exceeds their assigned time slot on the program by allowing an equal amount of time for each presenter, followed by 20 minutes for comments from all discussants, and 15 minutes for audience discussion.
  • • If 5 presenters, 10 minutes
    • If 4 presenters, 12 minutes
    • If 3 presenters, 15 minutes
• Determine format and amount of time available to each participant.
  • For oral presentations, normally, time should be divided equally among papers, regardless of how many co-authors are on the paper. People should be discouraged from having more than two presenters on the same paper. Discussants may need more time than paper presenters, if they have several papers to discuss.
• Applies to:
  • Oral presentation sessions
  • Roundtables / town halls
  • Installations

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Live Presenter (Major Role)

What is your responsibility? You prepare content for your session type.

• Actual presenter of content within a session (oral presentation session, roundtable, conversation or debate, interview), both in-person and virtual
• Applies to:
  • Individually volunteer paper presenters
  • Flash presentation session presenters
  • In-person poster presenters
  • Oral presentation session presenters
  • Roundtable presenters
  • Conversation or debate moderators
  • Conversation or debate speakers
  • Interviewers
  • Interviewees
  • Installation participants

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Discussant (Secondary Role)

What is your responsibility? You review the content shared by the presenters in your session and provide feedback.

• Paper presenters in will provide a copy of their paper in advance for the discussants to read.
  • If there are two discussants and more than four papers, they may want to divide the papers so that each paper receives comments from only one discussant.
• Provide feedback pointing out both the strengths and areas of improvement.
• Pace the research in a broader context and discuss trends and themes.
• Guide the direction of the discussion between presenters and the audience members.
• Applies to:
  • Oral presentation sessions
  • Roundtables / town halls

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On-Demand Presenter (Prerecorded Role)

What is your responsibility? You prepare and record your session type for the Annual Meeting on-demand library.

• Actual presenter of content within a prerecorded submission type, only virtual
  • Virtual poster presenters
  • Talk presenters
  • Three-minute thesis competition presenters
  • Podcast hosts
  • Podcast guests

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Co-author (Non-Role)

What is your responsibility? You are not an active participant in the Annual Meeting but contributed significantly to the work being presented by a colleague at the meeting.

A co-author is any individual who helped you work on the abstract or someone that you would like to recognize in creation of your submission. A co-author is an “in name only” role in which they are not presenting in any capacity in that specific session. Because it is a non-presenting role, they are not held to the same registration or membership requirements as presenters or session participants (organizers, chairs, discussants, etc.). Co-authors are listed in the final program with the corresponding abstract, but they are not identified as presenters or listed in the indices of the final printed program.

Co-authors…

• are listed in name only;
• are not co-presenters;
• are not required to register for the Annual Meeting or be active AAA members (but must be meeting registrants if they wish to attend the Annual Meeting or the session);
• are listed in the final program with the corresponding abstract, but not identified as presenters or co-presenters;
• are not listed in the indices of the final program or searchable with presenters.

Co-authors may only be included in submission types that allow for individual abstracts:

• Oral presentation sessions
• Individually volunteered papers
• Flash presentation sessions
• In-person posters
• Virtual posters
• Talks may include co-authors

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