• Invitation to submit
  Key dates
  Types of presentations
  Requirements for online abstract submissions
  Content requirements
  Style requirements
  Format requirements
  Abstract example
  Post abstract submission

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Invitation to submit

APA Conference Week 2009 brings together the individual conferences of APA National Groups (NGs), which represent the full diversity of Australian physiotherapy.

Featured will be prominent Australian and international physiotherapy researchers and clinicians, presenting cutting edge scientific research and clinical practice knowledge in their respective physiotherapy sub-disciplines.

The APA Conference Week 2009 organising committee, including representatives from each of the 11 participating APA National Groups, extend a warm invitation for the submission of Free Paper and 5x5 presentations to be considered for inclusion in the various scientific programs.

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Key dates

Please make a note of the following important dates.

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Types of presentations

Free papers are oral presentations of 15 minutes duration, inclusive of question time, and will be scheduled into concurrent sessions within the relevant National Group conferences.

5x5 presentations (5 slides in 5 minutes) comprise a five minute oral presentation complemented by a maximum of five corresponding slides.

Note: There will be no poster presentations in 2009.

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Requirements for online abstract submissions

1. Content requirements

Word limit Abstracts will be a maximum of 250 words (not including title / authors / affiliations). Abstracts exceeding this limit will not be accepted.

Title Abstract titles should be no more than 20 words and written in sentence case (i.e. with a single capital only at the beginning of the title).

Authors and affiliations Authors should be presented as surname first followed by initials in capitals. Separate authors by a comma, but do not place commas or full stops between each author’s surname and initials, or between initials e.g. Canning CG, Shepherd RB, Carr JH. Where there is more than one author and more than one affiliation, superscript numbers after the author’s initial should be used to indicate affiliations. When providing affiliations, include the city but not the state. Give the country if other than Australia. The name of the presenting author should be highlighted in bold type face.

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2. Style requirements

Font and point size Times New Roman regular-no italics, underlining or bold other than as indicated in the sample abstract below. 14 point for title; 12 point for remainder of text.

Spacing Single throughout abstract text. Leave a line after the title and again after affiliations.

Layout All copy should be unjustified and aligned to the left.

Text Abstracts are to be written as a single continuous paragraph without line breaks, indents or tabs.

Tables, references and figures Tables, diagrams, references, graphs and figures are not accepted within or at the end of the abstract.

Lists Do not use bullet-pointed or numbered lists within the abstract.

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3. Format requirements

Abbreviations Do not use abbreviations in the title and abstract. However, standard units of measurement, which do not have full stops after them (e.g. kg, cm) and which do not need to be preceded by the full term at first use, are acceptable.

Capitals Use capitals sparingly but capitalise proper nouns and most adjectives derived from proper nouns. Divisions of the data set may also be capitalised, e.g. Group 1, Stage 2. Capitalise official titles of conferences, congresses, postgraduate courses, institutions, organisations, businesses and government departments. Do not capitalise ‘the’ except when it is part of the official title, e.g. The University of Queensland.

Numbers and percentages Integers one to nine should generally be spelt out and numbers greater than nine shown as numerals.

Exceptions to this rule include:
• percentages, for which numerals are used in all cases (e.g.‘7%’)
• measures which involve abbreviations (e.g.‘7 km’)
• scores and ratings (e.g. ‘on a 9-point scale, the mean score was 7’)
• numbers used at the start of a sentence, which should be spelt out for numbers less than one thousand and one (e.g. ‘Forty-five people each received 20 copies of the paper’).

When reporting data, be conscious of the precision of the data and report a corresponding number of decimal places. Descriptors of distributions (such as means) may have greater precision than individual measurements.

Statistics Use a lower case italic ‘p’ when reporting p values, except when beginning a sentence. Wherever possible give the exact p (e.g., p = X) rather than the significance level (p < X). Use spaces before and after the ‘=’ sign. Report p to two decimal places if p is greater than or equal to 0.01, and to three decimal places if p is less than 0.01 but greater than or equal to 0.001. If p is less than 0.001, write ‘p < 0.001’.

When reporting confidence intervals, use the abbreviation ‘CI’ and separate the upper and lower confidence limits by the word ‘to’, not a hyphen. (For example, ‘mean = X (95% CI Y to Z)’).

It is usually not necessary to report t, F or c² values, or to provide ANOVA tables.

Metric abbreviation Common metric abbreviations are used for most measures but degree and tonne should be spelt out in full. Metric abbreviations do not take a plural. Do not refer to kgs or cms. Leave a space between numerals and abbreviations, e.g.10 km not 10km (the exception is %, which does not have a space before it).

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Abstract example The following sample abstract conforms to the AJP requirements.

A randomised controlled trial of the effects of intensive sit-to-stand training after recent traumatic brain injury on sit-to-stand performance

Canning CG¹, Shepherd RB¹, Carr JH¹, Alison JA¹, Wade L^1,2, White A²

¹The University of Sydney, Sydney ²Westmead Hospital, Sydney

The aim of this study was to examine the effectiveness of intensive practice of sit-to-stand on motor performance, exercise capacity and exercise efficiency in traumatic brain-injured patients during early inpatient rehabilitation. A single-blind randomised controlled pilot study was carried out in a brain injury rehabilitation unit. Twenty-four subjects who had recently sustained a severe traumatic brain injury were randomised into an experimental (n = 13) or a control (n = 11) group. In addition to their usual rehabilitation program, subjects in the experimental group participated in four weeks of intensive training of sit-to-stand and step-up exercises with the aim of improving performance of sit-to-stand. The control group did no additional sit-to-stand or step-up training. Outcomes were total number of sit-to-stands in 3 min as a measure of motor performance; peak oxygen consumption during a maximal 3 min sit-to-stand test as a measure of exercise capacity; oxygen consumption during a 3 min equivalent workload sit-to-stand test as a measure of exercise efficiency. Pre- and post-training measurements were made. The short four week program of sit-to-stand training and step-up exercise resulted in a greater improvement in motor performance of sit-to-stand for the experimental group compared to the control group (p = 0.02). There was no significant difference between groups for changes in exercise capacity or efficiency. Intensive task-specific training is recommended as an important component of rehabilitation early following severe traumatic brain injury.

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Post abstract submission

Confirmation
Once an abstract is successfully uploaded, an automatically generated email confirmation, inclusive of an Access Key, will be sent to the email address provided on the online submission form. Take note of this Access Key as it will allow you to edit/replace your abstract prior to the submission closing date (01/05/2009).

Review process
Each NG has appointed a Scientific Committee to review abstracts. All submitted abstracts will go through the same review process, with acceptance contingent on the extent to which the abstract meets the aim of the respective Conference Program.

Notification
Submitting authors will be notified of the outcome of their submission/s by 29 May 2009. Notification will include date of presentation / session details / instructions on how to register.

Registration
All presenting authors are required to register for the conference at which they will present by 30 June 2009 in order for their presentation details to be included in the Conference Week 2009 printed handbook, issued to all delegates.

Note: The APA will not provide funding for presenters.

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