Tips for After-Hours Proposal Submissions

Year after year, hundreds of proposals for the annual meeting are submitted in the last two days before the deadline for submissions; in the last hours, proposals typically come in by the minute. 99% of them will come through successfully and without incident. Still, we stay alert in these last days to solve problems that may arise—but we’re only there during business hours.

This year, the deadline is midnight on Friday, March 31, 2023, and AFS Staff will not be available over the weekend to assist with last-minute submission questions. Be assured that we will take time on Monday, as necessary, to resolve remaining problems with all good-faith efforts to meet the deadline.

Many questions may be answered in the instructions starting with How to Submit a Proposal. Here are some additional tips for resolving problems without staff intervention:

Trouble finding the proposal forms

ALL PRESENTERS must 1) register, then 2) submit their own program information to AFS. These are two separate steps, to be completed by everyone who is to be listed in the program, including forum participants, discussants, and co-presenters. You will receive an email with a personalized link to the submission system after you’ve registered for the meeting.

Meeting registration is not the same as submitting personal information for the meeting program!

The link to the online proposal system is on your meeting registration confirmation page, and in an email sent to your primary email address to confirm your meeting registration.

If you did not receive the registration confirmation email, please send a message to [email protected] with the subject line “Need Registration Confirmation Email.” If you can do this during business hours, we will send you the link to the proposal form as soon as possible. If this happens over the weekend, let us know. We will be in touch on Monday with further instructions for accessing the portal.

Bookmark or note the URL of the proposal submission portal! That way, if you can’t find your confirmation emails, you will still be able to return to your submitted information.


Trouble adding participants to your forum or paper session

If you receive an error message saying “The confirmation number you entered does not exist in our system,” it is likely because that person has registered for the annual meeting, but has not yet submitted their personal information in the proposal system (see above–these are two separate steps). Confirm with them whether they have done both steps, and try again.

If the problem persists, let us know by sending an email to [email protected].


High traffic errors and other oddities

The high volume of proposal submissions sometimes leads to error messages concerning processing errors on the website. Those frequently resolve themselves if you wait and try again later. If the page content doesn’t resolve or behave, try another web browser or computer, preferably one that is up to date.

If you run into a problem that isn’t so easily resolved, don’t worry, but do send us an email right away at [email protected] so that we can address the problem as soon as possible on Monday.