Thank you for your willingness to participate in the organization of the EGU General Assembly as a convener. Here we provide information to help you in all stages of proposing, organizing and convening a session. Information will be added to this page step-by-step as we approach the event. Make sure you read it carefully, as information may change from one year to another.

Conveners should pay specific attention to the following points:

  1. The scientific programme of the EGU General Assembly is organized by the Programme Committee, including Chairs and Science Officers of different Programme Groups (PGs).
  2. Conveners are invited to identify the PG Chair and the officers of the Programme Group their session belongs to and communicate with them whenever needed during the process of submitting and organizing a session.
  3. Conveners are assisted by the staff of Copernicus Meetings, who informs them by email of actions needed with regard to the organization of their sessions. Conveners use the Copernicus Office Meeting Organizer online system to submit and organize their sessions (see below). Copernicus Meetings can be contacted at egu25@copernicus.org.
  4. All members of a convener team must read the convener rules and guidelines, and agree to abide by the EGU code of conduct.
For a glimpse of what is expected from conveners during the EGU General Assembly, you are invited to watch this short video.

Useful links

  1. Deadlines and milestones
  2. Programme Committee

Rules and general guidelines for conveners

The following rules for conveners and co-conveners apply during session proposal submission and session organization. Please be aware that not abiding by these rules can prevent programme finalization in the system:

  1. When submitting a session proposal, keep in mind that a convener team consists of a minimum of 2 conveners (1 convener and 1 co-convener) and a maximum of 5 conveners (1 convener and 4 co-conveners) per session.
  2. The member of the convener team who submits a session proposal agrees to become the point of contact for the session for session-specific communication with authors and conference organizers. This means that their email address would be listed alongside their name on the programme. Changes to the point of contact and/or additional points of contact can be appointed at a later stage.
  3. One can have a maximum of 3 (co-)convenerships in total, with one as lead convener and a maximum of two as co-convener. One additional co-convenership for Union Symposia and Great Debates is allowed. Short Courses are not counted in the maximum number of convenerships allowed.
  4. Convening a session and presenting their work at the EGU General Assembly is encouraged, but some rules apply:
    1. Conveners and co-conveners cannot be solicited speakers in the session they convene.
    2. In oral/poster sessions, (co-)conveners can be (co-)authors, but they cannot present an oral in the session they convene. They can however be poster presenting authors.
    3. In PICO sessions, (co-)conveners can be (co-)authors and presenting authors in the session they convene.
    4. A (co-)convener cannot be a session chairperson for the time block in which they are presenting.

In addition, we recommend conveners to carefully read the following points:

  1. The EGU strongly encourages conveners to build their teams and organize their sessions considering and promoting under-represented demographics, in particular including: (i) multiple countries and institutes, (ii) different career stages, with particular attention to the participation of Early Career Scientists, as well as (iii) different genders and all other forms of diversity.
  2. Lead conveners should check with all co-conveners that they agree to take part in the proposed session and to contribute to the session organization. All co-conveners should review the convener rules and guidelines.
  3. The EGU Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Committee created the EDI session logo to be added to your session if your convener team fulfils the 3 criteria of diversity in gender, career stage, and geographic affiliation. An automatic check and assignment of this EDI logo is applied if all conveners have filled their user profile. If individual conveners have not filled their user profile, you will be asked to manually indicate whether the diversity criteria are fulfilled. We then kindly ask you to encourage your colleagues to complete their profile online. Please note that the EDI logo only appears on the listed session following session programme finalization.
  4. Conveners do not automatically obtain discounts or waivers on the abstract processing charges or the registration fee. If eligible, they can apply to EGU participation support schemes when applications are open during the call-for-abstracts.
  5. It is the responsibility of conveners to advertise their session. The EGU will advertise the conference and the entire programme, but not individual sessions. Email lists cannot be provided for data privacy reasons.
  6. Conveners must comply with the EGU General Assembly rules of conduct.

Copernicus Office Meeting Organizer online system

  1. Conveners use the tools of the Copernicus Office Meeting Organizer online system. For this purpose, they need to register to the system with a user account (ID and password). Only registered conveners can access the online system. The ID is a personal identification and cannot be shared with others.
  2. Conveners can create or update their user account, including updating their email address, at: https://administrator.copernicus.org/personal_data.
  3. Names and affiliations of conveners and co-conveners are listed in the programme for each session. Other personal details are only displayed if explicitly permitted by the conveners in their personal account. The person proposing the session agrees to be the session point of contact, with an email address visible for session related questions.
  4. When submitting a session proposal, conveners and co-conveners are entered by first name, last name, and email. If these data match an existing user ID, they are connected to this ID. Conveners and co-conveners who already have an ID should be registered with the email address associated with that ID. This is to avoid multiple IDs for the same person and associated login problems.
  5. Copernicus Meetings can be contacted at egu25@copernicus.org.

Session submission: general information

The EGU General Assembly programme is organized into several Programme Groups (PGs) and their respective sessions. Sessions are distributed amongst disciplinary, inter- and transdisciplinary (ITS), education and outreach (EOS), union-wide (e.g. Union Symposia, Great Debates), and community-led.

The programme is built in three main steps following the timing in the deadlines and milestones table.

  1. Call-for-skeleton programme: the PG Chairs are asked to implement sub-Programme Groups in their respective PG to guide session submission.
  2. Public call-for-session proposals: the public is invited to suggest sessions.
  3. Session programme finalization: the PG Chairs and their scientific officers are asked to compile their session programme from the proposed sessions before the public call-for-abstracts.

Public call-for-session proposals

Session proposals can be submitted during the public call-for-session, before the session submission deadline: 9 September 2024.

During the call-for-session proposals, EGU accepts proposals for the following sessions (check their respective guidelines for further information):

  1. Regular scientific sessions (organized by a leading PG)
  2. Inter- and Transdisciplinary sessions (ITS)
  3. Education and Outreach sessions (EOS)
  4. Union Symposia (US) and Great Debates (GDB)
  5. Short courses (SC)

To submit a session proposal to the EGU General Assembly programme, please first have a look at the provisional skeleton programme implemented by the PG Chairs, where main topics may be listed.

When submitting a session, the following steps are required:

  1. Submit your session proposal to one Programme Group (PG) only. This will be the leading PG of your session and the PG Chair will be responsible for the organization of your session in the programme. Programme Groups and their Chairs and Science Officers are listed here.
  2. Define your session with a title and description, and short summary. Avoid submitting a session that is similar to sessions already suggested. Rather, contact the conveners or directly propose modifications to already suggested sessions if you would like to be involved. Please note that only the session title and short summary will be visible in the provisional programme, until session programme finalization in October.
  3. Identify the lead convener and co-conveners (more information below).
  4. Optionally, identify (co-)conveners as Early Career Scientists (ECS), if applicable.
  5. Identify one of the conveners as being responsible for the Outstanding Student and PhD candidate Presentation (OSPP) competition in your session.
  6. Define keywords from the EGU keyword list. Keywords are used by PG Chairs to identify potential session similarities when finalizing the programme and during session scheduling. They are not used for online search tools. Typing in the keyword box will bring up suggestions from the EGU keyword list.
  7. Indicate other Programme Groups to suggest potential co-organization with other PGs, if relevant (see below). This is a suggestion only; the final decision is taken by the PG Chairs when they finalize their programme.
  8. Indicate whether your session is to be co-sponsored by a colleague science organization (see below).
  9. Consider organizing a special issue about your session in one of the EGU's open-access journals. A subject-based selection is given in the proposal form for further information. Please take a look at the list of the EGU's topical journals as well as EGU's proceedings series Advances in Geosciences.

The Programme Group Chairs and officers will build their PG session programme from the sessions proposed.

Conveners will be informed of the status of the session they proposed by email in October. The Chair of the Programme Group where the session was proposed can accept the sessions as they were proposed, suggest changes for the sake of clarity of the final programme, and also request conveners of sessions that are similar to merge.

Session co-organization and co-sponsoring

Session co-organizing by Programme Groups

Conveners can suggest other Programme Groups to co-organize their session when submitting a session proposal. The Chair of the PG hosting the session is responsible for sending the invitations for co-organization. Acceptance of these suggestions lies with the receiving PG Chair(s). Co-organized sessions are supposed to be truly multi-disciplinary in nature and to entail active involvement (through convenership) of members identifying with all co-organizing Programme Groups.

Session co-sponsoring by colleague science organizations

The EGU encourages session co-sponsoring by other colleague organizations as a means of strengthening ties and encouraging collaboration. Co-sponsoring organizations will be listed in the session subtitle (automatically set by the system). Session co-sponsoring is expected to follow these guidelines: (i) co-sponsoring should be reciprocal, involving sessions at meetings of both partners, (ii) the session has conveners from both organizations, (iii) the colleague organization agrees to session co-sponsoring, and (iv) session co-sponsoring is intended for colleague scientific organizations and does not imply funding. A co-sponsoring organization should furthermore not influence the work of the conveners or the content of the session. Programme Group Chairs decide on co-sponsoring of a session within their respective Programme Group. During session submission you will be asked to confirm that the colleague science organization agrees with the co-sponsoring.