Guidelines for the Scientific Organizing Committee (SOC)

These guidelines provide a preliminary description of the SOC role and duties. It refers to the deadlines & milestones posted on the web page.

SOC membership

The EPSC2024 SOC is composed of two Co-Chairs, ex-officio members (EPSC Executive Committee Chairs and Europlanet Society President) and several additional members. The mandate of the SOC Co-Chairs runs for three years. In order to ensure continuity, the mandates of the two Co-Chairs will end in different years.

A call for SOC membership is released biennially for membership for 2 years. The SOC CO-Chairs select the Programme Group Coordinators (2-4 SOC members each depending on size of Programme Group:

  • Terrestrial Planets (TP): 3-4 SOC members
  • Outer Planet Systems (OPS): 2-3 SOC members
  • Missions, Instrumentation, Techniques, Modelling (MITM): 2 SOC members
  • Small Bodies (comets, KBOs, rings, asteroids, meteorites, dust) (SB): 3-4 SOC members
  • Exoplanets, Origin of Planetary Systems and Astrobiology (EXOA): 2-3 SOC members
  • Outreach, Diversity, Amateur Astronomy (ODAA): 2-3 SOC members

It is expected that programme group coordinators will participate in the SOC telecons, at least one for each PG is required to participate to support the preparation of the EPSC meeting.

Roles and responsibilities of the PG coordinators

  • Session programme finalization (06–20 March 2024):
    • Finalize sessions within PG, ensure a proper session description and adequate session conveners (considering also diversity of gender, nationality/institutes and career stage).
    • Support the SOC Co-Chairs in harmonizing the sessions across the PGs (session merging, session transfer across PGs, converting session proposals into workshops, etc.).
    • Participate in SOC telecons organized by the SOC Co-Chairs.
  • Call for abstracts (21 March–15 May 2024): Monitor and encourage session conveners to solicit abstracts.
  • During the Convener Part 1 (SOI) & Part 2 (SOII) (29 May–11 June 2024):
    • Monitor and coordinate convener activities.
    • Encourage conveners to refer to Copernicus Office Meeting (not to SOC) for technical questions at the helpdesk email address.
    • Participate in Conveners meetings as required by SOC Co-Chairs.
    • Suggest potential invited speakers before 15 May.
    • Suggest potential topics and persons for the keynotes and debates before 15 May.
  • During PCI/PCII/PCIII (29 May–02 July 2024):
    • Monitor, support and coordinate convener activities. Make decisions as appropriate at PG level. Identify open points at PG level that need to be settled at SOC level.
    • Participate in SOC coordination telecons as required by SOC Co-Chairs.

We expect you to ensure that participation in your Programme Group is diverse and representative of the whole research community. A minimum of two conveners for each session is recommended, to limit bias when selecting chairpersons, inviting and reviewing abstracts and selecting contributors. You should ensure sessions balance gender, career age and nationality and are organized without disadvantage to any potential participant. If there is a possibility, please support early career researchers and persons from underrepresented countries. All PG coordinators, conveners and co-conveners are expected to abide by the EPSC Code of Conduct.

The Copernicus Office Meeting Organizer provides the tools required to assist you in the fulfilment of your duties.