You may now submit your ideas for a symposium for the 2026 annual SICB meeting in Portland, OR! Symposia are a great opportunity to advance your career, shape your field, and collaborate with people you admire. They also provide an essential contribution to SICB meetings and our journal ICB. Initial proposals require only a one-page concept summary and are due September 1, 2024.
What’s a good idea for a symposium?
Most SICB symposia present an emerging area of research in integrative and comparative biology. If you feel like there are exciting developments in your field that are not receiving sufficient attention, then you should consider organizing a symposium around that topic. Check out previous symposia for inspiration: 2024, 2023 (see page 16 in program pdf), and 2020.
How are SICB symposia structured?
Symposia consist of presentations at the annual meeting and a set of papers in the society’s journal, Integrative and Comparative Biology (5-year impact factor is 3.3). Both typically begin with an overview of the topic and an explanation of how the symposium synthesizes information, integrates across fields, or moves a field forward. The following talks and papers present novel research, reviews of a subfield, perspectives, or policy papers. Manuscripts are due after the meeting, by January 31, 2026. Symposia are expected to reflect the diverse identities and career stages of the scientific community, and authors need not be regular attendees of SICB.
How do you plan a good symposium?
Symposia are usually organized by two or three people and supported by one or more SICB divisions. As you are thinking about symposium topics and discussing them with colleagues, consider what new ideas intrigue you, what you think would move your field forward, and what conversations you want to have about the topic. Symposia are intended to catalyze future research in an emerging field, explore new ideas in comparative and integrative biology, bring people together across disciplines, and/or synthesize current knowledge to advance a field. The papers generated by symposia can become highly-cited references that guide future research. In addition, ICB is an important revenue source for the society, and your symposium papers support that income.
How do I submit a proposal?
The initial application now only requires contact information for organizers and a one-page summary of your symposium concept. Provide that information using this Google form.
What happens after I submit an initial proposal?
Your initial application will be reviewed by the Program Committee in September, and we will select symposia to develop for the SICB 2026 meeting in Portland. We will contact you by mid-October with information on developing a speaker and manuscript list. If you have any questions or would like additional guidance on generating a symposium topic, please see our Symposium Proposal Guidelines, or contact the Program Officer Elect, Matt McHenry, at programofficer.elect@sicb.org.
