Awards

The Fear Free award is intended to stimulate, recognize and spotlight excellence in behavior and welfare research at the EVCBMAW related to the subject of the prevention, reduction and/or assessment of fear, anxiety, and stress associated with veterinary care in dogs, cats, birds and / or horses.  The winner will be selected by a scientific committee of the EVCBMAW from all the qualifying abstracts submitted, with the presentation to be made at the congress.  The award includes a prize of $1000.

 

The International Cat Care (iCatCare) Welfare Research Award is designed to recognise and celebrate individuals who have dedicated a piece of research to improving domestic cat welfare. Such research may come from any discipline within animal welfare, including behavioural medicine, ethics, and law. The award aims to encourage researchers from a variety of disciplines to conduct cat welfare research and to disseminate such research in ways that make meaningful positive differences to cat welfare.  A team of judges will assess research submissions using iCatCare’s Cat Friendly Principles. The successful recipient of the award at the 7th Annual meeting of the European Veterinary Congress of Behavioural Medicine and Animal Welfare will receive free registration to iCatCare’s flagship veterinary congress in June 2026 and will be multidisciplinary, encompassing both the physical health and mental wellbeing of cats.

The Juliana von Wendt Foundation primarily promotes alternatives to animal testing. In addition, the foundation has a fund that supports animal welfare. This fund supports research aimed at improving the living conditions of livestock and other domestic animals and their opportunities for natural behaviours. The award encourages researchers and producers to develop and implement animal-friendly production methods or to solve significant animal welfare problems with practical solutions.

  • A maximum of 2 abstracts may be submitted by each person for one oral presentation and one poster in each stream.

  • Sponsored presentations have to be clearly marked as such. If the presentation (spoken or poster) deals with a product of the sponsor, it has to contain relevant research data and appropriate statistical evaluation.

  • All submissions will be reviewed by the EVCBMAW Academic Committee. Abstracts will be assessed based on the importance of the research or topic, the academic merit and quality of the work, the clarity of the abstract and the fullfilment of the guidelines (see below: components of abstracts).

  • Based on the analysis of the EVCBMAW Academic Committee it is possible that abstract will be accepted to a different category than the one requested. (e.g. a spoken presentation may be accepted for a poster, and a poster abstract submission might be requested to be present as a presentation or stream change: BM to AWSEL and vice-versa).

TYPE OF ABSTRACT

Based on the type of content/focus, abstracts can be divided into:

These should include the following components:

  1. Introduction – introduction of the study and its objectives.
  2. Methodology – including a description of participants (both human and animal), such as number (n), type, age, gender, and species, and a description of the study design, data collection, data analysis and apparatus used. This may include qualitative research, papers on ethical analysis, and law reports.
  3. Results – including, where appropriate, statistical tests, significance level and actual test value (e.g., F(df) = ?, p < 0.05).
  4. Principal conclusions and implications for the field.

These should include the following components:

  1. Introduction (a clear statement of the purpose of the review).
  2. Key literature references to theory, concepts, evidence or methodology that have been reviewed or re-evaluated.
  3. Main findings.
  4. Principal conclusions and implications for the field.

These should include the following components:

  1. Introduction.
  2. Literature review or an indication of the absence of literature in the area examined. Discussion of choice of framework/ethical construct and motivation e.g. deontological, utilitarian, value-based etc. (A lot of ethical material in the veterinary sphere has not been properly considered).
  3. Principal conclusions and implications for the field.
  4. Declare funding resources/no funding.

These should include the following components:

  1. Introduction – considering national or international legislation.
  2. Current legislation and its application / Jurisdictional direction (e.g. UK Case Law set precedent, in Napoleonic code less important?).
  3. Principal conclusions and implications for the legislature.

These should include the following components:

  1. Introduction (anamnesis, aetiology).
  2. Key literature references to theory, concepts, evidence or methodology.
  3. Diagnosis, case management, and evidence base.
  4. Principal conclusions and implications for the field.


IMPORTANT INFORMATION

  • Please, state in the system who will be the corresponding author (contact person). This person will receive all the notifications and will handle correspondence at all stages of reviewing, publication and post-publication.
  • Please, state in the system who will be the presenting author. This person will present the abstract. Presenting authors whose abstracts (spoken and poster) have been accepted must register for the Congress. Failure to do so will result in exclusion from the Congress program and proceedings.
  • The corresponding and presenting author can coincide. 
    IMPORTANT: Note that one author may submit and appear as co-author in several abstracts but ONLY WILL BE ALLOWED TO PRESENT ONE SPOKEN PRESENTATION PER STREAM and 2 POSTER PRESENTATIONS PER STREAM.
  • Authors are requested to indicate their preference for the type of presentation during submission. However, the final status will be decided by the Scientific Committee.
  • Authors are requested to indicate the stream they would like to submit the abstract to; however, the stream might be changed if another one is considered more appropriate and fitting by the Scientific Committee.
  • The EVCBMAW Scientific Committee supports only research that has been conducted according to the protocol approved by the institutional or local committee on ethics in animal and human investigation. Where no such committee exists, the research should have been conducted in accordance with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki of the World Medical Association. If your answer is “no” or “not applicable”, you will be required to provide a written explanation for your answer. The EVCBMAW Organizing Committee may enquire further into ethical aspects when evaluating abstracts.

ABSTRACT FORMATTING INSTRUCTIONS AND INFO TO BE INCLUDED

1. All abstracts should be written in British English.

2. Use Times New Roman font size 12.

3. Abstracts should not be longer than 250 words (excluding title, names, affiliations and references).

4. First line: Title of the abstract in bold.

5. Second line: name of author(s). Please underline the presenting author.

6. Third line: affiliation.

7. Fourth line: e-mail address of presenting author.

8. Fifth line : Please indicate your preferred stream : BM or AWSEL, as well as the preferred format of presentation : Oral (short); Oral (long); Poster with teaser; Poster without teaser; No preference.

9. All abstracts should include a statement of any conflict of interest after the author details. This should include information about affiliations, research funders, memberships for all authors that may be taken into account by readers when evaluating the research.

10. Then leave two blank lines.

11. On the next line, the text of the abstract.

12. Indent first line in each paragraph and leave a one-line gap between paragraphs.

13. When using uncommon abbreviations, spell out in full when first mentioned, followed by the abbreviation in parentheses. Do not abbreviate in the title of the abstract.

14. Do not include tables or diagrams in the abstract.

15. References: All references should be provided in Harvard format. They should be listed in alphabetical author order in the reference list and should be cited in the text by author name and publication year in parentheses.

16. Send a second copy of the abstract that is blinded:

  • Use the above guidelines for format.
  • Indicated, as above, category, session, and type of abstract.
  • Do not include authors name(s).
  • The blinded abstract should not include any country or institution name (e.g., University of Bristol, or Italy). Instead use the word BLINDED.
  • Do not use names of authors in the abstract, for example: “subjects were recruited by the first author”.

Keep in mind

The Academic Committee will contact the first author to inform him/her if their abstract has been accepted. The decisions of the Academic Committee are final. Responsibility for the programme lies with the Academic Committee. The abstracts will be published as a scientific proceedings.

Abstracts will only be reviewed for content and if language is good, they will not be edited by the academic committee; poor language, that makes the abstract not understandable, misinterpretable or of poor quality will be rejected.

The EVCBMAW Academic Committee reserves the right to reject submissions where the research has not been submitted for independent ethical review or where the Committee feels that the research or cases do not meet current ethical guidelines. The decision of the EVCBMAW Academic Committee is final.

For questions regarding the submission of abstracts please contact EVCBMAW2024@twobevents.fr

Please indicate “question about abstract submission” in the subject line.

REVIEWING PROCESS

POSTER AND POSTER TEASER GUIDELINES

Poster:  The poster has to be printed in the A0 size. Please add a photography of the presenting author with his/her name underlined.

Poster teaser: This poster teaser session gives you the opportunity to create a short presentation of 1.5 min to open the “appetite” for other participants in the conference on why they should attend your poster’s presentation. The power point support (one slide) is not mandatory, nevertheless we encourage poster presenters to use this opportunity to promote their research and raise awareness on the presentation to maximise attendance. Tips of content: Make short and easy to follow sentences. Create one very short introduction on the topic, by using keywords. Highlight one reason why the participants should attend your presentation. Mention the number of your poster.

FEAR FREE AWARD FOR EVCBMAW 2023

The Fear Free Research Award is intended to stimulate, recognize and spotlight exceptional research aimed at building and advancing the science and knowledge toward creating a veterinary experience that is free from fear, anxiety and stress, for pets, owners and their health care providers.  All abstracts submitted either for spoken presentations or posters will qualify for consideration for the Fear Free award, if they directly relate to the subject of prevention, reduction or assessment of fear, anxiety, and stress in dogs, cats, birds and / or horses associated with veterinary health care.  The highest graded project will receive the award of $1000 US.