I hope everyone is having an enjoyable weekend. Calgary is in full Stampede mode and hopefully the weather will cooperate so that our international visitors can take full advantage of our city and the festivities.
The applications are starting to flow in and we are looking forward to receiving the final submissions as the summer rolls along.
It has already become apparent that some applicants are not adhering to the guidelines in section 4.9 of the applicant manual and are entering data which we do not consider publications at the admissions committee level and may be interpreted by reviewers as potentially misleading. For some of you, it may be that you feel obliged that something needs to go in this section. For others, it may be that you want to highlight that you have done some research. If that research is important to you, then you may want to reflect it in your top 10 but do not misrepresent it in this section.
I once again encourage you to read section 4.9 but will offer some clarification.
There may be some confusion by what is meant by peer-reviewed. This means external scholarly individuals have reviewed the work and deemed it acceptable for publication and or presentation (oral or poster). Non-peer reviewed usually refers to invited reviews, editorials, letters, book reviews. They may even be commissioned.
In addition, for poster or oral presentations, please only list those at recognized national or international conferences. These are usually run by or sanctioned by a major national or international scientific organization. We should be able to easily find these with a simple search in the information you provide.
Oral or poster presentations at local meetings SHOULD NOT BE ENTERED. We give examples in the application manual but this includes inter or intra-university presentations. For example, at the University of Calgary we annually hold a one day conference in Gastroenterology called the Schaffer Awards where undergrad, grad students, and residents present their research as posters or oral presentations. This is considered a local meeting. Therefore, local research days, half-days and symposiums do not meet do not meet our criteria.
T0 qualify as a regional meeting it still needs to be sanctioned by a scientific body and this does not mean a university/universities. I will again give an example from Gastroenterology. We have an annual meeting called the Alberta Digestive Disease Summit. This is hosted by the University of Calgary and the University of Alberta under the umbrella of the Alberta Society of Gastroenterology. Students and residents may present their research but this is only found in the syllabus given to attendees. It is not public and therefore we have no way of verifying the accuracy. Therefore, it should not be entered.
In the end the simplest rule to follow is –if what your entering can not be found in a journal, supplement to a journal, published conference proceeding (which is public), or online then it likely does not meet our criteria.
