The SIOP 2022 Conference Program: See You in Seattle AND Online!

Richard Landers, Chair, SIOP 2022 Program Committee

The SIOP Annual Conference is the most important yearly event for the I-O community. It is where we all get together to connect with friends and colleagues, past and present, sharing our research and our experiences of the past year with each other. It is where we all take a short break from our daily work to learn, together. This year, more so than at least in the last several decades of the SIOP conference, our lack of togetherness is palpable. Although the 2021 conference was as exceptional as it could be in the midst of a spike in global unrest and a global pandemic that brought so much strife and suffering, I now look toward the future, anticipating that once again, come April, we will be able to share a laugh and perhaps a meal with those we have not seen in so many years. Much as in the ancient times of 2019, we plan to have a SIOP conference that is at least a little bit back to “normal,” whatever normal might mean for each of us. And although I cannot promise it, I can say that the Program Committee has been doing everything it can to help that vision come true. I hope you will join us for whatever the annual conference becomes, and I hope you will submit a proposal so that we can learn from you just as we all learn from the broader I-O community.

Now for some details. To start, the biggest news if you haven’t heard it already: The submission deadline this year is Wednesday, October 13, 2021 at 5PM ET.  Every year people wait until the very last minute to start their proposals on the website, and every year, the website slows down, and a few of those people find themselves unable to submit. Don’t be that person! Start early.

Next, as you might expect given the first in-person conference coming back from a pandemic and 2 years out of the norm, there will be more changes than usual this year, in three major sets. The first set of changes is that we have further simplified the roles individuals can occupy in a session. When submitting proposals, submitters will only need to designate who is a Speaker and who is a Non-Speaking Contributor. A Speaker is someone who will be speaking during the session. In the past, these may have included discussant, chair, cochair, panelist, presenter, and so on. Non-Speaking Contributors are all others: credited authors who will not speak in the session.  Thus, the number of sessions in which a person is designated Speaker will be used to evaluate compliance with the Rule of Three (see Eligibility) instead of author order. This means that you have a bit more flexibility than in past years; for example, you could specify the “third author” of a poster as the person responsible for presenting it. Additionally, all non-poster submissions must have at least one Speaker that is not a Student Affiliate, but that person does not need to be a session organizer. A side effect of this change is that you will now also be asked to provide an APA-style citation to your session that will indicate author order and more specific roles, which will eventually appear in the publicized (in Whova) description of your session. SIOP will not track this information otherwise.

The second and biggest set of changes is that we will feature significant in-person and virtual content. Given feedback and attendance records over the last 2 years, in-person content will be the “premiere” experience of the SIOP conference. All presentations will be delivered live, either in-person or virtually, and we will not have a separate asynchronous program. In-person attendees will have access to all virtual and in-person content, whereas virtual attendees will have access to all virtual content and a subset of the in-person content, such as by watching livestreams of one or two tracks of in-person content. Additionally, in-person poster presenters will be asked to present twice—once online in the same Virtual Chair format used during the 2021 SIOP Conference and once as usual, in-person in the Exhibit Hall in the Washington State Convention Center. Given expectations for accepted submissions (see “Conference Programming Formats”), we will also ask in-person submitters to share supporting content (e.g., poster PDFs, symposium slide deck PDFs, master tutorial sample code, other supplemental material) virtually in advance of the conference, around the end of March.

Thus, when submitting, you will be required to select an In-Person Live or Virtual Live modality. Importantly, virtual attendance and virtual submission are not the same. In-person attendees may participate in both in-person and virtual submissions, whereas virtual attendees will only participate in virtual submissions.  The intent of the virtual modality is to provide greater accessibility and increase diversity of presenters, not to support a stand-alone version of the conference. Thus, virtual submissions must have at least one Speaker that meets Virtual Presentation Qualifications and plans to attend virtually (see Conference Programming Formats), but other Speakers may attend either in-person or virtually as appropriate given their other submissions. Logistical support, such as a quiet space for presenting, will be provided in Seattle for those needing to present virtually mid-conference.

The third major set of changes concern submission content: We have eliminated press paragraphs, increased the length of the abstract, allowed 80-minute submissions for all submission types (except poster, but note that 50-minute submissions are much preferred!), and expanded the types of social media information requested so as to better advertise your session. All of these changes are with the intent of streamlining the submission process, increasing peer review quality, and facilitating better session promotion.

As in all years prior, the SIOP Program Committee continues to welcome proposals aligned to SIOP’s vision, mission, values, and goals. All proposals must advance the scientific mission of SIOP, to translate scientific knowledge to tackle real-world problems in collaboration with organization leaders, communities, and policymakers, promoting individual and organizational health and effectiveness. We particularly encourage proposals reflecting a diverse and inclusive I-O in terms of the questions asked, the populations studied, the research teams investigating, and the Speakers presenting. Through this conference, we hope to energize those invested in understanding and improving work and workplace issues, to guide the learning of all attendees both during the conference and beyond. Please join us!

Finally, we are also asking for your patience during the continually evolving circumstances of the pandemic, especially as new variants emerge and as vaccination continues to progress unevenly worldwide. Comments and suggestions are always welcome!

SIOP 2022 Program Committee
Richard Landers, Chair (program@siop.org)