New dates for the third ECSA conference
Due to the ongoing COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic in Europe, we have regrettably decided to postpone the third international ECSA conference until 6-8 September 2020. We sincerely hope that the situation for everyone, in Europe and beyond, will have returned to normal long before then, and that people will be able to meet and travel as normal. 

The conference organisers will follow the situation extremely closely and follow all advice and regulations from the Italian government. The health and safety of everyone - conference delegates, organising staff and the citizens of Trieste - will remain our primary concern.

A further update about whether we go ahead with the conference will be made on 1 June 2020, to give everyone enough time to prepare accordingly.

Registration

Registration for the conference remains open. If you have already registered and paid, then this is of course still valid for the rescheduled event. Should the rescheduled conference need to be postponed again, or cancelled, then you are entitled to a refund of the registration fees.

If you have already registered and paid, but will not be able to participate in September, registration fees will be refunded. You can ask for a total refund until 15 June 2020 by writing to ecsa2020@medialab.sissa.it.

The early bird deadline for registration has been extended to 15 June. We will review this at the beginning of June, in light of how the situation has developed.

Conference proceeding for the third ECSA international conference

The conference proceedings for ECSA 2020 will be published as a special issue of the Journal of Science Communication (JCOM). To be considered for inclusion in this special issue, conference submissions must meet the following criteria:

• Only proposals that submitted an extended abstract (1,000 words) will be considered. This includes all types of sessions: interactive workshops, papers, presentations and posters.

• Only proposals that were accepted for the conference, and which will be presented, will be considered.

• If the conference committee asked you to merge your proposal with another for the conference, you do not need to merge papers submitted to the journal. These can still be considered separately.

• If, in light of the conference session, you would prefer to merge papers with other authors, this is acceptable as long as at least one paper was originally submitted as an extended abstract.

• Not all proposals accepted for the conference will be accepted for the JCOM special edition. A guest editor will be appointed to review all the submissions that meet the criteria.

• You do not need to submit the full paper before the conference. The deadline will be shortly after the event, to provide an opportunity to revise your  paper in light of any feedback from the conference delegates.

You can submit a paper via the JCOM website. To prepare your contribution, please use the template available on the website. To submit your contribution, please:

• Go to http://jcom.sissa.it/jcom/index.jsp and register

• In the ‘Submit’ section, select ‘Submit an article for the special issue’

• Select ‘Third International ECSA Conference - Ecsa Conference 2020’ 

• Follow the step-by-step guide to submission, referring to the instructions available in the section ‘For authors’ (at the top of the JCOM home page).

For further information and assistance, please contact the JCOM editorial office (jcom-eo@jcom.sissa.it).

… and thanks!

Lastly, we would like to thank everyone connected to the conference for their patience, understanding and kind words of support these past few weeks. It’s an incredibly difficult time for everyone right now, but we look forward to seeing you all in Trieste soon!

The ECSA conference committee