Please note some important changes to the TRB Annual Meeting Submission Policy. 

For more information, please visit:  http://www.trb.org/GetInvolvedwithTRB/GetInvolvedSubmitaPaper.aspx

Stacey Bricka, PhD

Chair, TRB Committee ABJ30

512-921-6791

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I want to give you advance notice about a few changes to paper submission and review that will go into effect when the paper submission site opens tomorrow in preparation for the 2018 Annual Meeting:

• The instructions for Authors, Reviewers, Review Coordinators, and Event Planners has been reviewed and revised to clean up material that has accrued over time, eliminate duplication, clarify policy, include volunteer suggestions, and generally try to tighten up the language and make it more professional.
• The Compendium of Papers will no longer be produced. As you know, the Compendium is a subset of the material that is contained in Annual Meeting On Line. AM On Line includes papers accepted for presentation as well as powerpoints and poster materials. The Compendium contained only the papers accepted for presentation but in a static downloadable file. This duplication of material costs tens of thousands of dollars. The result of this decision is that Annual Meeting registrants and TRB sponsors will continue to have access to all the content they have previously had access to, only not in the particular format of the Compendium.
• The review criterion related to the quality of writing has been reworded to emphasize that a paper must be written well enough to be readily understood and that poor English grammar is sufficient grounds for rejection of the paper. This revision is the result of recommendations from the TRR Review Advisory Board and concerns expressed by a number of reviewers about the poor writing quality of many papers. In addition, Neil has been asking us to be stricter about this issue because poorly written papers require an inordinate amount of time from editors, which adds to the cost of the TRR and the time it takes to get papers published.
• Authors who submit papers for presentation will no longer be able to opt out of including their accepted papers in AM On Line. Approximately 20% of the authors who submit for presentation do not allow us to include their accepted paper in Annual Meeting On Line. We have received a number of complaints from Annual Meeting registrants and from sponsors that they are not finding papers from Annual Meeting sessions in AM OnLine, papers which are promised as part of the benefit they receive from registration and/or sponsorship.

Thanks.

Ann

Ann M. Brach, Ph.D., P.E.

Director, Technical Activities

Transportation Research Board

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

TRB 97^th Annual Meeting

January 7-11, 2018

Washington, DC