The good news is that our submissions for the Boston Conference are considerably higher than in previous years. The total number of submissions is 3689, which is 31% more than the number submitted for Chicago 2 years ago. The bad news is that correspondingly, the acceptance rate will also set a record low mark, at approximately 38%.
On the bright side, the Virtual Conference component will provide an additional 30 sessions, and we will have more room for poster sessions than we have had previously. But the pressure is still on, and division and interest group planners are now in the midst of the challenging task of reviewing hundreds more papers than in previous years.
The review process that will be completed by 10 December, at which point the division and interest group planners will begin to form their sessions. All the submitters will be notified of acceptance or rejection of their papers and panels by mid-January and the conference program should be available online by 1 March 2010.
Meanwhile, planning is ongoing for other elements of the conference, with 12 preconferences approved so far, that will shortly appear on the ICA website. There will also be a number of professional development preconferences, including a book and journal publishing preconference we are organizing with our publishing partners at Wiley-Blackwell, and a daylong preconference workshop on nonacademic career paths.
We have an exciting lineup of plenary and mini-plenary sessions in formation. The opening plenary on Thursday, 26 May, will be headlined by Craig Calhoun, president of the Social Science Research Council and University Professor of the Social Sciences at NYU, who has agreed to be the main speaker on the topic, "Communication as the Discipline of the 21st Century," followed by several eminent scholars representing a variety of perspectives.
The speaker at the closing plenary on Monday, 30 May, will be Noam Chomsky, addressing the media and the crisis of democracy.
There is no doubt that this will be an exciting and important conference for ICA and I look forward to seeing you in Boston next May.
