1. Why workshops, not classical sessions?
Many conferences offer "classical sessions" with consecutive presentations. We see the potential for exciting presentations of outstanding new developments. Though, sometimes the flood of information makes it hard to get and take home key messages. It is also difficult to clarify potentially contradictory scientific opinions and to create summaries because time for fundamental questions is usually missing. To complement traditional conference offers (instead of duplicating them) and to produce immediate and long lasting conference output, we developed and determined the IMC2019 workshop format.
2. What is the minimum number of abstracts needed to accept a workshop session into the program?
This depends on the moderators. If they think that they have participants for fruitful discussions, the workshop will be part of the program.
3. Who reviews these abstracts, apart from the chairs/moderators? Is there a review committee?
The abstracts are only reviewed by the moderators.
4. What happens if a certain quota is not reached, will the topic itself not be part of the program at all?
See question 2.
5. What are the chances of merging workshops, and who will make those decisions? What if moderators don't agree to a merger?
Workshops will only be merged if requested by the involved moderators.
6. Will there really be an opportunity for meaningful in-depth discussion if only flash talks are presented?
Please see question 1 and consider that the IMC2019 conference format - in contrast to many classical ones - offers plenty of room for discussions and flexibility to workshop moderators. Submitted abstracts, flash talks and optional posters should strongly help to bring the participants' expertise and opinions into the workshop. Furthermore, it's up to the moderators to allow/ask for further input on specific aspects. We might give this interactive format a try?!!
7. Why review papers, not special issue(s)?
This conference doesn't intent to publish a special issue on mountain research or research "sub-domains". Instead, an attractive overview about the output of the conference (that can be updated whenever it is desired) will be generated by experienced experts based on the workshop outputs and will be published on an appropriate web platform.
For the classical scientific output which is what all of us want and are expected to produce, all moderators and workshop participants are asked to consider review paper initiatives. The advantages of review papers in the context of IMC2019 we see are (1) that they perfectly meet the conference goal of producing synthesis products on the current state of various mountain related research questions, (2) each group of authors can decide which type of journal is best fitting to their topic/background, (3) each group decides on their own if the workshop output can/should be published and how much time this needs and, (4) the review process might be more thorough compared to special issues influenced by temporal and other limitations.