The individual presentations at the Congress are determined largely by the person organising the individual sessions. In some cases, the papers are peer-reviewed, but this depends on the session organiser. For example, the papers in the sub-plenary session "Global Change" were reviewed (by as many as 20 reviewers), since one of the briefs of the authors was to try and present the current state-of-the-art in specific fields related to global change. Given that only 25 minutes was available to each speaker, the content of the presentations had of necessity to be fairly general. The level of detail included in papers in a meeting such as the IUFRO World Congress is always difficult to guage. In some cases, e.g. where a group of specialists meet, then highly technical papers are possible. In others, the audience may be more general, and the papers need to be adapted accordingly. In both cases, there will probably be people in the audience that are dissatisfied with what they hear. On networks such as this, it is generally the former group that make comments, but to obtain a fair picture, it might be useful to hear from those who attend a World Congress for reasons other than attendance of technical sessions. A further point is that a large number of meetings are organised through IUFRO, of which the World Congress is only one. These other meetings are smaller, much more specialised, and serve a different function to the World Congresses. I believe that it would be a mistake to mix the two more than they are at present: surely part of the function of a World Congress is to enable participants to find out what is going on in fields other than their own, in which case the presentations cannot be too specialised? However, there does seem to be a need to ensure that papers are informative and relevant to the topic. I agree that there is an urgent need for improvement in presentations - but how many times has it been said that Times Roman 10 points does not reproduce as an overhead? Reviewing a paper will not solve the problem, since it often the presentational skills of the speaker that is at fault rather than the content of the paper. This seems to be a problem that extends well beyond IUFRO, but perhaps IUFRO could do something about it by organising a series of demonstrations on presentational skills at World Congresses and other meetings. Not everyone has the opportunity to attend such courses in their own countries. Alternatively, session organisers could ask for a preview of all graphics and tables (before the start of the Congress) and arrange to have them reproduced in a legible form if they do not reach the necessary standard. The issue of competing presentations is interesting, but could be difficult to implement given the structure of IUFRO and its Divisions and Research Groups. Rather than competing for a place in the Congress, it might be more appropriate to compete for a place in a particular session. (Sessions might even be invited to compete for a place at the Congress). This way, an appropriate balance could be maintained between the different Divisions. To a certain extent, this may already occur. Perhaps one of the Congress Organisers can elaborate on this? John Innes Dr John L. Innes Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research Zuercherstrasse 111, CH-8903 Birmensdorf Switzerland Tel: (+41) 1 739 2216 FAX: (+41) 1 739 2215 email: john.innes@wsl.ch
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