How to avoid the rejection of your abstract

Ways to land an abstract in purgatory

• Exceed the allowed word count of 250 words. This count applies to the text of the abstract (not including title, authors, affiliations, and grant support acknowledgements).
• Write an abstract that describes a study similar in many respects to a presentation from a previous AAPA meeting.
• Write an abstract with no results. We are aware that other organizations do accept abstracts that have no results. The AAPA has a tradition of accepting abstract that show evidence of data analysis only.
• Write an abstract that describes a study with little to no relationship to physical anthropology.
• Write more than one abstract as first author. Note: Introductions to and discussions of symposia do not require an abstract. If you are, for example, organizing a podium symposium you can do an introductory paper without an abstract and present a paper with an abstract. What you cannot do is be first author on more than one abstract.
• Include extraneous information such as a list of literature cited.