Abstract Information

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As our top rated abstracts will be nominated for oral presentation at the BJJ session, our terms and conditions, and guidelines for entry have been created in line with that of the Bone & Joint Journal (BJJ) guidelines for paper submission.

Submission window will be open until 23:59 on 12th September 2025.


THEMES & KEYWORDS

We are pleased to accept original abstracts under the following Themes: 
  • Elective Orthopaedics
  • Trauma
If you wish for your abstract to be considered for the DRAGONS DEN or LIONS DEN sessions, then please select this as your theme. Unsuccessful abstracts for these specific sessions will then be considered for inclusion to the general abstract pool.


Each abstract should be linked to a specific keyword from within the following areas: 
  • Lower Limb 
  • Upper Limb
  • Paediatrics
  • Spines
  • Oncology
  • Biological Sciences
  • Elective - General & Trauma - General
    •  please use this for misc elective topics or if your work extends across multiple subdomains
  • Non-Clinical 
    • this can relate to topics such as medical education, sustainability, devices etc.


MARKING

Once submitted, abstracts will be reviewed by members of the BOTA Committee using a standardised marking matrix. Each will be reviewed by a minimum of two reviewers. They will then either be accepted for poster or presentation, or rejected. We receive over 200 submissions each year and therefore please ask that you ensure that your abstract is of high scientific quality and of value to both clinical practice and the existing body of literature. We will endeavour to communicate decisions by 6th October 2025.



PRESENTATION & SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Abstracts must be no more than 500 words, and must be presented under subheadings 'Aims', 'Methods', 'Results', and 'Conclusion'. Abstracts which are not formatted correctly, will not be reviewed. 

The main text of your abstract should be completely blinded and all identifying information should be removed.


AUTHORSHIP

There is a limit of five authors per abstract. All authors must have approved of the completed abstract prior to submission.

Each author must have contributed significantly to, and take public responsibility for, one or more of the following study aspects:
  • Design
  • Data acquisition
  • Analysis and interpretation of data
Individuals who do not meet the above requirements, e.g. those who have contributed only cases, should be treated as a non-author and be credited in an “Acknowledgements” section within the presentation/poster.

The presenting author must be registered to attend the conference, failure to do so may result in your presentation and certificate being voided.


DATA

The raw data associated with your abstract should be available for submission if required by the markers.


CONFLICTS OF INTEREST

Any conflicts of interest must be declared within the presentation/poster. Unfortunately, we will not be accepting any submissions from BOTA national committee members. This does not apply to BOTA Regional Representatives, who are welcome to submit. This is to ensure a fair reflection in marking and to avoid bias.


TEXT RECYCLING (as per guidelines from textrecycling.org)

Text recycling is the reuse of textual material (prose, visuals, or equations) in a new document where 

(1) the material in the new document is identical to that of the source (or substantively equivalent in both form and content), 

(2) the material is not presented in the new document as a quotation (via quotation marks or block indentation), and 

(3) at least one author of the new document is also an author of the prior document. 


Authors should recycle text where consistency of language is needed for accurate communication. This consistency can be especially important when describing methods and instrumentation that are common across studies. If the amount of recycled material is substantial, authors should determine whether permissions are needed and whether it is acceptable for submission. Authors may recycle text so long as the recycled material is accurate and appropriate for the new work and does not infringe copyright or violate publisher policies. Authors should be careful not to recycle text in ways that might mislead readers or editors about the novelty of the new work. For most unpublished work (unpublished research manuscripts, preprints, grant proposals, conference posters, etc.), authors hold copyright and thus can recycle from that work without legal restriction. If the amount or type of recycling exceeds what copyright law and the signed contract allows, authors should obtain permission from the publisher of the source document. 


AI POLICY (as per BJJ)

Anyone with access to the internet now has free access to artificial intelligence (AI) applications that can quickly develop text-based responses to specific questions. Large language model applications such as ChatGPT have made it possible to construct research manuscripts, abstracts, and letters to the editor that are extremely difficult to differentiate from human-derived work.

This rapid improvement in AI capabilities may offer some benefits to journals, publishers, readers, and, ultimately, patients. For example, large language models such as ChatGPT might – with suitable human oversight – be able to create plain-language summaries of complex research quickly and at scale, which might make the scientific record more accessible to the public. AI-based tools also may facilitate the creation of consistent, clear visual presentations of complex data. And, of course, an exciting feature of transformative technologies is the potential for benefits that we cannot imagine at the outset.

However, misuse of these tools can undermine the integrity of the scholarly record; indeed, there are examples of this happening already. Researchers and authors need to be aware that AI-detection software development is in the refinement stage. When available, these tools will be used by our journals in the same way that plagiarism software is currently deployed. Some have suggested that large language models should be considered authors; in fact, ChatGPT has been listed as a co-author in published research, and even is a registered author in the ORCiD and SCOPUS databases. This practice is inappropriate. Under the authorship guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, an author must meet a number of important standards, including being willing to be accountable for all aspects of the work, to ensure that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of the work will be suitably investigated and resolved, to be able to identify which co-authors are responsible for specific parts of the work, and to have confidence in the integrity of the contributions of their co-authors. A large language model has no means to comply with such standards, and, for that reason – as well as, we believe, simple common sense – AI-based tools cannot be authors on scientific papers.

Other important concerns have been raised about the use of AI-driven tools in scientific reporting, including the possibilities that they may produce material that is inaccurate or out of date, they may conjure up “sources” that do not exist, and – this from the team that built ChatGPT – they may generate “plausible-sounding but incorrect or nonsensical answers,” which the coders have said is “challenging” to fix because “during RL [reinforcement learning] training, there’s currently no source of truth”. 

For these reasons we are following the BJJ standards concerning AI applications that create text, tables, figures, images, computer code, and/or video: 
  • AI applications cannot be listed as authors.
  • Whether and how AI applications were used in the research or the reporting of its findings must be described in detail in the Methods section and should be mentioned again in the Acknowledgements section.