Authors

Since cAIR aims to promote collaboration between practitioners and researchers, we prefer submissions with two or more authors. The (first) two authors should be the (main) practitioner and the (main) researcher (in either order).  The first author is responsible for the final editing and submission of the project summary and for communication with the conference organisation. 

If you work as both practitioner and researcher, you may submit alone. But we ask you to consider defining yourself as either practitioner or researcher for the purpose of submission, and collaborating with a person whose skills and background complement your own. An additional author may be added after the evaluation procedure is complete.

Any one or more of the authors may present their project at the conference. We hope that first authors will participate in project presentations, but will not require them to do so. Video conferencing with an author in a remote location may be possible.

What to do 

Please first download our template file, either as word or pdf (you can also read it here as html). The format of your submission (especially the headings) should correspond to this example.

Please also read the following guidelines carefully. Detailed guidelines are necessary to ensure that the conference achieves its stated aims, the evaluation procedure is conducted fairly, the quality of individual presentations is high, and the accepted and revised project summaries can be printed on time in the conference handbook. 

Guidelines

Your text should begin with:

• the title (6-12 words),
• the names of the author(s),
• their main relevant affiliations 
• they may be organisations, institutions or other less formal groups
• it should be clear which author is primarily practical and which author is primarily research oriented
• if the main language of the affilation is not English, please consider writing the original name followed by an English translation in brackets (especially if that helps readers find further information in the internet)
• the email address of the first author, and
• the preferred mode of presentation (talk or poster).

The main text should be structured with the following six headings. 

Practical background
What is the main practical issue? What problem needs to be solved? Why is that issue or problem important? Which practitioners have previously addressed that issue or attempted to solve that problem? What have they (not) achieved? 

Research background
What is the main theoretical issue? How have other researchers addressed that issue? What specific research questions have been posed and how have they been answered?  What important questions have not been answered? 

Aims
What is the main aim of your specific project? How does your project link together theory and practice (i.e. the previous two sections)? We prefer a concise statement of aims, so this is usually the shortest section.

Main contribution
Describe your collaborative project in detail here, balancing theoretical and practical aspects. This is usually the longest section and might for example comprise three paragraphs. Include any material that you consider appropriate.

Implications
By "implications" we mean consequences of the achievements presented in the "main contribution" section. What are the relevant political, social, cultural or academic implications of your project? 

Literature
This section is to help readers find the most relevant books, articles, and internet pages, and to acknowledge the authors of that literature. It should include between 5 and 10 sources of information, about half of which are practically oriented, and half research (but there is no need to mark them as such). Begin each entry on a new line with author, date and title (possibly with an English translation in brackets); apart from that, you may follow any familar reference format. Do not include sources without authors (e.g. wiki pages). Sort the list into alphabetical order of the author's family name. Ideally, all entries should be referred to in the main text, by either "(author, date)" or superscript numbers (footnotes).

The abstract as a whole should be about the application of interculturality research. The research being applied should be described in the research background section; the area of application should be described in the practical background section; and your specific project should be introduced for the first time in the aims section. Thus, the first three sections should address different issues and not overlap with each other (e.g. do not refer to the research section in the practice section, or vice-versa).  Describe your specific project in more detail in the main contribution section, synthesizing ideas from all three previous sections. (This paragraph was added to the guideline after abstract submissions were received.)

The entire text, including all headings and administrative detail, may not exceed 800 words, to allow accepted summaries to be published on two facing pages in the conference booklet (in a word processor, just select all and count). Write your project summary in English and submit it as email text or attachment (pdf or word) to cair10@uni-graz.at by 30 September 2009. 

Evaluation

Submissions will be evaluated by members of the international practice and research committees. Depending on the number of submissions in specific areas and the literature sources cited in the submissions, new committee members will be appointed following the submission deadline. The names of some (not all) committee members will be posted in the internet. 

Before sending submissions for evaluation, we will remove names, affiliations and contact address from beneath the title. To enable your submission to be evaluated anonymously, write in such a way that you cannot be identified.

Evaluators’ comments and notifications of acceptance (as talk or poster) or rejection will be sent to first authors. First authors will then be asked to revise their project summaries for publication in the conference handbook, taking into account evaluators' suggestions. After that, first authors will be offered the opportunity to publish a longer description of their project on the cAIR homepage. The deadlines for these procedures are presented on the dates page.

For further information on evaluation see the evaluation page.

Why bother?

Why bother submitting your work to cAIR? Is this a good investment of your time and energy? In the following text we try to answer this question in a general way. Of course we cannot address the specific agendas, constraints, and situations of individual submissions. 

It is not easy to submit to cAIR, for several reasons:

• It is difficult to work across the boundary that separates practice from research in any field, because practitioners and researchers often have very different ways of thinking, communicating, and generally approaching and doing things. 
• For that reason, it is also difficult for potential co-authors to negotiate the exact content of their project summary. What should be included and what left out? What is the most important point? How should it be expressed? 
• The material has to be sorted under the headings in the submission guideline, and the draft revised several times.
• It takes time to find the best reference material for the literature section.
• If English is not your native language, you will have additional problems of translation and formulation. 

Advantages of submission

• You clarify your goals and thinking, which can improve the efficiency of your project. In the future, that can prevent you from wasting time, energy, creativity and resources pursuing inappropriate goals.
• The submission procedure reminds you about relevant literature in both practice and research, which can give you new ideas for your project.
• Your submission might become the basis of a later grant application. Sources of financial support appreciate clear applications that are organized into sections such as practical background, theoretical background, aims, main contribution, implications, and literature. cAIR will give you expert feedback on your submission that could help you get grant money.
• Since practitioners are often better able than researchers to understand the practical implications of a given piece of research –  they often have a clearer idea about what will work in practice and what will not – the submission procedure is an opportunity for researchers to improve their practical skills under practitioners’ guidance.
• Conversely, since researchers tend to be more skilled than practitioners in the art of formulating concise, clearly structured texts for anonymous evaluation (“abstracts for peer review”), the submission procedure is an opportunity for practitioners to improve their practical skills under researchers’ guidance.

Advantages of presentation

If your paper is accepted for presentation at the conference, you can look forward to the following additional spinoffs:

• Interested members of the audience will talk to you afterwards and give you new ideas.
• You may meet new collaborators for future projects whose knowledge and/or expertise is complementary to your own, leading to new successes (productivity and synergy).
• You may meet people who can support your project in other ways, or you will find out about possible sources of funding. 
• Audience members will take your ideas home with them and apply them to other situations or projects. People in other areas of interaction between practice and theory may find that they can use your ideas. You will benefit at unpredictable future times in unpredictable ways.
• How interesting is your project for people in other countries? You will get a better idea of what material is publishable, and where it might best be published to reach your desired target audience and/or the largest possible audience.
• If English is not your first language, you will improve your language skills.

Advantages of participation

Even if you do not present a paper or poster at cAIR, you can benefit from attending the conference in several ways:

• You will meet many interesting people, some of whom may become long-term friends and colleagues.
• Through active interaction with like-minded practitioners and researchers, you will learn more about relevant projects, methods and so than you would ever learn by staying home and reading the literature.
• You will return home with fresh ideas and renewed motivation.
• If the conference becomes a series that is repeated in different countries (perhaps on different specific themes), you will become part of a global community dedicated to addressing and solving some of the most important problems facing today’s world.