Abstract:

Introduction:
The degree in Optics and Optometry in the University of Valencia (UV) is professionalized, with 97.56% of the graduates working in posts related to their university degree and a high employment rate (92.62% versus the 68.04% for the UV in 2018). Very few continue postgraduate or doctorate studies. Professional practice and not research is the main interest of the majority of students. However, the average optometrists might develop valuable clinical research work, based on their daily practice.
A group of professors from the Optometry and Vision Science Unit in the Optics, Optometry and Vision Science Department decided 9 years ago to promote the interest of students and young graduates for research and for the communication of research results to their peers, by creating the biennial International Symposium for Young Optometrists (SIYO), as part of the Faculty of Physics innovative educational technologies plan. This paper describes our experience after five editions.

The Conference:
The Organizing and the Scientific Committees reunite university teachers and researchers from over nine countries. English and Spanish are the official languages. To promote exchanges between students and graduates from different countries and keep low inscription fees, the symposium had from the start a moodle-based online format, with video and poster presentations, forums for discussion and invited conferences by experienced researchers. The number of participants has increased steadily from 61 in 2013 to 89 in 2020, in spite of the COVID19 pandemic.

The submission and revision process:
Although some academic tutors of Final Project Degree (FPD) encourage their students to submit their work to scientific conferences, their peer review process, focusing on the reliability and originality of methodology, data and conclusions, is ill suited for these first experiences. Authors are expected to know how to present their results or to learn the hard way, if the communication is rejected.
Our own Scientific Committee must balance ensuring a good scientific level with helping the authors improve their scientific communication skills. Participants submit a two-page abstract of their work, often their FPD. This exercise in content selection and concision, which most students tackle for the first time, needs guidance from their academic tutors. The Scientific Committee sends back a report, based on the evaluation by two reviewers, signaling formal failures (incoherence; unreferenced sources, figures and tables; incorrect or erratic formatting of the references; incomplete data reports) and discussing scientific aspects of the work. Only contributions lacking scientific validity are rejected. Otherwise, the authors are asked to send an improved version.

The abstracts appear in a book of proceedings:
The Scientific Committee select the best contributions and invite the authors to write a full-length paper, to appear the year following the conference in the volume "Current subjects in Optometry". This paper usually reflects the good effects of the abstract’s revision process, but careful supervision by the editor team is still needed.

The future:
Fomenting student participation is not simple but the good level of the contributions and the fact that participants return bringing new participants is encouraging. Lack of institutional support, bureaucracy and reliance on unpaid voluntary work make this interesting experience harder to maintain each year.

Keywords:

Optometry, scientific dissemination, scientific conferences.