2014 ASCB/IFCB Meeting abstracts

The abstracts of the 2014 American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) Annual Meeting, held jointly with the International Federation of Cell Biology (IFCB), are attached to this article as a searchable PDF file. To view the files, click on the “Abstracts” link in the content box in the middle column of the HTML version of this article.

The ASCB and the Editor-in-Chief of Molecular Biology of the Cell (MBoC) have decided to present the Annual Meeting abstracts in this manner so that they will be clearly associated with the ASCB's basic research journal and so that they can be properly archived. The abstracts of the 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013 ASCB Annual Meetings were published shortly after the meetings (American Society for Cell Biology, 2010, 2011a, 2012, 2013). The abstracts of the 2005–2009 ASCB Annual Meetings were published retroactively (American Society for Cell Biology, 2011b).

Historically, abstracts of each ASCB Annual Meeting were published in a printed supplement to MBoC. (PDF files of the supplements for 1992–1996 are available online; see Table 1.) That practice was discontinued in 2005, and abstracts were instead made available on the ASCB's website. Thus the historical link between the abstracts and the journal became tenuous, although authors were encouraged to cite ASCB Annual Meeting abstracts as having appeared in a supplement to MBoC. The association between the Annual Meeting abstracts and MBoC has been restored by making the abstracts available in the online journal.

TABLE 1:

URLs for abstract supplements tables of contents.

Year	URL
1992	www.molbiolcell.org/content/3/supplement.toc
1993	www.molbiolcell.org/content/4/supplement.toc
1994	www.molbiolcell.org/content/5/supplement.toc
1995	www.molbiolcell.org/content/6/supplement.toc
1996	www.molbiolcell.org/content/7/supplement.toc

Archiving of meeting abstracts is important because they are often cited in the scientific literature. They need to be permanently available. Although the ASCB is committed to maintaining abstracts from its Annual Meetings since 2003 on its website, it is prudent to preserve such documents in multiple locations. The Annual Meeting abstracts will now be available on the MBoC website at HighWire Press and in downstream repositories such as PubMed Central as well as on the ASCB website.

All abstracts submitted for ASCB Annual Meetings are screened by the abstract programming committee to ensure that they meet minimum submission standards. However, they are not peer-reviewed.

Abstracts are citable. Citation styles vary by journal, but one way in which 2014 ASCB Annual Meeting abstracts may be cited is as follows:

Smith AB, Jones CD (2014). Abstract title. Mol Biol Cell 25, xx (abstract #).