Oral presentation guidelines

Oral presentations are organized in sessions scheduled in specific lecture rooms, which are indicated in the programme together with the time of presentation of each contribution. Sessions are scheduled in four time blocks per day. A session can cover multiple time blocks.

All oral sessions are run in a fully hybrid mode, using the lecture room settings for on-site attendees combined with Zoom for virtual participants. This setup allows both on-site and virtual attendees to follow and present in the session equally.

Oral presentations for EPSC2026 will be in English and should cover the same material as your abstract. Dissertation talks, which have been selected as such by the conveners, are allowed to contain additional material from the entire duration of the doctoral thesis that is presented.

Each oral presentation has a length of 12 minutes including time for questions. Solicited presentations as well as dissertation talks will have a length of 15 minutes. The presentation length includes the time for change over. The allocated presentation time cannot be exceeded.

On-site presenters must give a live presentation. It is strongly recommended that virtual presenters also present live to benefit from audience feedback and questions. Virtual oral presenters will have the opportunity to share their screen. However, to be prepared for possible technical issues, virtual oral presenters are also asked to upload their presentation files. A pre-recorded talk may be submitted in exceptional cases, such as if all (co-)authors are unable to present live due to substantial time-zone differences, unstable internet connections, or other barriers. Session conveners must be informed in advance if this applies.

Virtual presenters will give their oral presentation live in the respective Zoom session. Please browse through the session programme to find your session of interest. The detailed session page lists all oral and poster abstracts with their schedules. Buttons to enter the respective Zoom meetings will only appear 15 minutes before the session starts. You will be asked for your Copernicus Office user ID to access the Zoom session, as a paid conference registration (either for on-site attendance or virtual attendance) is mandatory to access the Zoom meeting. Please note that no Zoom access links will be sent to presenters by email.

We kindly request that authors follow these guidelines:

Submission

• Oral presenters are asked to upload their presentation slides at least 24h before the start of the live session as "Presentation file". Presentation files can be in *.pdf, *.ppt/pptx, *.pps/ppsx, or *.mp4 format. The file size is limited to 50 MB per abstract for *.pdf, *.ppt/pptx, *.pps/ppsx files, and to 200 MB for a *.mp4 video file. This material is only visible to session chairs. It will not be possible to upload presentations from a memory stick in the session room.
• Additional material can be uploaded as "Supplementary material". This material can be accessed on the abstract page, either open access (if marked as "public" during upload) or restricted to EPSC participants (if marked as "restricted").
• The presentation upload tool will open in mid-August 2026. Supplementary materials can be modified until Friday, 11 September 2026. Presentation files can be modified up to 24 hours before the start of the live session.
• In case of an emergency, it will be possible for registered participants to replace their uploaded slides with a pre-recorded video as "Presentation file" material up to 4 hours before the presentation. A presentation originally marked as on-site can also be given virtually, with no separate virtual registration required if an on-site conference registration had already been paid. However, the participant must inform the session chairs of the change from on-site to virtual presentation as soon as possible.

Presentation style guide

• The aspect ratio of your slides should be 16:9 (not 4:3).
• Please include an introductory slide with the title of your presentation, name, co-authors, affiliation(s), and contact details.
• Be creative. Make good use of visuals to make your talk engaging and accessible.
• Text on slides should be clear and concise with correct spelling.
• Prepare all diagrams or charts neatly and legibly in a size sufficient to be read on screen (this includes annotations).
• Ensure that you leave your audience enough time to read and digest the material or data that you show. We recommend no more than one slide per minute speaking time.
• Bullet points and enumerated lists are easier to digest than large blocks of text.

You must not include third-party intellectual property (such as copyrighted imagery, music, video clips etc) unless you have permission from that party or are otherwise legally entitled to do so. Please verify that you include the required credits or acknowledgments in your presentation.

Accessibility and readability

• Make sure that you speak clearly into the microphone and not too quickly, aim for about 140-150 words/minute.
• The minimum font size you should use for body text on slides is 24pt or 18pt for minor text (e.g. the slide number). Use sans serif fonts such as Arial, Calibri, Verdana, or Helvetica that are easier to read.
• If your presentation includes visuals like images or videos, make sure you describe what people are seeing as part of your spoken presentation.
• You should ensure that there is sufficient contrast between your text and the background (you can check this with online tools e.g. at: https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/).
• Try to use colour schemes suitable for participants with colour vision deficiencies (e.g. red-green colourblindness). You can check this with online tools such as https://www.color-blindness.com/coblis-color-blindness-simulator/.
• PowerPoint offers an in-built accessibility checker (Tools>Check Accessibility), which can draw attention to accessibility issues in your presentation.

Asynchronous discussion and advertisement

• To allow for asynchronous discussion and based on the positive feedback received during the last conferences, session-wide discussions will also take place on EPSC2026 section of the Europlanet Discord server. Please consider posting in the 'science-forum' about your research to start a discussion about your work.
• Please note that the Discord channel will only be accessible to EPSC2026 registered participants.
• You should also feel free to advertise your oral presentation via the social media hashtag #EPSC2026.

Public/Restricted settings for presentation materials

• "Supplementary materials" (slides, videos, pdf posters, etc.) can be added to the abstract page. You can set these either to be publicly available or mark them as "restricted" so that they are only accessible by registered EPSC2026 participants. It is prohibited to retain or share scientific material shown in any supplementary materials if they have been marked as "restricted" in the programme and/or include the "no sharing" icon.
• Supplementary material will be available via the Copernicus website for the duration of EPSC2026 and on the archived site for one year afterwards.
• "Presentation files" (for oral presentations) can only be accessed by session conveners and will not be available on the conference website. However, please note that all scientific sessions will be recorded. Recordings will only be accessible to conference participants via the EPSC2026 website and to Europlanet Society members through the Europlanet membership website. However, if oral presenters do not wish for the recording of their presentation to be included, it will be possible to withdraw the recording by contacting epsc-registration@europlanet-society.org.