COMET2026

CONFERENCE THEMES INCLUDE:

• client–professional encounters (involving doctors, counsellors, nurses, pharmacists, dentists, speech and language therapists, psychotherapists etc.)
• communicating risk and uncertainty
• communication in chronic disease
• communication in palliative care
• communication skills training
• distributed expertise among professionals and clients
• disturbed patient
• ethics and communication
• evidence in diagnosis and non-diagnosis
• health and disability
• health, wellbeing and the lifespan
• health literacy
• health technologies and medical informatics
• healthcare services and organisations
• interpreter-mediated healthcare delivery
• intercultural communication in health
• interprofessional communication and hospital management systems
• media and health communication
• medical education
• mental illness
• narratives of illness experience
• patient centricity
• patient empowerment
• public understanding of health and illness
• quality of life and quality of care
• representation of the body
• research ethics
• simulated patient training
• (shared) decision making
• tailoring health messages
• telemedicine
• artificial intelligence in healthcare
• values and responsibilities in professional practice

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:

Proposals include panels, individual presentations (oral or poster) and work-in-progress sessions.

1. PANELS

Panels should address a common theme, content or methodological area, and will be scheduled for 90 minutes or multiples of 90 minutes. A 90-minute panel usually includes 3 individual presentations, plus a brief introduction and preferably  time allocated for a general discussion.

For panel submissions, please include a) an overview description of no more than 300 words (including references), highlighting the panel’s content and objectives, and including 3-5 key words; b) an abstract of no more than 250 words (including references) for each individual presentation within the panel. Also provide information about the panel members and the coordinator, including full institutional addresses and emails. Please indicate how many 90-minute slots you are requesting.

Submit your panel proposal via e-mail with subject header “COMET 2026 Panel Proposal” to comet2026@yokohama-cu.ac.jp

2. INDIVIDUAL PAPERS (ORAL OR POSTER)

Proposals for individual papers (no more than 250 words, including references) must clearly indicate a preference for oral or poster presentation. Following the peer review process, the organisers will determine whether a proposal is selected for oral or poster presentation. There will be an opportunity for all poster presenters to briefly outline their main argument in a panel session in 2-3 minutes each prior to the poster viewing session. Poster presenters must be physically present both at the panel session and at their poster board to discuss their work during the dedicated sessions.

Oral presentations will typically be scheduled in blocks of 90 minutes to contain 3 presentations, with 30 minutes (20 minutes for presentation + 10 minutes for discussion) allocated to each individual presentation.

Submit your proposal for individual paper

3. WORK-IN-PROGRESS SESSIONS

Proposals for work-in-progress should be no more than 250 words (including references), targeted at oral presentation. The presentations will be in blocks of 60 minutes, with individual presentations lasting 20 minutes (15 minutes for presentation + 5 minutes for discussion). This format is particularly suitable for early career researchers pursuing doctoral and postdoctoral studies and for experienced researchers undertaking/planning pilot projects or interested in reporting preliminary findings.

Submit your proposal for work-in-progress

PROPOSAL REVIEW AND SELECTION CRITERIA:

All proposals, except panel proposals, undergo a double-blind peer-review process. For panels, the reviewers will have access to the names of the panel coordinators and the panellists.

Please note that COMET conference policy is one main oral presentation per presenter. You may choose to submit more than one proposal, but normally only one proposal will be accepted for oral presentation. An additional accepted proposal may be presented as poster. Any individual presenter – even as part of a team – is limited to one oral presentation and one poster presentation. The policy of ‘one oral presentation per participant’ is relaxed in the case of a second oral presentation in the invited forum.

There is no fixed format for writing proposals, but we suggest the following structure: Background (including findings from and absences in previous literature); Aims/Objectives (including research question); Methodology (research design, type of data, participants, analytical framework); Results/Findings; and Conclusion (including practical relevance).

Please note that the following criteria will form the basis for peer review:

• originality of the topic and its relevance to the conference
• background contextualisation of the study
• relationship between title and content
• structural organisation
• theoretical/methodological appropriateness
• clarity of claims and relevance

Individual panels are reviewed without anonymisation in their entirety on the above criteria but also on the basis of their relevance to broader issues in communication, medicine, and ethics; the overall coherence of the proposal; and the usefulness of the panel to participants.

Decisions about acceptance/rejection will be communicated by early March, 2026. Following formal acceptance, the responsible (presenting) authors must register their participation.

The Registration deadlines and the registration fees will be published in early March.

Please, send an email to comet2026@yokohama-cu.ac.jp for further details regarding submission guidelines or for additional information about the conference.