Fourth European IRPA congress (IRPAeurope2014).

Abstract

In 2009 the delegates of the European associate societies of the International Radiation Protection Association (IRPA) nominated the German-Swiss Fachverband für Strahlenschutz (FS) to organise the fourth European regional IRPA Congress in 2014. The board of the FS decided to invite the Association romande de radioprotection (ARRAD), the French speaking FS colleagues in Switzerland, to join the organising team, and Geneva was chosen as host city of the Congress. Owing to the generous support by the Swiss federal government the Centre International de Conférences Genève (CICG) was available for the Congress. In agreement with the IRPA Executive Council the date of the Congress was fixed for 23–27 June 2014. IRPA Congresses have a tradition to publish abstracts only. The organisers of the 2014 Congress proposed to publish a limited selection of papers in a peer reviewed journal. Fortunately, Oxford Press agreed to publish such a selection in a special issue of the journal Radiation Protection Dosimetry (RPD). The international scientific programme committee critically reviewed the over 500 submitted abstracts resulting in a ranking of the abstracts. The authors of the 60 top-ranked abstracts were invited to submit by the end of the Congress a full paper, according to the special rules of Oxford Press. Not all contributions could be accepted because of earlier or ongoing publication elsewhere and some authors were not in the position to complete a full paper for peer review on time. Finally, 37 papers were submitted. The review process was then according to the system of Oxford Press for the journal RPD. The Guest Editors were the members of the core team of the organisers of the Congress. Originally, the plan was to limit the papers to four printed pages each. Due to the fact that not all invited papers could be included, this size limit was finally not applied.