Policy on Supporting External Organizations and Conferences
Introduction
The Cognitive Science Society (CSS) provides financial support to conferences and other academic events that have a focus on interdisciplinary research in Cognitive Science. The purposes of this support include: promoting and advancing the field of Cognitive Science, establishing closer relationships between CSS and outside organizations, increasing the membership of CSS, and endorsing professional activities consistent with the goals of CSS.
In addition to the possibility of financial support, CSS has a procedure for creating Chapters of and Affiliations with the Society for organizations whose missions overlap with those of the Society. For further information, see the Policy on Creating Chapters and Affiliates.
In order to establish a uniform policy for requesting organizations, CSS will issue an annual call for requests for financial support, publicized on the CSS web site and emailed to the CSS membership. The deadline for these requests will be December 1 of each year. Decisions on requests will be handled by the CSS Membership Committee, which is charged with disbursing CSS discretionary funds in support of the Society's membership.
Types of support
CSS offers financial incentives for three specific activities:
- student paper awards at conferences and other academic events: CSS will provide up to $250 for student paper/poster awards on interdisciplinary work in the allied fields of Cognitive Science. The award must be badged as sponsored by CSS, CSS must be included on the list of sponsors of the event, and the event web site must include a link to the CSS site.
- workshops arranged to coincide with the annual CSS conference or the EuroCogSci conference: CSS can provide support of several types, including subsidizing CSS member registration, coordination with the conference hotel, complementary use of meeting space, food and beverage service, funding for speakers, complementary registration to the main CSS conference. The support of CSS must be acknowledged in any web or printed materials pertaining to the workshop.
- co-location of other meetings with the annual CSS conference: CSS can provide administrative support (e.g., the conference support staff might assist with hotel negotiations, registration, badges), possible discounted room rates through our leverage with conference hotel, discounted registration to the CogSci conference, or other other financial incentives to co-locate with the annual conference.
- Organizations receiving support from CSS are requested to include CSS on its list of sponsors, and include links to CSS on its web site.
Prioritization of support
Priority will be given to proposals based on the following criteria:
- Support promotes interdisciplinary cognitive science research
- Support benefits members of the Cognitive Science Society
- Support promotes closer ties with other organizations
- Support assists graduate students and postdoctoral fellows
- Support is directed to underserved or intellectually underrepresented areas of cognitive science in the Society
Applying for support
Submit a brief (several sentences) statement, describing the conference and what sort of support you would like the Society to provide. Feel free to make creative suggestions for the nature of the support, as long as the support falls into the categories listed above. E-mail your statement to the Society Business Office here, and it will be forwarded to the current Society Chair for consideration. The deadline is December 1 of each year.
The Policy can be downloaded as a pdf document from here.
