GUIDELINES FOR HOLDING CONFERENCES/WORKSHOPS/SEMINARS BY LASA MEMBERS

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Laboratory Animal Scientists’ Association (LASA), India has been organizing conferences since 2006. The first LASA conference was organized in Hyderabad in 2006. Till 2023, LASA have organized eleven conferences in different cities in India. Reports/ representative photographs of each conference is available on LASA website at http://www.lasaindia.in/conferences.php .

Since enhancing professional knowledge of the members of the ‘Association’ is one of its mandates/ objectives, LASA wish to continue the activity of holding annual conferences. However, in order to provide opportunity equally to all zones in all parts of India to showcase their strength and also to streamline this activity, a set of guidelines are needed. LASA India also promotes regional workshops/ seminars in different parts of the country. These set of guidelines would also serve guiding force for the regional workshops/ seminars too.
Executive committee of LASA proposes following guideline document for holding the conference/ workshop/ seminar by any LASA member.

  1. Host member must be a regular employee of the institution. Retired personnel or consultant or emeritus scientist/ professor are not eligible to hold the LASA conference. However, they are eligible to apply for funding in case they wish to conduct a workshop or seminar.
    Host member of conference must hold continuous membership for last 5 years of LASA India.
  2. For holding a conference, member must have attended at least two conferences in last five years. A copy of the participation certificates must be produced at the time of application
  3. For holding a regional workshop/ seminar, continuous membership of LASA at least for last 12 months is must but attending two LASA conferences is NOT mandatory.
  4. Member should have approached their employer and obtained written permission from the employer to host the conference regional workshop/ seminar in their organization before proposing to the EC/ AGM. Approval letter from the office need to be submitted to LASA for record purpose. Once declared, the meeting will not be called off except for the reasons of unavoidable circumstances and justified to the LASA EC.
  5. Member must declare the Chairman, Organizing Secretary and Treasurer, whichever is applicable, to hold the conference and communicate to LASA along with the proposal. In case of zonal/ regional meeting/ workshops, it is expected to submit the name of at least Organizing Secretary.
  6. Team and venue of LASA Conference once decided will not be changed without the pressing reason. The change will have to be approved by the EC. There is no scope to change the venue of zonal/ regional meeting/ workshop,
  7. In case more than one proposals are received for holding the conference in a year, EC shall consider following criteria’s-
    1. Preference will be given to a new zone/ city where conference/ workshop has never been held.
    2. Credentials/ potentials of the Organizing team will be ascertained by the EC.
  8. For zonal or regional meetings/workshops, selection will be determined by the criteria outlined in point number 8, in addition to adhering to the application deadline. Only six applications will be sponsored within a financial year. LASA, India will advertise regional workshops once every six/three months. The application deadline for the first six months is January 31, with results announced in the first week of February. Likewise, June 30 marks the deadline for the following six months, with results announced in the first week of July
  9. To ensure equitable opportunities across all zones, organizers will be ineligible for funding for the subsequent two years. Even after this period, funding allocation will remain contingent upon meeting the criteria specified in point number 8. However, if no new proposals are received by the deadline mentioned in point number 9 within a given financial year, LASA EC reserves the right to consider funding for a previous organizer, provided the repeat organizer's application was submitted before the stipulated deadline, regardless of their funding in the previous financial year.
  10. LASA shall provide refundable seed money up to Rs. 3,00,000/- (Three lakhs only) for the conferences of which non-refundable seed money will be up to Rs. 25,000/- (Twenty five thousand only); and non-refundable seed money up to Rs. 25,000/- (Twenty five thousand only) for the zonal/ regional workshops or seminars. The organizers are free to raise additional funds from any other sources.
  11. For conference, refundable money can be released three months before the date of conference; whereas the non-refundable money for workshop/ seminar will be released four weeks before the workshop/ seminar.
  12. In case the organizer of a ‘Workshop/ Seminar’ have additional funds left at the end of the event, then they may voluntarily refund the non-refundable amount (partially or fully) as this may help LASA to support additional organizers to hold such events.
  13. Non-refundable seed money will be provided to maximum SIX different ‘zonal/ regional meeting/ workshops’ in a financial year preferably from different zones of the country.
  14. Members wishing to avail the seed money for holding zonal/ regional meetings/ workshops, must submit the proposal to the ‘President, LASA India’ marking copy to Secretary, LASA India at least two- three months before the date of meeting enabling the LASA EC to discuss it and also analyze the no. of proposals received to be approved for funding.
  15. Member must return the refundable seed money and balance amount within 3 months or by end of the financial year, whichever is earliest.
  16. LASA EC must be kept in loop by the Organizing Secretary for development at all stages like coming out with first announcement, final announcement, selection of speakers, funding status, final program etc. so that it can also be pasted on the LASA website for the information of the members. Suggestions given by the LASA EC may be mere suggestions and not mandatory for the Organizing team to accept.
  17. The Organizing secretary of the LASA conference should arrange a meeting of LASA-EC at the place of venue for transacting routine business of LASA at least 3 months before the scheduled program. The LASA EC can also help the organizing team to finalize the theme of the conference, scientific program and list of the speakers etc. in this meeting. Expenses towards travel (Pre-conference) of the EC members for such meeting will be borne from the LASA account. However, the organizing team will take care of local hospitality of the attending EC members
  18. Organizing secretary must publish the report or paper out of the workshop /regional conference in Journal of Laboratory animal science. Also play the LASA video before, after and during the break in workshop and display logo in all publicity material and acknowledge the funding in paper and social media circulation.
  19. The President, LASA India shall decide the committee in consultation with EC and organizing secretary for screening the prizes for poster/ oral presentation based on the attendees in the conferences.
  20. Certificates of the conferences must have the signature of President and Secretary beside the signatures of the Organizing Secretary. For this purpose, draft of the certificates has to be circulated to the President and Secretary before finalizing.
  21. Complete list of members who attended the meeting, report of the conference/ workshop/ seminar along with representative photographs must be submitted to the ‘President or secretory, LASA India’ by end of March or no later than 3 months of holding the conference/ workshop/ seminar, whichever is applicable.
  22. Expenses towards travel for LASA executive committee members who attend the conference should be borne by LASACON, organizing secretary with the prescribed norms.
  23. All publicity material should contain a LASA name and its logo
  24. The organizing secretary must declare that the output of the conference must be published in official journal of LASA, Journal of Laboratory Animal Science (JLAS)
  25. Organizers of zonal/ regional meeting/ workshops are expected to raise the new LASA members from the participants of the events.
  26. In addition to the refundable seed money, Organizing Secretary of the conference must try to save sizeable money from the conference and transfer the balance amount in to the main LASA account immediately after the settling of all the conference dues.
  27. In case the Organizer is not able to close the bank account and audit the income and expenditure of LASA Conference, for want of clearing the outstanding bills, LASA shall take care of the pending bills provided the unspent money are not less than the liabilities. The Organizer will have to close the bank account and transfer the unspent money to the main LASA account.
  28. Organizing Secretary of the conference must get the accounts audited by end of a financial year of holding the conference enabling the LASA Secretariat to file the income tax return in time. Audited report and statement of accounts must be submitted to the LASA Secretariat for record purpose.
  29. Organizer of the workshop/ seminar must submit the ‘Utilization certificate’ of the account to the LASA Secretariat within 3 months of holding the event.
  30. Bank account opened for organizing the conference/ workshop/ seminar must be closed immediately after settling all dues. Closure report with supporting document must be submitted to the LASA Secretariat before auditing the accounts.