Practical Guidelines for Presentations by Commercial
Suppliers at BCA Meetings
Commercial suppliers of hardware, software and services are
vitally important to crystallography practitioners. Users and
suppliers are all part of a commercial chain of co-operation. It
is therefore important that we institute minimum practical
gui
delines that balance the need to demonstrate that there has
been no unfair bias in selecting meeting participants against the
need of BCA members to access current commercial information. To
that end the following guidelines should apply to all
presentations by commercial suppliers:
- In any meeting of the BCA or of its subsidiary groups
reasonable measures should be taken by the organisers to ensure
that commercial suppliers do not gain unfair advantage over the
competitors by invited
or offered presentations.
- If it is intended to include direct description or comparison
of commercial products in a session, there should be a "Call for
papers" publicly (Crystallography News and/or group newsletters)
or by direct correspondence with those known to have an interest.
The level of response to such invitations should primarily be
controlled by definition of the session topic(s). Discretion must
be retained by the session organiser and BCA or group committees
to judge the ap
propriateness of contributions and the programme
timing. If there is a commercial exhibition associated with the
meeting, participants should normally also be exhibitors.
- In other (normal) scientific sessions, suppliers'
representatives should continue to participate where relevant to
the topic without the restriction of (2) above. However they
should first agree that there would be no direct commercial
exploitation of the presentation e.g. comparisons with
competitors' wares or listing t
he virtues of their own
product.
Address any comments on these guidelines to the Industrial
Group Secretary/Treasurer ,
|
Industrial Group of the BCA