How to write and publish a scientific paper - Barbara Gastel, Robert A. Day 2022

Popularity of posters
How to prepare a poster
Conference communications

It takes intelligence, even brilliance, to condense and focus information into a clear, simple presentation that will be read and remembered. Ignorance and arrogance are shown in a crowded, complicated, hard-to-read poster.

—Mary Helen Briscoe

Popularity of posters

Whether a conference is local, regional, national, or international, it is likely to include posters presenting research. Sessions featuring such posters originated—apparently in the late 1960s through the mid-1970s (Waquet 2008)—as follows: As attendance at meetings increased, and as pressure mounted on program committees to schedule more and more papers for oral presentation, something had to change. The large annual meetings, such as those of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, reached the point where the number of available meeting rooms no longer sufficed. And, even when enough rooms were available, the resulting large numbers of concurrent sessions made it difficult or impossible for attending scientists to keep up with the work being presented.

At first, program committees simply rejected however many abstracts were deemed beyond the capabilities of meeting room space. Then, as poster sessions were developed, program committees could take the sting out of rejection by telling the rejectees that they could present their work as posters. In the early days, posters were relegated to the hallways of the hotels or conference centers where meetings took place; nevertheless, many authors, especially graduate students trying to present their first paper, were happy to have their work accepted for a poster session rather than being knocked off the program altogether. Also, younger scientists had come of age during the era of science fairs, and they liked posters.

Nowadays, poster sessions have become an accepted and meaningful part of many meetings. Large societies set aside substantial space for poster presentations; at some meetings, thousands of posters are presented. Even small societies often encourage poster presentations because some types of material may be presented more effectively in poster graphics and the accompanying discussion than in the confines of the traditional 10-minute oral presentation.

Meanwhile, posters and poster sessions continue to evolve. Recent developments include electronic posters, also known as e-posters or digital posters. More and more conferences are featuring e-poster sessions, for which posters are provided digitally and displayed electronically. Some such sessions are limited to e-posters that have only static images, and so are largely digital equivalents of conventional posters. Others display e-posters that incorporate dynamic elements, such as videos, animations, and opportunities for interaction. Also, some conferences include related sessions such as 3-minute spoken “flash poster presentations,” intended to interest attendees in visiting the speakers’ posters. Since the advent of virtual and part-virtual conferences, many posters have been presented remotely.

Before starting to prepare a poster, be sure to know the requirements specified by the meeting organizers. If the poster will be a physical one, you of course must know the height and width of the space available for it. The minimum sizes of type may be specified, as may other aspects, such as requirements for e-posters. As well as being given directly to the presenters, this information is likely to be available on the conference website.