Insights on Poster Preparation Practices in Life Sciences

Abstract

Poster sessions allow conference participants to discuss recent research and are a first public discussion for many early career scientists. Preparing a poster that is both accessible and insightful to the audience is key. Yet often both poster presenter and audiences complain about overloaded and incomprehensible posters, despite many guides and how-to papers being available. Here, I probed the current practices of poster preparation and present the results of an online survey and in-person interviews with poster presenters. This revealed, that the on average scientists spend two days on the preparation of a poster and receive neither training nor feedback on this task. Early feedback, provided during the drafting stage of the poster preparation process, could safe many hours of work, free valuable time for research, and help making research reach a larger audience.

Scientific digital poster assignments: strengthen concepts, train creativity, and communication skills

“…The majority of posters produced were created using Microsoft PowerPoint, recommended by Christenbery and Latham [26] for students as beginners. However, at scientific meetings, PowerPoint is also widely used to prepare posters, for example, at the "Complex Life of mRNA" conference [23]. This is because it provides templates that are easy to use [50] with numerous traditional contexts [16].…”

“…The required text includes abstracts, introductions, methods, results, discussions, and conclusions [16]. The detailed format consists of the title and author information, an overview of the reasons, methods, and results, as well as references, acknowledgments, and summaries [23].…”