Posters are an important tool for communicating research findings to a large audience, but their value can be hit-and-miss, according to Martin Fenner’s Nature Network blog Gobbledygook. The research presented in many posters will never be peer-reviewed or published. And although at some meetings the poster presentation leads to stimulating discussions, at others, Fenner says, it is mainly “a trick to increase conference attendance”.
The authors of a paper in Deutsches Ärzteblatt interviewed poster authors and attendees at a conference and found that although poster-session attendance was very low, the event was valued by younger scientists and by the meeting’s moderators. Almost one-third of the posters had already been presented elsewhere.
Fenner concludes that poster presentations should be taken more seriously. Meeting organizers should select abstracts through a competitive peer-review process, rejecting those that have already been presented or published, and should allow space and time for viewing posters during a meeting.
Nature 452, xii; 13 March 2008
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From the blogosphere by Maxine Clarke
An archive of the "From the Blogosphere" column on the Authors page in Nature, highlighting nature.com blog posts of interest to scientists in their role as authors and peer-reviewers. We welcome comments and suggestions.
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Improving standards of posters -- 13 March 2008
- Date:
- Thursday, 13 Mar ch 2008 - 16:48 UTC
Last updated: Thursday, 13 Mar 2008 - 16:48 UTC
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