Making statements with section headings on your conference poster

A new paper by Wolfe and colleagues (in press) provide a new suggestion for improving your poster.

Do not use generic section headings like “Introduction,” “Methods,” “Results,” and “Discussion.” Instead, use longer descriptive headings that give the main points of each section.

For example, instead of writing:

Reaching out to resources

They suggest a longer but more informative heading:

 Women report reaching out to more resources than men

The team call these, “Complete assertion headings.” There are two examples in the paper I have reproduced here; click either to enlarge! Table II in the full paper also lists multiple examples.

The team tested this format against the billboard poster pioneered by Mike Morrison and the “Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion’ (IMRAD or, as Wolfe and company call it, IMRD) formats.

They did two tests. Both of them used posters about the same content formatted in three different ways. Viewers of posters were scored on their comprehension of the poster and their preferences. 

The first was with undergraduates. The authors wrote that students are not exactly the target audience for posters, who tend to be a bit further along in their studies. So they conducted a second study, using “engineering professionals,” which was a mix of graduate students and faculty. 

The logic of the second study was generally the same, except that instead of testing for comprehension directly, they asked how participants how easy it was to understand. This is an important difference, because people’s preferences about content they are trying to learn do not always align with their actual learning (Delauriers et al. 2019).

In both studies, the “Complete assertion headings” generally comes out on top, the billboard format in the middle, and the “journal article on the wall” fares poorest.

Both studies had relatively small samples, between 20 and 25 subjects. I would love to see studies on poster usability that are ten times bigger.

What strikes me is that this format – using headings to guide a reader quickly through a poster – shares much in common with the billboard format and with what I’ve called “the Columbo rule.” 

All three of them emphasize making simple and clear declarative statements. They just differ in where those statements are placed.

• The Columbo rule suggested making the title of the poster a simple declarative statement.
• “Complete assertion headings” suggests using multiple simple statements as the headings for the poster.
• The billboard #betterposter format suggested using most of the body of the poster into a simple declarative statement. 

I think many scientists shy away from making those strong declarative statements. Flat out saying “This is the finding” might feel push and blunt because it runs counter to academic culture. Scientists are taught to be conservative in their interpretation of data. To allow others to inspect data so that they can reach their own conclusions. Not to hype their research. 

These are generally positive things for researchers to do! These are good practices for full presentations of research projects in journals. But in the context of a busy conference, trying to say as little as possible about the data and the interpretation of them makes for much less effective communication.

While I didn’t use the term, I basically used the “Complete assertion heading” format in one of my own posters.

In that post, I wrote:

First, I ditched the standard “IMRAD” headings. My idea was to try to make the poster quickly readable by making every heading a key question or finding. That way, you only had to read a few sentences to get the gist of the poster.

Ahead of my time!

References

Deslauriers L, McCarty LS, Miller K, Callaghan K, Kestin G. 2019. Measuring actual learning versus feeling of learning in response to being actively engaged in the classroom. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: 201821936. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1821936116

Wolfe J, Reineke J, Lott J. 2025. Comparative study of scientific research poster design favors complete assertion headings and no abstracts over other formats. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication: In press. https://doi.org/10.1109/TPC.2025.3529094

Related posts

Detective stories: “Whodunnit?” versus “How’s he gonna prove it?”

A poster with no conference, or: What I made in that #SciFund poster class

Water Whys presentation, 28 March 2025: Poster pitfalls and power-ups!

 

I’ll be giving an online presentation tomorrow, March 28 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time or 11:00 a.m. Arizona time.

There is still time to register! Visit https://waterwhys.org/seminar/spring-2025/ to sign up!

Politics hits poster sessions

Alexandra Witze reports:

Here at the ASSW (Arctic Science Summit Week - ZF) Arctic science conference in Boulder, a poster describing research done with US federal funds has words including “ethical” and “equity” crossed out. 🧪

 

 

This is, without question, a response to the American federal government’s attempt to eradicate policies that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion.

But there are questions as to why someone felt compelled to make this particular response. Did the author(s) make it to draw attention to the policies? Or were they instructed to make the changes by someone above their pay grade?

If you are presenting a poster funded by an American federal agency, have you been asked to change to poster? Would you consider doing so even if not so instructed to avoid having to justify it to some agency administrator?

If you have a story to tell, I’m DoctorZen.66 on Signal.

You can’t have a great poster session in a bad conference

Many academics are aware of predatory or low-quality journals, but I get the impression that many are not as aware of predatory or low-quality conferences.

Christine Ro has just released an article in Nature describing the difficulty of knowing what you’re going to get when you decide to go to a new conference. This is a follow-up to an article last year about exploitative predatory conferences.

An underlying question that is not addressed in either article is, “Why would you go to a conference that you didn’t know?”

Many researchers are introduced to conference through their mentors. Many of them are conferences run by scientific societies. That continuity is a big benefit of societies running annual conferences. They are known and trusted. 

I know from personal experience that people end up with projects that cut across disciplines and are interesting to people in fields that you were not trained in. Again, it is usually not difficult to find a well-established scholarly society that has been running an annual conference for decades.

Why go to a conference that isn’t connected to a society, that doesn’t have a track record? What is the perceived value of going to a new conference by a commercial company? This is not to say such conferences are bad, but they represent a significant change from the tradition of conferences run by academics.

Ro’s article quotes researcher Olivier Sandre: 

Sandre advises students to be cautious with unfamiliar conferences, advising them to attend established ones at which they can be confident about making useful contacts. ... Now that he is more selective about which conferences he attends, he’s particularly wary of those run by businesses rather than learned societies. It’s fine when companies arrange practical services, such as meals, but he feels that the scientific content needs to be decided on by scientists. If he does not recognize the name of a single member of the organizing committee, he’s doubtful that the conference will be a good one.

In other words, conferences are about building a trusted community.

The bottom line from both articles:

Conference experiences are often a mixed bag. But understanding the potential and limitations of a conference ahead of time can help to manage expectations and assess the value of attending, even if it requires quite a bit of upfront research.

One resource mentioned is the “Think. Check. Attend.” website. It seems nice enough. I would also search for the conference on social media and look for whether people you trust have been to an earlier version of the conference. Searching the Flaky Academic Conferences blog might also be a useful tool, although I wish it was updated more regularly.

References

Ro C. 2024. How to spot a predatory conference, and what science needs to do about them: a guide. Nature 632: 219-220. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-02360-2

Ro C. 2025. How to know whether a conference is right for you. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-00903-9 

External links

Think. Check. Attend. 

Flaky Academic Conferences (blog - not updated in a long time)

Sweet sixteen

Almost missed blogiversary month!

It’s always a little crazy to think how this one project, started almost on a whim spinning off from my general academic blog, has managed to keep going.

I thank you for you continued interest and attention. I know I have slowed on posts, but make no mistake, I have every intention of keeping this project going for many more years yet.

I’m always looking for posters to share on the blog! I.ve you’ve done a conference poster you are happy with – or one you want to share as a warning to others – please email me at BetterPosters@gmail.com!

 

Photo by Michael W. May on Flickr; used under a Creative Common license.

Critique: No grave mistakes

This poster comes from Spencer Moore. Click to enlarge!

I’m super pleased to have posters that are not from the traditional sciences. This one is off to a good start. 

This posters had a big advantage, because the research itself is about the use of imagery. That can provide entry points for a viewer. If I were browsing in the conference hall, I would look at this and be convinced I could get something useful in five minutes.

The top of the poster features a curve that is reminiscent of the top of many grave markers. I am torn between making the visual connection to a stone stronger, or leaving it subtle.

The first place I would look for improvements is in the layout of those graphics. For example, here’s a close up of the lower left corner:

I want to see those symbols positioned more carefully. Currently, they are different shapes and sizes, and only the top edge of the second row aligns. Let’s try a couple of different grids.

There are nine image, which would suggest a three by three grid. The top image is so wide that it will not make it easy to make every image the same width. So to create an orderly grid, we want all the smaller images to be an even fraction of the top one (e.g., one third, one quarter).

Here is the first version I tried. The layout created a space in the lower right, where I put a description of figures.

The images in the bottom rows are not the same height, so I filled in the background with a similar colour using the eyedropper tool. (Other tricks to harmonize shapes in a grid are in the Better Posters book!)

Here is another option:

Speaking of alignment, it would sure be nice if “Background,” “Analysis,” and “Discussion” were all on the same line instead of “Analysis” dipping below the other two. There are lots of other places where more attention to alignment would significantly improve the poster.

If I were making deeper revisions, I might try to put all the imagery together, instead of one set in the left column and another set in the right column.

Another possibility to clean-up the images is being more selective. For instance, on the left side, there are four images of temples. True, they are different temples, but maybe only one is needed to represent that category. Similarly, there are four examples of "linguistic symbolism" on the right. Maybe one is enough.

The central figures both show the same thing: an increase in Mormon symbols over time. Again, maybe only one is needed. Alternately, maybe try to change the second graph to emphasize the increase in the types of symbols, not just the raw number of them.

Both graphs might have an indication when two events mentioned in the introduction happened: temple construction in 1945, and the change in church teachings in 1972.

As for the text, I’m not a fan of the bullet lists, particularly using the visually complex “black diamond minus white X” (❖). 

The “Background” section currently lacks a clear problem that explains why the research was undertaken. The “Discussion” section suggests a possibility when it mentions, “The frequency of LDS symbols indicated increased community representation before it was reflected in the census.” Oh, now why would that be? Can we see some census data in the “Analysis” section for comparison?

The “Methods” are so short and simple that they might be moved into figure captions.

After I shared an earlier version of some of these comments, changes were made. Click to enlarge!

 Definitely better!

Thanks for reading, and remember: Make a grid whenever you can!

Reimaging posters on In Plain Cite podcast

Everyone has a podcast now. Even the International Society for Medical Publication Professionals . They just renamed their podcast to In Plain Cite, and their first real episode is about conference posters! They talk to Doreen Valentine. (She is listed as being affiliated with Bristol Myers Squibb, but I cannot find any active web page).

Valentine describes what she sees as trends in conference poster design.

1. Plain language summaries.
2. QR codes.
3. Iconography. (It sounds like she just means more attention to graphic design.)
4. Interactive posters.
   
5. Augmented reality. (She mentions goggles, so I think she might mean virtual reality)

Host Rob Matheis asks how we can make posters more accessible to a wider audience. This struck me as a curious question. If a poster is in a conference hall, it doesn’t matter how you design your poster. You’re limited to conference attendees. A scientific conference is a walled garden. You can’t just walk into a scientific conference off the street. You have to register, and academic conferences are notoriously expensive. The audience is largely technical experts by design.

How would conference posters reach a wider audience? I suppose that in medical conferences, there will be some patients and patient advocates along with original researchers. I do see conference posters that have a second life in hospital hallways, much like scientific posters often end up decorating hallways outside university department offices. And finally, I have repeatedly suggested that posters should be archived online through repositories.

But I don’t see any of those three pathways being a very significant expansion of audiences to a wider audience that are not researchers.

The podcast goes on a bit of a tangent to mention best practices for medical publications. The discussants miss an opportunity, I think. Professional communication societies don’t have best practices for conference posters. Not truly.

The American Medical Writers Association guidelines do say, “The GPP guidelines cover... non‑peer‑reviewed communications such as posters, lectures, and book chapters.”

But the guidelines are all about text. They are about who gets to be an author, transparency, conflicts of interest, and when to submit. Those are useful. But it misses what guidance would be useful in making an effective poster.

Why not guidelines on visual accessibility for posters?

I understand that the publication guidelines are not Elements of Style. And maybe a national writers association is not the right organization to provide those guidelines. But plenty of organizations, like conference organizers, might be.

The absence of best practices from professional organizations is very conspicuous.

External links

Scientific Posters, Reimagined