Link roundup for January 2017

The Columbo rule vindicated again! Another research article has found that simple, declarative titles are the best. (The first was this.) Articles with such titles were more likely to be highly rated by Altmetric scores, although the effects are small. Hat tip to Neuroskeptic.

Biogreography has a poster session guide:

How to poster session: 1. Grab a snack. 2. Wander until you see someone standing alone by their poster. 3. Say “Hi.” 4. Repeat.

Hat tip to Jacquelyn Gill.

Critique: frog choices

The “Best of Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology” continues, with this contribution courtesy of Matthew Murphy! Click to enlarge!

This is a very successful poster on multiple counts. There is not a lot of text. The visuals are simple, with a strong but limited colour palette. The reading order is clear.

Matthew wrote:

Almost all of the elements of the poster were created using open-source graphic design software. Some preliminary work (especially editing the reference image of the frog icon) was done in GIMP. The vector images were developed in InkScape, and the whole thing was assembled in InkScape. I used an individual layer for each section.

The fonts used are Steve Matteson’s Open Sans and Open Sans Extrabold, both freely available through Google Fonts.

With open source materials, I have argued that you sometimes get what you pay for. When I saw this poster, I wondered if Open Sans had the chops necessary for the job, because I was struck by the dumb quotes (also called straight quotes) in the title. But a quick check revealed Open Sans had perfectly good smart quotes.

The problem is apparently that the open source material didn’t auto-correct the quotes, as some software (notably Microsoft’s Office products) have done for years. The solution is not difficult: you just need to know the commands for extended characters. In Windows, this is ALT + 0146 on the keypad. A more comprehensive list is here.

Speaking of typesetting, some paragraphs end in periods and some don’t. Consistency always helps.

The use of numbers in circles is a nice graphic tough and keeps the reading order clear. I personally would have started with one instead of zero, though.

You might expect me to complain about the results being before the methods, but I am not going to. First, having seen Matthew present this work, the order on the poster reflects the order he presented the material verbally. Second, some journals have taken to putting results before methods. This practice has critics, but flipping the order isn’t absolutely crazy.

Some of the material you would expect to be at the bottom is up at the top: acknowledgements and a QR code. The word “Acknowledgements,” presented here in bold and all caps, is competing with the title. I would have suggested making it smaller and more innocuous, something closer in size to the author bylines under the title.

Also, when you put a QR code, it’s a good idea to tell people what they’re getting. The upper right one does (“Summary”), but the lower left one does not.

In the context of this poster, “green noise” might be more precise, but “noise” might more readily understood.

And, much like last week’s poster, Matthew isn’t just a contributor, he’s a reader!

I actually used your blog - especially your design critiques - to get design ideas for my poster.

I’m glad it’s useful!

Related posts

Anything free is worth what you pay for it
Scripting a poster

External links

Smart Quotes for Smart People

Critique: Viper shapes

Today’s poster comes from Jessica Tingle, who I met at the recent Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology meeting in New Orleans, where she presented this poster. Click to enlarge – if you need to!

I say, “If you need to,” because the reason I stopped at this poster, was just how visible this poster was from a distance. I could read the title and see the main outlines not only within the poster row, but from the next row back. Even if I shrink the image:

You might still be able to read the title and see some of the main shapes on the poster. That’s why I think this poster was one of the clear winners at a conference where I was frustrated by how small many of the posters were (more about which later).

The secrets to this poster’s success are not complicated. Jessica used most of the available space. SICB has big poster boards (8 feet long by 4 feet high, I think), and this one covered most of it. The title is in large point size, and has no colours or logos competing for attention. It has one big central graphic, with few colours that are clear and intuitive (green for snakes in trees, more earthy orange for snakes in deserts). The two colour-coded call out boxes explain the central plot of data well, using simple, icon-like outlines of the snakes.

The change I might have suggested are small. The title could have been more specific. I might have suggested something like, “Treeclimbing, but not sidewinding, snakes are morphologically specialized.” This would also have removed the need for the big question right above the data.

Similarly, underlining the headings adds nothing to their visibility. Bolding alone does the job.

The left paragraphs are in a box, but none of the other regular text paragraphs are. I don’s think anything is harmed by removing the box:

 The boxing of the three call-outs works, because the colour of the lines connects the explanation to the data. The boxes there also make it clear that the text and images are serving as labels to the data, instead of part of the main text.

The discussion is in a box, too, but it’s more subtle: very light gray with no outline. Indeed, the gray is so light that I am not sure anyone notices. And the discussion isn’t in the location you expect it to be (right), so feels like an awkward afterthought. I do appreciate that the discussion is split into two columns to prevent the line widths from getting unreasonably long, though the space between the columns might be widened to signal that there are two distinct columns.

This poster’s use of one data plot and visibility from a distance pays off.

 P.S.—Jessica is not only a contributor to this blog, she’s a customer! I swear I did not know this when I asked Jessica if she would be willing to share her poster on the blog. But she knew the blog! She was kind enough to write:

(I)t really is a precious resource in a field where graphic design is important but rarely (if ever) taught formally(.)

I’m glad it helps!

Picking up the tab

I’m stepping a bit away from the poster board this week, so to speak, to talk about conference etiquette more generally. Conferences involve travel and eating out, usually in locations that cater to a lot of tourists (e.g., San Diego, New Orleans, Washington, DC) and partially hosted by hotels that are normally catering to business class. Since most conference attendees are usually early career stage scientists, cost is an issue.

Amy Lynch-Biniek wrote:

Tenured profs at conferences: adopt a “grad students and adjuncts don’t pay” rule at dinner/bar. Some did this for student-me and I never forgot.

Kate Washington added:

I was once in a grad-student dinner group that got stiffed by tenured profs who skipped out; I never forgot that either.

In fairness, that would be rude behaviour from anyone, regardless of career stage.

Drugmonkey, however, noted:

I never assume that just because (someone is a) tenured prof = moneybags that can pick up $$$ dinner checks. Should be voluntary.

Angela Vergara supports that:

I do it as much as I can, but as a prof in a state school in California, my conference budget is usually tied.

There are several issues at play here. For instance, how many people are at the conference with the professor? There’s a big difference in the cumulative tab for one trainee and half a dozen of them.

Many institutions support student travel to conferences. If a student has a per diem food allowance for a conference, it seems a little excessive for a professor to absorb all of those expenses when there are other sources of money dedicated to keeping the student fed.

I’m a little baffled that the original tweet singles out tenured professors. A tenure-track professor is still probably making significantly more than any trainee. Indeed, thanks to salary compression and inversion, tenure-track professors may be making more than tenured ones.

A professor – regardless of career stage – is expected to be a team leader. A conference is a good opportunity for leaders to say, “Thanks for a job well done,” and a good meal or a few drinks at the pub are a welcome gift. Generosity is a good feature of team leaders.

External links

Tenured profs should pick up the check?