It’s been a month. What has happened around conference poster sessions?
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The quest to perfect the online poster session continues!
Macarthur and Drude posted a slide deck with a brief explanation of how they created a small online poster session using ThingLink. This allows you to create an online space that people can navigate through, click buttons to bring up specific posters, and listen to a short recorded video presentation.
The slide deck doesn’t do justice to the experience, so I encourage you to visit their poster session.
I tried this on my phone and laptop. Both worked well. I like the navigation for this session. I found it very intuitive and smooth.
I don’t like that the recorded presentations that I saw have small heads that often cover part of the poster, with no option to move them. I am not sure if there is any possibility for interaction between either the presenter and the audience or other audience members.
Even on a larger screen, some poster titles are hard to read. This is a problem with the poster design, not a failure of the format. But this makes me worry slightly about whether this successful approach would scale to larger poster sessions. Browsing is an important aspect of poster sessions, and this set-up seems to make that difficult. If I want to get in close to a poster, I have to click that specific poster, maybe zoom to read the title, and possibly pause the recorded presentation.
Macarthur V, Drude F. 2025. Bringing research to life: an immersive virtual poster gallery. In: University of Cumbria Learning & Teaching Conference, 18 June 2025, University of Cumbria, Lancaster, UK (unpublished). https://insight.cumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/8957
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A very robust finding about conferences is that oral presentations are more likely to become journal articles than poster presentations. But how much do conference organizers have their thumb on the scale?
A recent paper looking at the reporting of randomized clinical trials at conferences found, not a difference in publication, but a difference in the quality of project reported.
Poster abstracts had lower overall reporting quality scores compared to oral abstracts. This could be partly attributed to the more rigorous evaluation process of oral presentations by scientific committee. Given the limited number of podium slots and the high volume of submissions, it may be that higher-quality studies are selected for oral presentations.
Paheerathan S, Flitti D, Cobourne MT, Hua F, Pandis N, Seehra J. 2025. Reporting quality of randomized controlled trial abstracts presented at the European Orthodontic Society Congress between 2015–2024: has there been an improvement over time? European Journal of Orthodontics 47(4): cjaf039. https://doi.org/10.1093/ejo/cjaf039
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S. Kamoun wrote a couple of blog posts one reasons to publish posters. I agree with most things, but warn against this:
Having a DOI for your poster allows you to include it in your CV under publications.
There is nothing special about a DOI that turns a conference poster into a publication. Many CVs I have seen have a separate section for publications and conference presentations. Trying to pass off the latter as the former will be seen as obvious puffery.
But maybe that was advice that ChatGPT dreamed up. Both of the posts below are written with “assistance” from ChatGPT. I appreciate the disclosure.
Kamoun S. 2023. Why you should publish your posters. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8154941
Kamoun S. 2025 Why I’m skipping the Congress this year (And why you should still publish your posters). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15863849
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Almost as old as the blog but new to me post on confusing comic page layouts.
Always make it easy for a reader to know which way to look next.
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If you have ever wanted a Norman Romanesque look for your posters, may I direct you to the Historic Tale Construction Kit Bayeux.
Hat tip to Ian Coomber.
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I don’t have access to this article by Amy Pepper, but some of you might.
Pepper A. 2025. How to develop and present a conference poster. Nursing Older People. https://doi.org/10.7748/nop.2025.e1516
I couldn’t help but notice while looking for this article that another article by Davina Calbraith came out in 2020 with the exact same title:
Calbraith D. 2020. How to develop and present a conference poster. Nursing Standard 35(9): 46-50. https://doi.org/10.7748/ns.2020.e11468
And it’s not just the title that causes déja vu. The “Reflective activity” for both articles is very similar.
2020:
‘How to’ articles can help to update your practice and ensure it remains evidence based. Apply this
article to your practice. Reflect on and write a short account of:
1. How reading this article will improve your poster development or presentation skills.
2. How you could use this information to educate nursing students or colleagues wanting to develop
a conference poster.
2025:
‘How to’ articles can help to update your practice and ensure it remains evidence based. Apply this article to your practice. Reflect on and write a short account of:
• How this article might improve your practice when designing and presenting a conference poster.
• How you could use this information to educate nursing students or your colleagues on the appropriate technique and evidence base when designing and presenting a conference poster.
Maybe this is standard boilerplate in nursing journals? I don’t know.
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How to use peer review to improve student posters.
Emery KL, Shepard MD, Matthew SJ. 2025. The effectiveness of online peer-feedback
for group interaction and assessment quality in a high-enrolment and culturally diverse undergraduate
topic. in: 11th International Conference on Higher Education Advances (HEAd’25). Valencia, 17-20 June 2025. https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAd25.2025.20129 and https://researchnow.flinders.edu.au/files/162584869/Emery_Effectiveness_P2025.pdf
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And finally, in “Cool things I haven’t seen done before”.
Biologist Chris Eckert is retiring. (Good luck and enjoy, fine sir!) So for his last professional poster at the 2025 meeting of the Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution, what did he do?
He held a garage sale.
Brilliant! Hat tip to Andrea Wishart and credit to Janice Freedman for the photo.
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Thank you! Your next link roundup will be here on the last Thursday of August!
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