I have only once presented poster in my career. I did so to "get in" to the field, a decision I do not regret. The conference was on hyper text, and some peoples' posters cleverly made use of real red tape to link to other displays, something a talk could not do.

It is always a challenge to compress onto one A1 sheet the essence of what you have done. Nevertheless this is a good exercise, recommended for seminars on the home campus. An advantage of a poster table is that you can answer people's queries in more detail. A good plan for transportation is to travel with 8 A4 sheets that you pin together at poster time.

Some delegates leave preprints of a fuller version on the table for interested parties to take away. Business cards on the table are also a good idea, as one cannot continually man the table.

For the viewers, the advantage is that they need not sit through irrelevant sessions to get the point, and they can absorb as much or as little as they need to get.

Research posters are not regarded as publications, so travel and conference costs may sadly have to be self-funded.

Hi Ian - Thanks for getting the ball rolling & you make some good points about the dissemination of knowledge (either direct or indirect). As far as posters not being regarded as publications: The broader perspective of knowledge transfer is bought into question by Adams and Patrea Pabst (2004) who produce legalistic consideration as to whether a poster presentation may truly constitute a printed publication. Adams cites a 2004 US Court of Appeals ruling, in which a poster presentation depicting 14 PowerPoint slides was deemed "to foster general knowledge" of the subject concerned. No entry of the work was made into library indices or database reference, nor was there a distribution of linked written material. The display was given adequate exposure (2.5 days) to an audience of assumable expertise, and as such its content material could be noted or copied by note-taking or photographic means, in the absence of any restrictive prohibition. As such, the material was deemed to have been published and so prevented the presenting author from subsequently applying for patent rights on the material described. In this case, publication was not determined in terms of the common perception as requiring the dissemination or distribution of copies of written or printed material, but along the lines of exposure & the ability to achieve knowledge transfer to a selected audience. There are ever increasing numbers of 'conference contributions', 'poster-papers' etc. on peoples CVs and they and their institutions, as well as other entities (see Research Gate & Academia.edu publication sections) value them as publications. I am in support of this, given that in my own experience, to write succinctly, to compile a visually attractive scholastic / scientific work & to be able to converse around your topic answering ad-hoc questions off the cuff, perhaps merits just as much acknowledgement as boring a room full of captive delegates to death for 20 minutes (which regretfully I have also done): Such audiences can hardly get up and leave mid-flow, but a potential poster viewer can simply walk past without stopping, or head off for a cup of coffee before the next droning mumper takes the podium ... now how's that for peer review :-)

I am also very supportive of the advances with e-posters & virtual conferencing that widen audiences & might help stop posters being lost to obscurity once the event has ended. It is (IMHO) a shame when peoples good work is perhaps belittled ... I'm not (solely) a visual learner and I do not have a particularly good eye for art, but I do think that posters are definitely missing a trick when they are thought of as just a limited display of knowledge to a limited audience. After all, how many people read the stuff I write on obscure subjects (such as posters) ;-)

Hi Nicholas,

good point. Actually my question is, in which way to publish this posterpaper on Research Gate. I allready published the abstract on my profil and like to add the poster as a pdf. Would you do this ass "addition data", or how they call it, as an attachment of the abstract or as an own "pulication" with the same title, same authorship, conferense and so far.

And yes, I think that publishing the poster is a value, since the abstract sometimes only announce some results, the poster does present it. Besides, even for young researchers, poster creation sometimes may take as long as preparing a talk, even when the supervisor views himself as being obliged.

@Marc-Oliver: I have a couple on my profile page. My view is that the poster is the actual work, not the abstract. I would therefore put the pdf/ppt poster down as a conference presentation, with the abstract. If you provided an informational paper to delegates, I would put this under the 'additional / supplementary data' section. If this was not provided at the time though, IMO in is simply unpublished data. It is great though that you want to put the actual poster on your profile - too many great works are 'lost' when posters get reduced to 300 word abstracts :-)

** Great you presented a poster - tell us why you did so, your experiences & what you thought of the experience **

Interesting to look to 'publish' something on RG - personally, I only put outputs that have been previously peer-reviewed & published, so I say I 'post' them on RG. It may just be a choice of words, but times are changing & media such as RG are great for connecting with a wide range of people. Others have said that some contributors do indeed put their new work on RG first, but I imagine most stick to common publishing outlets such as journals & books etc.

Also interesting is your use of the phrase 'poster paper': terms such as poster, poster presentation, poster paper, are all used in available literature around the world. The most common form is the 'poster presentation' where people pin up a poster & talk to anyone who shows an interest in the topic during designated times at conferences. I have not come across events that require a paper to be supplied or presented along with a poster. I have however come across a 15 page 'poster' that had no figures, just text ... zzzz

I am in favour of having standardised formats & nomenclature for posters that reflect the way they were presented.

Hello Nicholas,

well, of cause, every post made on my profile already has been published in journals or books. So I may agree to use the term “post”. On the other hand, I always feel like I am posting right now, writing text in a forum or blog (ok, this blogging).

There are two cases.

Of cause, we have publications up to eight pages in conference proceedings that are published in the section “Poster presentation”. Additionally we created the corresponding poster and presented them to the audience. So one could say that there is a publication in the conference proceeding AND there is a poster, normally bearing more figures and less text, as I agree to flee from verbose posters (don’t be sure about the plural of poster in English).

In contrary, we have abstracts only promising some results but also published in the conference proceedings. In this case, I would agree to post the poster as the original output, although the conference proceeding is accessible via the internet, sometimes.

The third possibility would be to create a category “poster”, which is a job for Research Gate, and add the functionality to link to an abstract or conferences proceeding. That would at least standadize the way of posting things to RG.

Having an 8 page paper under 'poster presentation' is interesting. I agree that unless you are talking with the poster presenter during a poster event, it is often difficult to get enough detail from a simple abstract or just the poster itself. If you are creating an 8 page paper though, then surely a journal would provide wider dissemination (& more recognition). I would like to see more structured poster events, designed to aid networking and collaboration. Additionally, I would like to see posters & a 1-2K paper published in proceedings, or even a dedicated journal of their own that provides a full page poster image, short paper & clear contact details. This would help researchers present their work to other like-minded people, give enough depth to readers who see the material post-conference, & also give a more permanent medium for dissemination (that is also more visible for purposes of recognition).

Thank you Nicholas,

well the 8 pages paper is, of course, the conference proceedings. Because we are representing work in progress it is not enough for a journal right now.

Actually, I added the poster as additional source connected to a conference proceeding in RG.

Since