Give "poster session 2012" to Google.

The dropdown suggests ALA, IFLA, MAA, JMM, NIH,

“Grace Hopper”, COFC SSM, “Philadelphia ACS”,

MGH SAC, UHC.

Substituting 2013 gives ACRL, “MAA undergraduate”, AACR,

PYCON, ALA (again), LHCC, COFC SSM (again).

The bias is towards the USA.

You can try 2011 also, and then try giving "poster session”

to Google Trends.

Hi Ian,

Of course, the handy Google is always the first stop but there are so many variables involved: local, national, international, science, academia, professional associations, undergrad, post-grad .... & multiplied by who knows how many countries - the list goes on ! Additionally, not every conference is visible on the net or internationally (e.g. how many conferences in China use posters each year ?).

The bottom line: if we talk ‘bang for your buck’ – a poster presentation (time, travel, event fees, materials etC.) may cost perhaps €800. A single event may host 50 – 100 such ‘publications’, and there are 40,000 man-hours devoted each year to this medium in the US alone (F1000.com). If the US is considered as holding ¼ of the worlds ‘academics’, then @160,000 man hours could be spent around the world on posters every year. Pay each employee as little as €20 per hour and it equates to €3,200,000 ... every year.

I figure this therefore merits a decent attempt at quantification ... but am not best sure how to go about it ;-)

Hi, Nicholas. I think that you would need to also look at the cost of NOT presenting posters. Two extreme alternatives are to deny all travel and communication or to pay for more research time to achieve proper paper presentation status. What the simple accounting (B4B) does not take into account is the need to "create human capital". Also, a bean counting approach will say: hey, why send this candidate / staff member to present a poster, when he could post a Web page or join a virtual conference...

You might like to set a lower limit on X. Alternatively avoid the quantitative question: "Posters are a very popular medium for academic / scientific presentation, being presented at conferences and events worldwide each year (State WHY) ... there many variables involved in estimating how many: local, national, international, science, academia, professional associations, undergrad, post-grad in many countries. This paper concentrates on ...

Hi Ian,

Posters are a great medium, in that they are (rightly or not) a 'publication' and get an institutions staff out there 'networking', so I think people will carry on being funded. I have written a number of proper papers (which for me involve simal ammounts of research time) using the qualitative angle you suggest, but I would very much like to have a go at guestimating how many we actually churn out. As for the limit of X - it strikes as being very high but although some local presentations are cheaper, a huge amount of posters are delivered at international conferences, from 50 to unbelievably 300 at a single event. Conference organisers put bums on seats (& bucks in banks) and we gain from making a contribution, so although the price is high, I think it is a 'winning' medium. Posting on a web page, virtual conferences .... great & up-coming things and I think posters will adapt to fit these mediums (please forgive my lack of pseudo Latin). Hopefully someone will come up with a solution to fit my quantitative need though :-)

To calculate the market for e.g. poster software or a poster service: Start with a good lower estimate of the _largest_ component of each poster community (Academic not Business); (USA not non-USA); (4th year not Post Grad); (2012 not pre 2012); etc. Calibrate your lower estimate with your mini-census using Google searches for distinct conference acronyms or university acronyms. Use the rank-size rule to further estimate the smaller non-census components. Add the smaller components to the largest to get the grand lower estimate. I am using this approach to estimate for my publisher the potential market for my book.

Hard know, different factors are involved in conferences, international, local, academic, non academic societies, language, countries, field or area of the poster and money others. I would like to know more about the quality of posters which for us is more important on which basis the poster is accepted, in some conferences all submitted psoters are accepted, so the quantity is not indicator since no standard of acceptance.

I think it is fair that posters be not pre-refereed but rather post judged via e.g. awards for the best poster, since the intention is to give all new students and new ideas exposure.

What is your research question?

Fathi - I think you have a fair point. I have seen some pretty 'scant' proposals for poster presentations that would never have passed decent peer-review, but might however make an interesting focal point for delegate discussion (& so suggest that posters are suited more to networking than knowledge transfer). The other more sceptical view is that by accepting a poster submission, you are generating X amount of money for the conference organisation ....

Ian - I like the idea of awards for posters, but I find it a little condescending that many still view the medium as more suited for 'new students'. Many people (who are quite well published & have spoken at their share of conferences) use it as an alternative to journal publication, oral presentations etc. because it is in my opinion different & not simply a lesser form of academic activity.

We would hope that posters are pre-judged but for the reasons given above, it might not always be so :-(

Guestimating X.

Maybe start with a subset of all conferences. Here's how Gross and Fleming did it

1. How many conferences are there? There are more than 17000 scientific associations and scholarly societies worldwide. This info comes from Opitz, Helmut (2002) World Guide to Scientific Associations and Learned Societies. I found a reference to this in Gross, N., & Fleming, C. (2011). Academic conferences and the making of philosophical knowledge. In C. Camic, N. Gross & M. Lamont (Eds.), Social knowledge in the making (pp. 151-179). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

2. In the article mentioned above, Gross and Fleming go on looking at American humanities and social sciences alone, come up with 70 major scholarly associations that are members of the American Council of Learned Societies, and then add 4,400 institutions of higher education.

3. They assume that each association holds an annual conference and that many schools do so, too.

4. Of course, you'd still have to guestimate how many posters at each conference.

Tina - thank you very much for this.  It gives a great example which may be roughly extrapolated to a global figure (assuming the US holds @ 1/4 of the worlds 'academics').  Good find, although I am not sure there are enough 'noughts' available on my calculator to deal with a final estimation of global poster expenditure .... pretty scary for a 'lesser activity' !

Poster presentation is a scary experience, but it is the hook to get you to present conference papers, prepare journal papers, prepare a PhD proposal, write a PhD thesis, and to successfully advise your own PhD candidates!

Not so sure about the 'scary' perspective - it can be daunting if you don't know your stuff, are unprepared for the random questions that get flung at you, or are simply not yet confident in presenting to others.  As far as presenting papers (I presume you mean oral presentation) - I think it is always a numbers game:  big conferences may have over 1k poster slots, but 95% favoured developing the medium to give exposure post-event.

I can now show poster presentation to be a billion dollar annual practice, so outcomes & efficacy (bang for buck) are quite important.  I am wondering however, if people are going to get so little exposure, have such minimal contact during their presentations, achieve almost no post-event benefit/exposure, then how do we map the expressed intent & appreciation of the poster medium, with its theoretical & empirical shortcomings?  Can (should) we invest so heavily in the medium if we cannot improve the demonstrable return we get for our investment?  I think face2face is great, but we can also collaborate & meet in virtual arenas - given the cost of face2face & the availability of free technology, I think we need to promote & appreciate other CPE approaches as well.

What your bean-counting approach is not taking into account is the multitude of opportunities afforded for improvement of one's material; forging of new friendships and collaborations, and having one's mind opened by seeing how different other people and approaches are.

Ian:  I agree that 'bean counting' is not at the centre of my work (nor at the centre of the scientific works that are produced in the poster format). The idea is to highlight the 'elephant in the room'.  Friendships, collaboration, opening one's mind - these are all very valid things which qualitatively support the overall practice of conference attendance, but there is very little 'evidence' which demonstrates this beyond opinion & anecdote.  I fully agree that from a qualitative perspective, conference presentation is   individually well supported, but given the amount of resources we allocate, is it not reasonable to ask what benefit this activity brings to others?

Poster presentation has been pretty much un-investigated since its inception and the concepts of networking, collaboration & discourse which hold true in smaller settings, do not readily transfer to the modern environment where we (& our work) can get simply lost in the crowds of bigger events.

Rest assured, the idea is not to demonstrate that everything must show a quantifiable return!  More that it is important to realise the size & scope of this 'lesser' practice, & develop it to be more effective in meeting the needs of the wider community (after all ... they pay for it).

I agree with you, and wish you success in your interesting endeavour. Have you presented your own first poster session on your preliminary investigations?

Ian:  I have to confess that although I have presented a poster, done a guest blog, a national guest lecture, a scientific magazine article & a letter of correspondence in a very high impact journal .... for the purposes of the PhD, I am as 'selective' as the rest of them - the journal article is under review  ;-)

I use posters extensively for teaching management and in conferences too.

Example - Broiler Chicken / 3 D Printing / Principles of Practicing Management

Data Broiler Chicken - Marketing innovation - Food Industry

Data 3D Printing Landscape and Technology

Data Principles for Practising Management

Dear Nicolas

    I personally feel it is good one and a lot of posters are presented in every topics throughout every year in all over the world .

Niranjan,

Even though some find it a bit 'quantitive', this type of figure is important to raise awareness of how 'big' the practice is.  I am just finishing a literature review that uses informatics to show the number of poster presentation returns by year & discipline. One single return however, might give either a single citation, or more commonly the abstracts of hundreds of posters which were presented at a single conference. I can demonstrate the prevalence of poster presentation, estimate its cost & get an estimate of how many posters might be presented (if the registered academic institutions funded/hosted a certain number of posters each year, but a method to precisely measure how many posters were presented in a certain year eludes me. Too many variables & a lack of centralised data !