This page provides useful tips and guidelines to help you write your abstract. Dr. Geoff Hyde (NCBS, Bangalore) has provided the content for this page, with help from Umesh Srinivasan.
Speed-talk-cum-posters
[FORMAT: 4 min speed talk + poster presentation]
The speed-talk-cum-poster is a recent and popular newcomer to the conference scene, allowing a greater proportion of attendees to personally present their work to a wide audience. At YETI 2010, each speed-talk-cum-poster presenter will be given a maximum of four minutes on stage to describe his/her poster which will be followed by a conventional poster presentation session. There are two ways to approach a speed talk, each equally acceptable at YETI:
(1) Present the bare bones of the study described in the poster, by providing a shortened version of the work with a similar level of detail (and structure) as in the conference abstract. Use the structure suggested for the abstract as a guide to how to structure the speed talk.
(2) Focus on the highlight/s of the study without trying to provide a comprehensive overview. Think of it like a movie preview – just present the most exciting parts! For example, the presenter might spend three of four allotted minutes telling the audience about a novel method used or about an unexpected finding.
Speed talks will be presented in bunches of 15 per hour (each talk is 4 minutes). Each hour-long series will immediately be followed by a two-hour poster session in which all of the 15 presenters will be available next to their posters for discussions with the audience. Please read the guidelines for posters below to help you prepare your poster.
Posters
[FORMAT: Poster presentation only]
At poster sessions, many posters are presented simultaneously, so you need to compete for audience attention. Your poster should therefore be bold, well-designed and attractive, even maybe a bit provocative to catch people’s attention. Remember that some people will read your poster when you are not there in front of it. This means that even without explanation, the poster should make sense. This does not mean however that it should be comprehensive, rather it should present a simple story, just like your conference Abstract. Therefore, limit yourself to the key aspects of your work.
Some of these tips might be helpful:
1. Try to produce your entire poster on a single piece of paper
A lot of design problems arise when a poster is made from a large number of small pieces of paper. The worst case is using a bunch of A4-sized sheets. This will almost inevitably lead to use of fonts that are too small to read. Also, the gaps between the pages create unwanted breaks (both logical and visual) in the flow of your poster. The easiest way to create a single-piece poster is using the custom settings of Powerpoint or some equivalent.
There are pre-created templates for designing posters in MS PowerPoint. Some of these can be found at:
http://www.posterpresentations.com/html/free_poster_templates.html
2. Too much text = loss of audience interest = death of poster
What kills most posters is too much text. Avoid full paragraphs. Bullet points are much better than full sentences. See if you can replace text with something more visually appealing, e.g. a map, a flowchart or a self-explanatory picture. As a general rule, the word count should not exceed 600 words. A good way to achieve this is to aim for about 400 words.
A very rough guide:
Introduction: 150
Materials & methods: 150
Results: 150
Discussion/Conclusions: 150
References – only include references vital to your work. These should ideally be in much smaller font size than the body text.
Acknowledgments – keep them brief, and use a smaller font size.
You can see a very nice real-life example of how to shift from a text-heavy style to a pleasant graphical style here: http://www.conbio.org/studentaffairs/posters/commonmistakes.cfm
3. Keep it simple
Ask yourself at every step:
Have I used many words instead of a few?
e.g. ‘it is likely that climate change may affect bird migration’ can be replaced with ‘climate change may affect bird migration’
e.g. ‘invasion by alien species may be aided by the opening of forest gaps’ is an unnecessarily long version of ‘forest gaps may aid alien invasions’
This is especially useful while presenting results.
e.g. ‘Herbivory by butterfly caterpillars was found to be affected by the concentration of secondary compounds in young leaves. An increase in secondary compound concentration led to decreased herbivory.’ This is the same as saying ‘Secondary compounds in young leaves negatively affect caterpillar herbivory.’
Have I used any jargon?
Jargon is highly technical language, which, chances are, only your supervisor and (some) lab-mates will understand. So replace, for example, ‘kleptoparasitism’ with ‘stealing’. It is much simpler to understand, has fewer syllables, and you will not have to explain it to each person who starts to read your poster.
4. Use clear headings and sub-headings
These will help people navigate through your poster even if you are not there to explain it to them. Usually poster headings follow roughly the format of a paper but do not include abstract:
Title – should be large, catchy, and a maximum of two lines in length
Introduction
Study area (if important) – a map here is better than text
Materials and methods – this is one of the most boring parts of a study, and a graphic or flowcharts helps a great deal in keeping the audience interested.
Results – again, neat, well-labeled graphs with self-explanatory legends are much more preferable to text. A good thing to remember when making graphs is that the graph should be a stand-alone explanation without having to refer to any other text.
Conclusions – ideally bulleted, discussing the results and highlighting their relevance
5. Use consistent formatting
A very useful way of formatting your poster to improve readability and comprehension is to make your poster ‘modular’. In other words, having separate boxes for Introduction, Methods etc., with enough separation between the boxes. This allows the audience to skip parts like the methods and go straight to the discussion or conclusion sections.
A poster should have a lot of empty space (about 35%). This does not mean that:
a. you leave 35% blank and cram the remainder with text
b. you should add text to the empty spaces once you finish the poster!
Avoid using more than:
2 font types
2 font colours
3 font sizes
Too many format changes make the audience focus on the formatting rather than on the content.
Font types: there are two types of fonts: serif fonts like Times New Roman and sans serif fonts (which don’t have the small things sticking out at the angles of the letters) like Arial. Serif fonts are easier to read in books and papers. Sans serif fonts are easier to read on screen or on posters. That’s why most people prefer using sans serif fonts in posters and PowerPoint presentations.
Font sizes:
A rough guide to font sizes:
Title: 150 pt
Section headings: 36 pt
Body text: 26 pt
Text justification:
Text is easier to read when left justified rather than when justified to the left and the right.
6. Use colour wisely
Posters are basically a visual medium of presenting data, and colour can help draw people to your poster and help you to present your message. However, if used unwisely, colours can make your poster less attractive and more confusing. Colours should be well co-coordinated and their use consistent throughout. For example, be consistent in the colours (and font type/size) used for subheadings. It is better to err on the side of too little colour than too much! The poster shown on the site below shows a judicious use of colour:
http://www.conbio.org/studentaffairs/posters/commonmistakes.cfm
Thanks to:
Jason Tylianakis, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
and
http://www.conbio.org/studentaffairs/posters/
Oral presentations
[FORMAT: 7 min talk + 3 min question-answer session]
Unlike the flexible Speed Talk format, in an oral presentation the audience expects you to cover all aspects of your study. That is, it should include all the areas previously suggested for an Abstract:
- Research Area and Question/s
- Objectives & Methodology:
- Results
- Discussion
Please look over the Guidelines for abstract again to understand what is required in each of these parts.
Of course, as recommended for the abstract, people are also encouraged to discuss less complete projects, for example, where you are still refining the methodology you will use. If this is the case, please use a suitably modified version of the schema suggested above.
The two most difficult parts of the talk are the introduction and the conclusion. The Introduction is difficult because:
- You may be nervous, not having got into the swing of the talk yet.
- You need to narrow down quickly from the very general to the very particular. It is easy to over-discuss general issues. Remember that in a talk, general issues are just a means to an end: helping the audience to understand what you actually did and its significance. You can often deal with the Research Area, for example, in one or two crisp, well-worded sentences.
The conclusion is difficult because:
- You may be tired.
- People expect a strong finish where you not only provide (or repeat) the answer/s to your Research Questions, but also discuss the wider implications within your Research Area (e.g. conservation or management applications).
For these reasons it is wise, for both the Introduction and Conclusion:
- To devote a lot of preparation time (and practice) to them
- To memorize them
For the remainder of the talk, memorization is not generally a good idea. It is better to devote time to making sure the structure is simple and sound. This will not only mean that the talk will be easy for your audience to follow, but, for you, it will be easy to remember its basic flow.
