What is an academic poster?
Academic Posters
- Think of the poster as an illustrated, expanded abstract using a mixture of text, tables, pictures, maps, charts, graphs, and/or other graphic elements to enable the viewer to quickly understand the major points of your research. It is a "snapshot" of your research. It is a format that allows the viewer to understand in a couple of minutes what your research is about.
- Posters are widely used in the academic community. Research posters summarize information on research concisely and attractively to generate discussion and awareness of your topic.
- The poster typically contains the same components as an academic paper, but in a modified format that is more appropriate for a poster – less text, bullet-point formats, graphs and tables instead of long paragraphs.
- At a conference, the presenter might be standing by the poster so that other participants have a chance to learn about and discuss the topic of the poster. At other times, the poster is designed to be a “stand-alone” fixture without the presenter being nearby for interaction.
Image description:
An illustration of the front page of a scholarly article is on the left side. An illustration of an academic poster is on the right side. A black line connects the title and author information of the article to the title and author information of the poster. A second black line connects the body of the research paper to the body of the poster.
The example poster is divided into two rows. The first row contains the title of the poster and its authors and affiliation. The second row contains three sub-columns. The left-hand column has Introduction, Aim/Purpose/Goal, and Method sub-headings. The middle column is largest with Results. This column includes figures to demonstrate what the researcher discovered. The right-hand column has four sub-headings: Conclusion/Summary, Further Research, Acknowledgements, and References. These columns and rows correspond to the information presented in the article.