General
Posters are a means of communicating research results quickly and are often used at large national meetings. They are not intended to be full length papers. They are shorter, and usually include more tables and figures, and less text. An appropriate scientific presentation should fulfill two objectives. First it must clearly and completely describe the goals, procedures used and the results that were obtained. Second, it must place these results in perspective by relating them to the existing state of knowledge and by interpreting their significance for future study.

To prepare a successful poster presentation, use the following questions for guidance:
1. Is the hypothesis clear and succinct?
2. Is the experiment well designed and are the measurements collected appropriate for testing the hypothesis?
3. Is the presentation clear?
4. Is the conclusion supported by the data and the experiment?

While preparing the poster you need to keep a number of criteria in mind. You should approach the construction of your poster seriously. "Cute" formats such as unnecessary pictures and drawings and overly bright paper and creative design should be avoided. Present your poster in a serious and professional manner people will take your conclusions seriously. The size of the poster will be that used by presenters at the ASPP national meeting, 47" x 47". All posters should contain the following components:

Title Banner
Use a short yet descriptive title. This should be a the top of the poster and in larger letters than the text of the poster. Underneath the title include the names of the people in your group. Use at least 48 point font for the title and 24 point for the authors.

Introduction
Briefly explain the existing state of knowledge of the topic with citations, why you undertook the study, and what specifically you are going to demonstrate. Be sure to clearly pose the basic question or hypothesis addressed in the paper.

Materials and Methods
Present the methods you used to investigate the problem in enough detail so that someone competent in basic laboratory techniques could repeat your experiments. Authors frequently cite papers that describe particular techniques in this section to reduce the length of the poster. Be both brief and thorough. Avoid specific details that are common procedures.

Results
Summarize the data obtained from your measurements in tables or figures, and written text so that the reader can appreciate both the general patterns of the data and the degree of variability that they possess. Written text should concentrate on general patterns, trends, and differences in the results, and not on the numbers themselves. Tables of data are used when it is most important to present the reader with a comparison of exact numbers. In most, if not all cases, tables will include a statistical analysis of the data as well. Graphs, referred to as figures are used to show a general trend or to graphically illustrate a relationship between two or more variables.

Figures will often contain some statistical information including means and standard deviations. Avoid presenting the same data in both a table and a figure. Label tables and figures completely.

Tables and figures should be numbered in the order in which they are mentioned in the text. Thus, "Table I" should be first mentioned in the text. Graphs are referred to as "Figures". Thus, "Figure 3" would be the third figure mentioned in the text. Note the use of Roman numerals for Tables and Arabic numerals for Figures. Each Table or Figure shouls contain a descriptive title. Place the descriptive title and a legend describing the data in that figure below the figure. Place the descriptive title and table legend above the table. Written text should take the reader through the data referring to each Table and Figure in turn. Unlike a full-length paper in which information in the Results and Discussion sections should be separated, in posters this is not always the case. Your goal is to get your point across to the reader quickly so the presentation and interpretation of the results can be done together.

Discussion/Conclusions
Interpret the data in relation to the original objective or hypothesis, relate these interpretations to the present state of knowledge presented in the Introduction, and discuss the future needs for research. You may also identify sources of error and basic inadequacies of the technique and to suggest improvements of methods. The Discussion also provides a place to speculate upon the broader meaning of the conclusions reached.

Text Citations: Do not use extensive quotations in scientific writing. Instead, paraphrase another authors words. Use parenthetical references giving names and dates keyed to the Literature Cited section. The following are two examples of parenthetical references:
- Osmosis is the movement of water through a membrane (Soked 1986).
- According to Wette (1988) osmosis concerns the movement of water.

If the reference contains two authors, use both names [e.g. (Soked and Wette 1990)]. If more than two authors exist, use the following format: (Soked, et al. 1990).

Literature Cited
Place this section at the end of the poster. Use the format presented in the journal "Plant Physiology".

James Madison University, Department of Biology
Jonathan D. Monroe, PhD
Comments to author: monroejd@jmu.edu

All contents copyright (C) 1995, Jonathan D. Monroe. All rights reserved.
Revised: December 22, 1995
URL: http://csm.jmu.edu/biology/courses/bio455_555/atlab/posters.html