What structure does a poster have and how is it organized? You will learn this in this step.

{.lead}

In general, the (content-related) structure of your poster follows the common argumentation of scientific papers with an introduction, main body, and conclusion. Depending on the subject area, research focus, and requirements of the organizers or institutions, this structure may differ or be implemented differently. Nevertheless, there are some building blocks that generally belong to it, and elements that have proven useful and common. It is important: An effective poster presents your research visually clearly and concisely and should not be overloaded.

Title

Choose a concise title that sparks interest and is understandable even to a non-specialist audience (depending on the context). Give the title enough space on the poster so that it can be easily read from a distance. Below the title, list all participating authors with their institutional affiliation in a smaller font. (If you want to add contact information, it is best to do so at the very end before or after the list of references, but not in the title field.)

Argumentation

Generally, scientific posters follow the common argumentation structure with an introduction, main body, and conclusion. To make everything fit on the poster, you cannot elaborate on your argumentation in detail, but rather present it as concise bullet points. What the introduction, main body, and conclusion consist of depends on your project and research area.

Introduction

First, you should briefly outline the research context. What is the background to your project? What is the current state of research that you are building on, what are the prerequisites? What is the central research question or hypothesis? What do you want to investigate or find out? Why is the topic relevant?

Main Body

The main body consists of the actual presentation of your project or study. This includes a description of the methods: Which methods, approaches or means did you use, how did you proceed? Depending on the project, this also includes information on data collection, experimental design or analysis methods. Outline the course of your study or the structure of your project: What are the most important steps, arguments and information? If it is an empirical study, describe the procedure step by step. In a more theoretical project, describe the conceptual framework and the structure of your argumentation.

Conclusion

Also give the concluding section enough space on your poster. There you present and interpret the main results of your study or project. What are the central findings and insights? Use visual representations such as graphics, diagrams and tables to make your results clear. Briefly discuss the conclusions from the results. How do you interpret the results in light of the initial hypothesis? Were there limitations to your study? What are the possible implications of the results, how could the research continue? What do the results mean for your research?

Formalities

As with other scientific papers, the references and literature used must be stated at the very end of the scientific poster. However, limit yourself to the three to five most important sources; a complete bibliography is not necessary. The acknowledgement should also be placed at the very end. Mention funding, support or collaborations here. A particularly visually appealing method for this is to display the partner logos.

Attached to this step below you will find a download example for a scientific poster. In the following step, we will dedicate ourselves to the visual design principles for scientific posters.