Are You Making the Right Presentation at the Scientific Meeting?
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A key reason for attending scientific meetings is to gain exposure to ongoing research activities from other research groups. In fact, until a few years ago, the disclosure of new findings of previously unpublished work was the biggest attraction at the scientific meetings. The Proceedings of the meetings provided a quick way for researchers to publish preliminary or unpublished results. The fast pace of today’s scientific publications and the availability of multimedia are rapidly changing the breadth and focus of the meetings. Once popular, the proceedings of scientific meetings in many disciplines have disappeared. The nature and style of presentations are also changing. The majority of presentations now emphasize work from the presenter’s laboratory that has already been published in a peerreviewed journal. There is a reluctance among researchers to present their unpublished or ongoing work at meetings for the fear of disclosing their ideas to competitors and losing their scientific edge. This is especially true in highly competitive, fastpaced fields. If this trend continues, scientific meetings will become mere slide show presentations of published work, failing to stimulate and inspire participants or provide a platform to exchange ideas. Lately, we are seeing presenters use a major fraction of the allotted time to advertise their research project by including slides of journal cover art, news clips, reviews, and other
cientific meetings are an excellent platform for interacting with scientific colleagues and learning new advances in the research field. More importantly, meetings offer researchers a common place to share their research findings with peers and seek their feedback. Informal scientific discussions often provide additional insights that are not usually possible to capture from published work. Scientific meetings can also foster new collaborations and offer new career opportunities.
Meetings offer researchers a common place to share their research findings with peers and seek their feedback. The scope and focus of scientific meetings vary. Broader society-sponsored meetings and specialized topic-based symposia offer different settings to communicate latest research activities. For example, at the spring and fall American Chemical Society (ACS) meetings, symposia are sponsored by the divisions of the ACS. Each symposium focuses on a specific topic with both invited and contributed talks. In contrast, conferences such as the Gordon conference are focused on a specific scientific theme. They invite leading experts to provide a broad overview and encourage exclusive discussion of unpublished results.
Figure 1. Making a clear and effective presentation with new results can create greater audience participation. Published: February 10, 2017 © 2017 American Chemical Society
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DOI: 10.1021/acsenergylett.7b00004 ACS Energy Lett. 2017, 2, 408−409
Editorial
http://pubs.acs.org/journal/aelccp
ACS Energy Letters
Editorial
nonscientific highlights. Such practices of excessive publicity of one’s own research tend to have a negative impact as the audience is likely to lose interest quickly. Clearly it is a lost opportunity for the presenter and audience to share new research findings. By following a few simple presentation tips, one can make an effective presentation and impress peers in the field (Figure 1).
Excessive publicity of one’s own research tends to have a negative impact as the audience is likely to lose interest quickly. If you are a presenter, it is important to know the difference between an invited talk and a contributed talk and to know the time allocated for your presentation. Invited talks include additional time for presenters to give a broader view of the research topic, whereas contributed talks tend to focus on a single scientific theme with only a couple introductory and motivation slides. The total number of slides should be less than the number of minutes allocated for the presentation. Try to minimize the text in each slide and include schemes and bullet points to highlight the findings of each set of data. Because the allotted time for a contributory talk is short (15−20 min), one should make a concerted effort to make the presentation concise and effective by focusing on a single scientific story. This type of presentation makes a strong impact with the audience and can lead to new collaborations.
Prashant V. Kamat, Editor-in-Chief, ACS Energy Letters University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556, United States
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AUTHOR INFORMATION
ORCID
Prashant V. Kamat: 0000-0002-2465-6819 Notes
Views expressed in this editorial are those of the author and not necessarily the views of the ACS.
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DOI: 10.1021/acsenergylett.7b00004 ACS Energy Lett. 2017, 2, 408−409
