Matt Holland, Library Manager, Library & Knowledge Service for NHS Ambulance Services in England (LKS ASE), Matt.Holland@nwas.nhs.uk
In late 2025 I submitted three proposals for posters to three conferences in 2026 with co-authors from Yorkshire Ambulance Service and Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust Library, all were accepted. The first six months of this year have been the story of delivering all three projects together with the day job. Briefly, this is the journey I went on with co-authors through the 2026 conference calendar.
January – CORE Information Retrieval Forum (Newcastle)
- Holland, M. and Bell, F., 2025. Measuring the impact of NHS ambulance service research activity. The implementation of BMJ Impact Analytics. [Poster presentation]. https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12417/2149
June – College Royal of Paramedics Annual Research Conference (Birmingham)
- Holland, M., Dutton, M., & Glover, S., 2026. Beyond citations: assessing the real-world impact of published research using BMJ Impact Analytics. [Poster presentation]. 10.13140/RG.2.2.17684.46721
July – International Congress on Medical Librarianship (Glasgow)
- Dutton, M., Heneghan, G., Holland, M., & Glover, S., 2026. Graceful decay. The loss of access to grey literature (GL) cited in three key paramedic journals affiliations. Analytics. [Poster presentation] 10.13140/RG.2.2.33085.42722
Posters are a great way to get on the publishing ladder and, if you go to conferences, turn you from a spectator into a participant/presenter. So here are the 10 top tips for poster writers.
- The idea. A little bit of the chicken and egg here as the idea should be tailored to the conference and it’s not always possible to keep ideas on the back burner while you wait for the right conference.Setting that to one side, good ideas are always local, short and small scale. Ideas need data to generate content and so if you are involved in a project remember to collect data. It can be qualitative – a survey or questionnaire or quantitative – usage data or a combination of the two (mixed methods) but to generate meaningful content you do need some data.
- The proposal. Proposals require an abstract, usually about 300 words. More helpful calls for proposals will give headings for you to structure your abstract. It’s likely that you won’t have a completed project or don’t want to write it up unless it’s accepted. In that case provided you can give a good rationale, a well thought through methodology, an outline of the likely data and potential conclusions with likely recommendations for practice you can write your proposal in the future tense (we will …) and that will be acceptable.
- Calls for Proposals. Of course,you need to put yourself in harm’s way so keep an eye out for conferences and calls, then when they come though, be brave and put in your proposal. You need to make sure that at least one author is available on the date of the conference to attend in person and that person is prepared and able to give a 3-to-4-minute presentation. It’s quite common for poster presenters to be put in groups and asked to explain their poster to conference attendees who may also vote on the best poster.
- Poster formats. This has changed over the years with the advent of technology. From my experience ePosters have limited engagement and aren’t nearly as effective as physical posters. If it’s an electronic poster, then you will be given a technical spec to meet. Physical posters are A0 and portrait. They cost around 100 – 150 pounds to print and that is a cost you should budget for. All printers will understand A0 but you may also be given dimensions in centimetres.
- Design. If you are not good or confident in design, then you should look for an academic poster template. Of course you can search on Google, but if you have access to design software like Canva they have templates for academic posters you can use and personalise to the point that no one will ever guess where it came from.
- Writing and word length. The true art of the poster is brevity. Posters should have between 250 to 300 words. The type face needs to be readable at a distance so over 18 point. You need to aim for the overview or helicopter view of your project. If it helps, look at your poster as a signpost to a more detailed conversation or a longer write up for a journal article or a report.
- Artwork. Pictures can add an eye-catching hook to your poster. However, generic clipart looks bland and unattractive. You may also run into problems with copyright. So, the advice here is to take photographs yourself, if possible, of your activity. Photographs that illustrate or illuminate might be useful to catch the eye of the browsing reader.
- Conference delivery / The Pitch. Have your pitch ready. The pitch is the main idea you want to get across to anyone who shows interest or if you present your poster. You can follow up with some conversation starters to engage people in discussion. Always include your email or QR Code for further information so people can follow up with you after the conference.
- Academic Posters. Traditionally academic posters are a stepping stone to further work. An opportunity to share, discuss and put down a marker on a particular research area. There are advantages to including this stage in your publication journey. You can publish your poster on an institutional repository or ResearchGate if you have an account. Once published you can add it to your CV or if it is a precursor to another publication, say a journal article, you can cite it in your bibliography. It can also be cited in research bids and other academic work.
- Work with co-authors. The advantages of working with a co-author(s) are many. Here are the main ones:
- It can take about 30 hours to analyse data, write up and design a poster so sharing the work with colleagues makes the load lighter
- Posters are great for first time writers and early career researchers, bringing people on board with your poster project is great CPD
- More people mean more ideas and in the unique format of a poster creative ideas on layout and design are very useful
- Having a co-author(s) to back you up at a conference is also good planning in case you can’t make it
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