Using Eye-tracking to Develop Key Indicators for Posters in National Evaluations: Report of the Pilot Test at STI2016, Valencia [NWB'2016 presentation slides]

Posters are the recognized medium for presenting new and innovative research at conferences. They are communicative support devices that encapsulate 6 essential qualities in effective research practice: doing research, writing a paper, getting it published, producing a visualization, verbally disseminating the results and engaging in the academic community. Accordingly, they are a form of output rewarded in research evaluations. But, even though posters are recognized in evaluation exercises, we believe they are still regarded as low rank, entry-level publications. Rather, it is the subsequent articles that are considered to carry the real “scientific” importance and thus highly ranked in evaluations. Yet posters have an important role to play, as they are one of the key ways early research is disseminated and how we interact with our academic community. Their effectiveness and utility therefore needs to be established for fair evaluation (Ilic & Rowe, 2013; Goodhand et al, 2011; Rowe & Ilic, 2009; Salzl et al, 2008; Halligan, 2008). We believe that by exploring the perceptions, attitudes and experiences of conference participants, we will be able to investigate the value of poster and perhaps unlock their potential for successful knowledge transfer. In this poster, we report the results of a pilot study at the recent Science and Technology conference in Valencia. Test persons were asked to interact in the poster sessions wearing eye-tracking glasses and respond to a survey about their attitudes and experiences to the poster session. With this knowledge we can begin to develop key indicators that will both inform poster design and evaluation practices. References Goodhand et al. (2011) Poster presentations at medical conferences: an effective way of disseminating research? Clin Med April 1, 2011 vol. 11 no. 2138-141. Halligan, P (2008) Poster presentations: valuing all forms of evidence. Nurse Educ Pract 8:41-5. Ilic & Rowe (2013) What is the evidence that poster presentations are effective in promoting knowledge transfer? A state of the art review. Health Information & Libraries Journal V30 (1), pp.4–12. Rowe, N & Ilic, D (2009) What impact do posters have on academic knowledge transfer? A pilot survey on author attitudes and experiences. BMC Medical Education 2009, 9:71. Salzl G, Golder S, Timmer A et al. (2008) Poster sessions at national conferences: education or farce? Dtsch Arztebl Int 105:78-83.