Of posters and exhibits and other things.

Abstract

As the year 2000 annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) becomes a memory, it is time to look briefly back and then forward to RSNA 2001. For RSNA 2000, scientific presentations were, for the first time, invited in two alternative formats. One was the usual 6-minute paper. The other was a scientific poster. The purpose was to optimize the match between format and content. When touring the scientific posters, each of us was struck by the number of one-to-one interactions taking place and the contacts facilitated by like-minded investigators—or at least those working on common topics. The experiment with a new format may be judged a success. But there are few ventures that cannot be improved on. Two issues arose: (a) Scientific posters were not consistently attended by their authors at the times specified. Some 60% of posters were presented by the investigator as requested, although this number declined on Thursday. The result potentially hurt both the attendee and the presenter. (b) It was apparent that some confusion exists between the purposes served by scientific posters and education exhibits. We wish to revisit these matters and provide some clarification. The intention in making the “poster” format available has been to provide an alternative but equal opportunity for scientific work to be presented—particularly when the 6-minute format inhibits presentation of dense data sets. The other intention was to foster exchange of information uninhibited by language barriers among investigators. It is our hope that the requirements for author attendance at scientific posters will be observed in the future without any compulsion. The distinction between scientific posters and education exhibits will never be absolute, but it might be represented as follows: Scientific posters should qualify as the type of material that otherwise might be submitted to a scientific session. They should present hypothesis-driven or translational research and be organized in such a way as to prove or refute a hypothesis on the basis of data that are appropriately reported and analyzed. Although of general interest, a poster might well appeal most to another investigator working in the same context. Education exhibits should be designed to review known facts, perhaps providing a synthesis of such facts, relating them in new ways, or extracting common threads from diverse data. There is no burden of proof. Education exhibits will most often be of general interest to those in practice or those at some stage of their education in matters radiologic in the widest sense. They should aim at being memorable, at potentially influencing clinical behavior, and at being as simple and direct as the subject allows. Guidelines for creating an exhibit have been published (1). The RSNA has been well served by its staff in providing a nearly ideal layout of materials in the exhibit and poster area, with color-coded subspecialty sections and even boxed lunches for those participating. Staff and those of us involved look forward to working with scientists and educators to continue to improve the experience of our annual meeting and, by means of gradual change, to ensure its continued preeminence among such meetings. In this goal, participants will be the most important element, for as has been written of scientific journals, no scientific meeting can be better than the quality of the material submitted to it. In that sense, we are already looking forward to 2001.