After a conference, you can share your slides or poster online, to reach a whole new audience. It’s a quick and easy way to expand the reach of your work. You don’t have to create any new files – just upload posters or slides that you already made. For some meetings, this is already standard practice: The conference organisers might ask you to deposit your slides or posters in a public repository.
Tips
- Find the best place for your posters and slides. Are they for colleagues in your field? Where would they search for similar slides? You can check if there are already slides on your topic in one of the academic poster/slide repositories (see examples below). If your slides are for a broader audience, you might also consider more general sites like Slideshare.
- Check your file before uploading. This is a perfect time to fix any typos, and make sure that the contact information you have on there is what you want to share with the world. Also check for copyrighted images. You may need to replace some images with an alternative, creative commons-licensed image, if you don’t have permission to share the original.
- There’s no rush! If you’re not comfortable with the idea of uploading your posters and slides before your article is published, you can always wait until later.
Repositories for conference posters and slides
- F1000Research includes thousands of posters and slides from conferences across the life sciences.
- Figshare allows researchers from any field to upload posters and slides, as well as other types of content. They even make it possible to set an embargo, so that you can upload your poster now, but make it public at a later date.
- ePosters.net is another collection of scientific conference posters, but it doesn’t include slides.
Posters and slides on both Figshare and F1000Research have a permanent digital object identifier (DOI) just like an article would have. They also provide stats, so that you can keep track of how many people viewed your poster or slides.
Who uses this?
Some examples of researchers who have uploaded their posters and slides.
- Chemist Tony Williams uploaded his slides to both Figshare and Slideshare to compare results.
- The Sternberg lab at Caltech has a page on their website listing their uploaded conference posters.
- Médecins Sans Frontières collects posters and slides that were presented at their scientific days in their official Gateway on F1000Research.
Image credit: colour-altered image of an original by Marianne Weiss, via Wikimedia Commons (CC-BY)
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