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The Columbo rule vindicated again! Another research article has found that simple, declarative titles are the best. (The first was this .) Articles with such titles were more likely to be highly rated by Altmetric scores, although the effects are small. Hat tip to Neuroskeptic . Biogreography has a poster session guide : How to poster session: 1. Grab a snack. 2. Wander until you see someone standing alone by their poster. 3. Say “Hi.” 4. Repeat. Hat tip to Jacquelyn Gill .

The “Best of Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology” continues, with this contribution courtesy of Matthew Murphy! Click to enlarge! This is a very successful poster on multiple counts. There is not a lot of text. The visuals are simple, with a strong but limited colour palette. The reading order is clear. Matthew wrote: Almost all of the elements of the poster were created using open-source graphic design software. Some preliminary work (especially editing the reference image of the frog icon) was done in GIMP. The vector images were developed in InkScape, and the whole thing was assembled in InkScape. I used an individual layer for each section. The fonts used are Steve Matteson’s Open Sans and Open Sans Extrabold, both freely available through Google Fonts. With open source materials, I have argued that you sometimes get what you pay for . When I saw this poster, I wondered if Open Sans had the chops necessary for the job, because I was struck by the dumb quotes (also calle

Today’s poster comes from Jessica Tingle, who I met at the recent Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology meeting in New Orleans, where she presented this poster. Click to enlarge – if you need to! I say, “If you need to,” because the reason I stopped at this poster, was just how visible this poster was from a distance. I could read the title and see the main outlines not only within the poster row, but from the next row back. Even if I shrink the image: You might still be able to read the title and see some of the main shapes on the poster. That’s why I think this poster was one of the clear winners at a conference where I was frustrated by how small many of the posters were (more about which later). The secrets to this poster’s success are not complicated. Jessica used most of the available space. SICB has big poster boards (8 feet long by 4 feet high, I think), and this one covered most of it. The title is in large point size, and has no colours or logos competing for atte

I’m stepping a bit away from the poster board this week, so to speak, to talk about conference etiquette more generally. Conferences involve travel and eating out, usually in locations that cater to a lot of tourists (e.g., San Diego, New Orleans, Washington, DC) and partially hosted by hotels that are normally catering to business class. Since most conference attendees are usually early career stage scientists, cost is an issue. Amy Lynch-Biniek wrote : Tenured profs at conferences: adopt a “grad students and adjuncts don’t pay” rule at dinner/bar. Some did this for student-me and I never forgot. Kate Washington added : I was once in a grad-student dinner group that got stiffed by tenured profs who skipped out; I never forgot that either. In fairness, that would be rude behaviour from anyone , regardless of career stage. Drugmonkey, however, noted : I never assume that just because (someone is a) tenured prof = moneybags that can pick up $$$ dinner checks. Should be voluntary. Angel