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My poster didn't win the "best poster award" at a top conference in mathematics, is it desperate/impolite to ask the committee about an evaluation of my poster's quality?

I don't want to seem needy but, I want feedback so as to know what to improve.

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    Certainly don't ask all of the committee members. Maybe you can get some ideas by comparing your poster to the one that won.
    – Oliver882
    Sep 30, 2022 at 21:13
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    You probably already know this, but just to make sure: If you ask for feedback and someone is generous enough to give it to you, accept everything they say at face value and thank them, but do not, under any circumstances, defend you poster or start to argue about the things they say. (Asking for clarification is fine, though, if used sparingly.)
    – Heinzi
    Oct 1, 2022 at 7:58
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    Bear in mind that many times the judges won't even remember your poster at this point! There was probably some scoring sheet and someone might still have some numbers... but I would expect that very limited feedback can be given after some time has passed. I'd expect you're better off asking someone else for feedback at this point. Oct 1, 2022 at 15:24
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    I think the question would come across as a lot needy if you were interested in feedback independently of the goal of "winning the best poster award". It would be rare for a conference to hand out 50 best poster awards even if, by some objective measure, all 50 posters are equally "good". That would somewhat undermine the point of a "best X award", a part of which is not so much the pure evaluation, but rather some "gamification" of the venue. With that said, which poster is considered "best" can also boil down to factors you have little control over - maybe your research topic is just not ... Oct 2, 2022 at 19:20
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    ... the "one hot topic" that everyone (or at least the poster session organizers) are all excited about this year. Or maybe your particular research has produced exactly four or exactly eight key points, while the "perfect poster" (including thoughts about layout and presentation) would need six key points. Oct 2, 2022 at 19:22

4 Answers 4

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At some conferences all posters are evaluated and all participants receive some feedback.

If you've received none it's likely that there is none to send you. You could politely ask the organizers if that's the case. Don't mention that yours didn't win.

You've now asked two questions about conference posters. I think you should prepare and submit them, as often as it fits your work and travel schedule, for the experience you gain creating them and the feedback you get from folks who meet you in front of your poster. Don't worry about prizes or formal responses.

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No, it’s neither impolite nor desperate. In the eyes of any reasonable person I don’t think it will imply anything negative about you at all. There is a possibility however that the committee won’t have much feedback to give you, other than that your poster was simply not as impressive as that of the person who was given the best poster award.

If the committee members are in a charitable mood they might be willing to invest time to give you a detailed critique of your poster, but the point is that doing that takes a lot more time than just deciding whether your poster deserves the best poster award, so technically would fall outside of the scope of the committee role they took on themselves.

As another suggestion, you can of course also ask a trusted friend or mentor for this kind of feedback on your poster.

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While you can certainly ask, I'd like to suggest a slightly different approach for the future:

When presenting the poster, ask people who are interested in your poster (or pass by) for suggestions how to improve/critique. Often, you'll anyways get suggestions on the subject matter when discussing the poster with a visitor, and you may easily get suggestions on the presentation side of things as well in this fashion.


In my experience, the committee members devote a substantial amount of time* - but also are asked to judge/compare a large number of posters. Discussing a detailed critique with the poster author means yet increasing this amount of work, and it would be fair that not only you but all poster authors get such a critique if they ask.

Btw, sometimes poster judges are assigned a subset of posters, e.g. according to expertise, and then give scores from which the winning poster is determined - so a particular member you approach may not have evaluated your poster. However, I'd expect that they are able to do so - but then many other attendees would be able to as well. Hence the advise to talk to people who are interested in your poster or at least in the general topic.

*They have to evaluate all posters they are assigned to during the poster presentation time. In consequence, they may even skip/miss discussing posters they are interested in in detail with the author (e.g. since there are more posters to evaluate, or the interesting poster is not eligible and thus not part of the evaluation, or it is not in their share of posters to evaluate)

Being part of the poster committee is something I do as professional duty, but it is not a particularly enjoyable duty to me because it does cost me time that is particularly valuable to me: time that otherwise could go into discussing in depth a very few posters that I'm particularly interested in, or time that could go into talking in-person with colleagues (without poster) whom I meet only occasionally at such a conference.

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You are missing the point for a best poster award. Most researches try to give a talk about their research, depending on the conference this comes with a publication in the conference's proceedings. If the research is of low general interest, does not match the conference topic, or describes the idea of ongoing research, it is degraded to a poster.

Having a poster can be thankless: You wait for people interested in you poster, but you pay the full conference fee and traveling costs. The best poster awards upvalue the poster session, as at least the members of the best poster award committee will check for your poster - and it might actually motivate a couple of poster presenters to create a good poster.

I think you should not concentrate on improving your poster skills too much. In a not too distant future you will write papers and give conference talks which require different skills. (posters train you to formulate your research question, preparing nice graphs, that remain undoubtedly useful)

Try to max the outcome of a poster session for your research: You might get tips for related papers or where other people struggled in the past with similar approaches.

This might depend on the field.

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    I disagree that the OP has "missed the point" about the best poster award, perhaps instead you have? A best poster award can be a notable item on a budding researcher's CV and some folks really chase it aggressively. Awards on CVs can have some modicum of impact on where one actually ends up in the "not too distant future" and winning is just plain fun for some folks.
    – uhoh
    Oct 2, 2022 at 0:27
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    Not universally true, in some areas and conferences, poster sessions are a dedicated track to which one can make dedicated submissions. These cases are also more likely to be the ones that have "best poster awards". Oct 2, 2022 at 16:53

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