A quick way to judge posters

If you are looking for a rubric to assess conference posters quickly, this might fill the bill. This rubric has gone through a couple of versions. This is the most recent, presented on a poster this summer and archived on ResearchGate.

There are four categories:

• Layout

• Science-based order (IMRAD)

• Use of graphics

• Central message communicating (Wordy and / or busy)

Each of these categories gets a score from one to four, with one being worst (“Poor”) and four being the best (“Superior”). I’m going to present the criteria for each score in lists. At the end of this post, I’m going to put a version of this table that looks horrible on the blog, but that you can cut and paste easily.

Layout

1. Poor: Neither clean nor straightforward

2. Sub-par: Much left to be desired / better (4 column?)

3. Acceptable: Some left to be desired / better (3 column?)

4. Superior: Information clean, straightforward, organized

Science-based order (IMRAD)

1. Poor: Much disorder/chaotic, no references

2. Sub-par: Some disorder (or missing), no references

3. Acceptable: Disorder and references or order without references

4. Superior: Good order and one or more references

Use of graphics

1. Poor: Visually unpleasant

2. Sub-par: Much left to be desired / better

3. Acceptable: Some left to be desired / better

4. Superior: Visually helpful, eye catching, pleasant to eyes

Central message communicating (Wordy and / or busy)

1. Poor: Very distracting and hard to review / understand (‘wall of text’; very busy and / or very wordy)

2. Sub-par: Distracting and hard to quickly review/understand (majority was text; busy and / or wordy)

3. Acceptable: Decent communication (some wordiness but could be quickly reviewed / understood)

4. Superior: Concise communication (neither busy nor wordy, use of bullet points, easy, and quick to review/understand)

 Now that you know what the rubric is, let me address who developed rubric, how it was developed, and why I’m writing about it.

Michael Peeters and colleagues have published a trio of papers, likely with more to come, developing and testing the rubric presented above. The papers mostly revolve around ensuring that the rubric above is reliable. If you are not in developing and validating assessments, the technical details in the paper probably need not concern you.

They also compare their rubric to two other methods of assessing posters: a more detailed, analytic rubric, and a more holistic assessment. The rubric presented above gives similar results to the analytic rubric, but the analytic rubric takes so much longer to score that is may not be practical. The holistic rating scheme was faster yet, but the reliability took a hit.

The bottom line to date: This rubric is a good mix of reliable and practical.

I’m interested in research on one of the new posters, which uses this rubric to try to tease apart what people are responding to when they make decisions about whether to give posters a “1” or a “4” in each category.

The team find three things lead to higher scores. In no particular order:

1. No abstract! (I’ve been beating that drum for years.)

2. Having references.

3. Having a QR code. (This puzzles me. Sure what the code is used for should matter?)

The poster also indicates poster type matters, but doesn’t go into details.

References

Khadka S, Holt K, Peeters MJ. 2024. Academic conference posters: Describing visual impression in pharmacy education. Exploratory Research in Clinical and Social Pharmacy 13: 100423. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rcsop.2024.100423

Peeters MJ, Gonyeau MJ. 2025. Comparing analytic and mixed-approach rubrics for academic poster quality. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 89(3): 101372. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajpe.2025.101372 

Peeters MJ, Cor MK, Castleberry AN, Gonyeau MJ. 2025. Comparing holistic and mixed-approach rubrics for academic poster quality. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 89(4): https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajpe.2025.101379

Peeters MJ, Kaun MA, Schmude KA. 2025. Poster type enhances academic conference poster quality. AACP Annual Meeting 2025. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/391907265_2-yr-RevisedMAR_AACP2025 (ResearchGate login)

Peeters MJ, Cor MK. 2025. Academic conference poster quality rubric Version 2.0. AACP Annual Meeting 2025. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/391907268_MAR20_AACP2025 (ResearchGate login)

External links

Michael J. Peeters home page

Michael J. Peeters on ResearchGate