24 Jan 2023

Preparing your poster abstract

How to write a better abstract

The purpose of an abstract is to summarise the major aspects of the poster presentation and will be used by the judges to decide who will be invited to present their posters at Congress.

Presentation

Abstracts should be no more than 300 words long and saved as a Microsoft Word or plain text document. They must be informative and representative of the paper. Be concise, to the point and highlight the main findings from the study.  Statements such as "results will be discussed" or "data will be presented" are not acceptable.

Abstracts must include the following information:

  • A pertinent introduction
  • A clear description of the design of the study
  • A brief description of the methodology indicating the key techniques
  • The major findings/results in relation to the question/topic
  • A brief summary of interpretations and conclusions clearly stating the implications

Titles must not be more than 10 words in length. No more than four named authors should be associated with any presentation, and their names should be in capital letters throughout, omitting qualifications. The address should include a postcode. See the example below.

Abbreviations should not be used unless conforming to internationally recognised usage (e.g. DNA). If in doubt, use the term in full and give the abbreviation in parentheses.

Tables, figures or references must not be included.

Abstracts that do not conform to the above may be rejected at the shortlisting stage.

Submission

An electronic file (in Microsoft Word) should be emailed to congress@ibms.org. Further information is available from the Congress Office tel: 020 7713 0214.

The deadline for receipt of abstracts by the Congress office is Sunday 30th April 2023.

Abstracts received without the accompanying application form or forms without the abstract will not be considered. The IBMS will aim to inform successful applicants by mid June 2023.

Example

Presentation of Abstracts for the IBMS Congress

A SCIENTIST

Institute of Biomedical Science, 12 Coldbath Square, London EC1R 5HL, UK

Presentation of abstracts as submissions to the Institute of Biomedical Science (IBMS) Congress must conform to this example.

Abstracts of the winning posters will be placed on the Congress website.

The abstract (excluding title, authors’ names and addresses) should be a maximum of 300 words in length. This is sufficient to support either a verbal or a poster presentation. The aim of the abstract is to provide, in a limited number of words, sufficient information for a reader to understand what the presentation is about.  The abstract should be a concise summary of the purpose of the project, the investigative approach taken and the conclusions drawn: vague statements of the type that say "results will be discussed" or "data will be presented" must be avoided. Text should always be written to encourage those who read it to attend the presentation.

This guidance is in the format that should be used for your abstract, and is intended to supplement the accompanying instructions, which aim to help you submit an abstract on the required style.

For IBMS Congress 2023, authors are asked to submit abstracts and application forms as an email attachment in Word or plain text format to congress@ibms.org