Abstract
Scientific posters are often treated as the final product of an undergraduate research project. After months of fieldwork, laboratory analysis, data processing, and interpretation, a student prepares a poster, presents the work at a departmental symposium or professional meeting, rolls up the poster, and moves on to the next stage of their career. The research, however, does not necessarily need to end with the poster session. A well-developed scientific poster already contains many of the fundamental elements of a scientific manuscript: a research question, scientific context, methods, results, figures, interpretation, discussion, and conclusions. Converting a poster into a manuscript therefore does not require starting over. Instead, it requires expanding the scientific framework established by the poster into a sufficiently documented, supported, and contextualized contribution to the scientific literature. This article provides a practical framework for transforming a scientific poster into a manuscript suitable for submission to a professional journal, with particular emphasis on undergraduate and early-career geoscience research.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Beason, Scott R.
(2026)
"Beyond the poster session: Turning a scientific poster into a publishable manuscript,"
The Compass: Earth Science Journal of Sigma Gamma Epsilon:
Vol. 95:
Iss.
2, Article 1.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.62879/c42520206
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.csbsju.edu/compass/vol95/iss2/1