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How to read and understand a scientific paper

How to read and understand a scientific paper: a guide for non-scientists, london school of economics and political science, jennifer raff.

From vaccinations to climate change, getting science wrong has very real consequences. But journal articles, a primary way science is communicated in academia, are a different format to newspaper articles or blogs and require a level of skill and undoubtedly a greater amount of patience. Here  Jennifer Raff   has prepared a helpful guide for non-scientists on how to read a scientific paper. These steps and tips will be useful to anyone interested in the presentation of scientific findings and raise important points for scientists to consider with their own writing practice.

My post,  The truth about vaccinations: Your physician knows more than the University of Google  sparked a very lively discussion, with comments from several people trying to persuade me (and the other readers) that  their  paper disproved everything that I’d been saying. While I encourage you to go read the comments and contribute your own, here I want to focus on the much larger issue that this debate raised: what constitutes scientific authority?

It’s not just a fun academic problem. Getting the science wrong has very real consequences. For example, when a community doesn’t vaccinate children because they’re afraid of “toxins” and think that prayer (or diet, exercise, and “clean living”) is enough to prevent infection, outbreaks happen.

“Be skeptical. But when you get proof, accept proof.” –Michael Specter

What constitutes enough proof? Obviously everyone has a different answer to that question. But to form a truly educated opinion on a scientific subject, you need to become familiar with current research in that field. And to do that, you have to read the “primary research literature” (often just called “the literature”). You might have tried to read scientific papers before and been frustrated by the dense, stilted writing and the unfamiliar jargon. I remember feeling this way!  Reading and understanding research papers is a skill which every single doctor and scientist has had to learn during graduate school.  You can learn it too, but like any skill it takes patience and practice.

I want to help people become more scientifically literate, so I wrote this guide for how a layperson can approach reading and understanding a scientific research paper. It’s appropriate for someone who has no background whatsoever in science or medicine, and based on the assumption that he or she is doing this for the purpose of getting a  basic  understanding of a paper and deciding whether or not it’s a reputable study.

The type of scientific paper I’m discussing here is referred to as a  primary research article . It’s a peer-reviewed report of new research on a specific question (or questions). Another useful type of publication is a  review article . Review articles are also peer-reviewed, and don’t present new information, but summarize multiple primary research articles, to give a sense of the consensus, debates, and unanswered questions within a field.  (I’m not going to say much more about them here, but be cautious about which review articles you read. Remember that they are only a snapshot of the research at the time they are published.  A review article on, say, genome-wide association studies from 2001 is not going to be very informative in 2013. So much research has been done in the intervening years that the field has changed considerably).

Before you begin: some general advice

Reading a scientific paper is a completely different process than reading an article about science in a blog or newspaper. Not only do you read the sections in a different order than they’re presented, but you also have to take notes, read it multiple times, and probably go look up other papers for some of the details. Reading a single paper may take you a very long time at first. Be patient with yourself. The process will go much faster as you gain experience.

Most primary research papers will be divided into the following sections: Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, and Conclusions/Interpretations/Discussion. The order will depend on which journal it’s published in. Some journals have additional files (called Supplementary Online Information) which contain important details of the research, but are published online instead of in the article itself (make sure you don’t skip these files).

Before you begin reading, take note of the authors and their institutional affiliations. Some institutions (e.g. University of Texas) are well-respected; others (e.g.  the Discovery Institute ) may appear to be legitimate research institutions but are actually agenda-driven.  Tip:  g oogle  “Discovery Institute” to see why you don’t want to use it as a scientific authority on evolutionary theory.

Also take note of the journal in which it’s published. Reputable (biomedical) journals will be indexed by  Pubmed . [EDIT: Several people have reminded me that non-biomedical journals won’t be on Pubmed, and they’re absolutely correct! (thanks for catching that, I apologize for being sloppy here). Check out  Web of Science  for a more complete index of science journals. And please feel free to share other resources in the comments!]  Beware of  questionable journals .

As you read, write down  every single word  that you don’t understand. You’re going to have to look them all up (yes, every one. I know it’s a total pain. But you won’t understand the paper if you don’t understand the vocabulary. Scientific words have extremely precise meanings).

Step-by-step instructions for reading a primary research article

1. Begin by reading the introduction, not the abstract.

The abstract is that dense first paragraph at the very beginning of a paper. In fact, that’s often the only part of a paper that many non-scientists read when they’re trying to build a scientific argument. (This is a terrible practice—don’t do it.).  When I’m choosing papers to read, I decide what’s relevant to my interests based on a combination of the title and abstract. But when I’ve got a collection of papers assembled for deep reading, I always read the abstract last. I do this because abstracts contain a succinct summary of the entire paper, and I’m concerned about inadvertently becoming biased by the authors’ interpretation of the results.

2. Identify the BIG QUESTION.

Not “What is this paper about”, but “What problem is this entire field trying to solve?”

This helps you focus on why this research is being done.  Look closely for evidence of agenda-motivated research.

3. Summarize the background in five sentences or less.

Here are some questions to guide you:

What work has been done before in this field to answer the BIG QUESTION? What are the limitations of that work? What, according to the authors, needs to be done next?

The five sentences part is a little arbitrary, but it forces you to be concise and really think about the context of this research. You need to be able to explain why this research has been done in order to understand it.

4.   Identify the SPECIFIC QUESTION(S)

What  exactly  are the authors trying to answer with their research? There may be multiple questions, or just one. Write them down.  If it’s the kind of research that tests one or more null hypotheses, identify it/them.

Not sure what a null hypothesis is? Go read this one  and try to identify the null hypotheses in it. Keep in mind that not every paper will test a null hypothesis.

5. Identify the approach

What are the authors going to do to answer the SPECIFIC QUESTION(S)?

6. Now read the methods section. Draw a diagram for each experiment, showing exactly what the authors did.

I mean  literally  draw it. Include as much detail as you need to fully understand the work.  As an example, here is what I drew to sort out the methods for a paper I read today ( Battaglia et al. 2013: “The first peopling of South America: New evidence from Y-chromosome haplogroup Q” ). This is much less detail than you’d probably need, because it’s a paper in my specialty and I use these methods all the time.  But if you were reading this, and didn’t happen to know what “process data with reduced-median method using Network” means, you’d need to look that up.

Image credit: author

You don’t need to understand the methods in enough detail to replicate the experiment—that’s something reviewers have to do—but you’re not ready to move on to the results until you can explain the basics of the methods to someone else.

7.   Read the results section. Write one or more paragraphs to summarize the results for each experiment, each figure, and each table. Don’t yet try to decide what the results  mean , just write down what they  are.

You’ll find that, particularly in good papers, the majority of the results are summarized in the figures and tables. Pay careful attention to them!  You may also need to go to the Supplementary Online Information file to find some of the results.

 It is at this point where difficulties can arise if statistical tests are employed in the paper and you don’t have enough of a background to understand them. I can’t teach you stats in this post, but  here , and here   are some basic resources to help you.  I STRONGLY advise you to become familiar with them.

Things to pay attention to in the results section:

• Any time the words “significant” or “non-significant” are used. These have precise statistical meanings. Read more about this  here .
• If there are graphs, do they have  error bars  on them? For certain types of studies, a lack of confidence intervals is a major red flag.
• The sample size. Has the study been conducted on 10, or 10,000 people? (For some research purposes, a sample size of 10 is sufficient, but for most studies larger is better).

8. Do the results answer the SPECIFIC QUESTION(S)? What do you think they mean?

Don’t move on until you have thought about this. It’s okay to change your mind in light of the authors’ interpretation—in fact you probably will if you’re still a beginner at this kind of analysis—but it’s a really good habit to start forming your own interpretations before you read those of others.

9. Read the conclusion/discussion/Interpretation section.

What do the authors think the results mean? Do you agree with them? Can you come up with any alternative way of interpreting them? Do the authors identify any weaknesses in their own study? Do you see any that the authors missed? (Don’t assume they’re infallible!) What do they propose to do as a next step? Do you agree with that?

10. Now, go back to the beginning and read the abstract.

Does it match what the authors said in the paper? Does it fit with your interpretation of the paper?

11. FINAL STEP:  (Don’t neglect doing this)  What do other researchers say about this paper?

Who are the (acknowledged or self-proclaimed) experts in this particular field? Do they have criticisms of the study that you haven’t thought of, or do they generally support it?

Here’s a place where I do recommend you use google! But do it last, so you are better prepared to think critically about what other people say.

(12. This step may be optional for you, depending on why you’re reading a particular paper. But for me, it’s critical! I go through the “Literature cited” section to see what other papers the authors cited. This allows me to better identify the important papers in a particular field, see if the authors cited my own papers (KIDDING!….mostly), and find sources of useful ideas or techniques.)

UPDATE: If you would like to see an example of how to read a science paper using this framework, you can find one  here .

I gratefully acknowledge Professors José Bonner and Bill Saxton for teaching me how to critically read and analyze scientific papers using this method. I’m honored to have the chance to pass along what they taught me.

I’ve written a shorter version of this guide for teachers to hand out to their classes. If you’d like a PDF, shoot me an email: jenniferraff (at) utexas (dot) edu. For further comments and additional questions on this guide, please see the Comments Section on  the original post .

This piece originally appeared on the  author’s personal blog  and is reposted with permission.

Featured image credit:  Scientists in a laboratory of the University of La Rioja  by  Urcomunicacion  (Wikimedia CC BY3.0)

Note: This article gives the views of the authors, and not the position of the LSE Impact blog, nor of the London School of Economics. Please review our  Comments Policy  if you have any concerns on posting a comment below.

Jennifer Raff (Indiana University—dual Ph.D. in genetics and bioanthropology) is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology, University of Kansas, director and Principal Investigator of the KU Laboratory of Human Population Genomics, and assistant director of KU’s Laboratory of Biological Anthropology. She is also a research affiliate with the University of Texas anthropological genetics laboratory. She is keenly interested in public outreach and scientific literacy, writing about topics in science and pseudoscience for her blog ( violentmetaphors.com ), the Huffington Post, and for the  Social Evolution Forum .

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Presenting in a Reading Group

Tips for giving a reading group talk

If you’re involved in research, you’re probably going to give a reading group presentation at some point. Many professors push their PhD students to give talks. Giving these talks helps researchers build the ability to read and understand papers quickly, and the ability to communicate findings effectively.

Volunteer or be volunTOLD. — Prof. David Fouhey

Dr. Fouhey told this joke multiple times during the computer vision reading group last semester and the other professors agreed. It succinctly summarizes the emphasis placed on giving these talks.

What’s a reading group?

Reading groups regularly meet to discuss topics in research. Most of the time, the group will focus on one specific paper detailing an important finding. In AI, many of these reading groups may be focused on award-winning papers from recent conferences or on methods relevant to the participants’ research.

Reading groups exist mainly to enrich the participants’ knowledge. Sometimes the talks will focus on a broader topic as an introduction and sometimes the talks will focus on a specific method in a specific paper. The more niche the audience of the reading group, the more advanced the topic tends to be. At MSAIL, we try to strike a balance between our younger, less-experienced audience (i.e. underclassmen) and our older, experienced audience (upperclassmen, graduate students, etc.).

Choosing a topic

Choosing a topic may be the hardest part of the presentation process. Generally, you can present any topic you want, given that it hasn’t already been presented recently. Present on something that grabs your interest immediately, or something you have some familiarity with - it’ll make the preparation process more bearable. If you’re open to topics and are confident you can adapt, then just go to a conference or journal page and search through some of the accepted papers that catch your eye (at the time of writing, I’ve been looking at ICLR 2021 papers).

In my opinion, the main question you should ask yourself when you’ve identified a potential topic is:

Am I willing to read about this topic in depth, even to the extent of falling into a rabbit hole?

You obviously don’t need to know everything about the topic you choose (no one does), but persistence is the key to having a strong presentation. The more comfy you are with the overall subject area, the more natural your presentation will flow and the less likely you are to trip up. (For MSAIL, however, if you’re a newcomer and haven’t really done a reading group presentation before, we’ll help you out!)

Here are some questions you should ask yourself when looking at a paper or topic that you’re about to choose:

• If it’s not clearly important or you don’t gain anything from knowledge of the topic itself, you’ll just be wasting time.
• Important for getting people to attend your talk, and also helpful in gauging whether your audience will stay engaged. If they aren’t engaged in the beginning how can they be expected to in the end?
• A “reasonable amount of time” is generally a week or so.
• You need to choose papers of reasonable length. We often suggest presenting on conference papers because they’re less than 10 pages on average. Longer papers and topics are more feasible down the line when you’ve become comfortable with these types of presentations.

For the examples in this post, I will go through the process of choosing a topic for one of my previous talks. I’ve given plenty of talks on uninteresting topics and papers, but some were received particularly well. I will talk about my process for presenting VideoBERT , which I presented way back in Fall 2019. This was actually my first ever MSAIL talk, and at the time I had only recently become acquainted with AI research. The talk had plenty of faults, which I’ll try to use as examples.

Reading relevant sources

For a specific paper.

Even if you choose one paper, that paper is probably not the only source you’re looking at to understand all the content. When you first read through the paper itself, you should annotate the key points (this is just a common reading skill, but it’s easy to forget!) and note the portions that confuse you. Depending on your background, you may or may not be able to finish the first pass. You should aim to have a big picture understanding of the paper, so maybe about 30%. If you can’t reach that level on your first read - don’t fret. You need to go read some supplementary materials. In particular, any decent paper will reference prior/related work in a section near the introduction - this is where you can dive into their citations and read up on the things that confuse you. Alternatively, I’ve found that Medium posts are particularly helpful as well for understanding more basic content.

Note the underlined portions here from the Related Work section of the VideoBERT paper. These highlight topics that might be worth searching up. You don’t need to dive into everything, but having a general understanding of what cross-modal learning and BERT are would help to better understand this paper.

If after all that, you still can’t understand 30% of the material in the paper, then I’m afraid you probably need to read further on basic material and possibly postpone your talk. I don’t expect this to happen because the pool of people who choose to present is self-selecting (as in, you’re more likely to want to present in a reading group if you already have basic background), but just in case, don’t be afraid to start at the beginning. I too have had to withdraw after signing up for a reading group before because I just did not understand what I was reading at all.

After the first pass, you have an idea of what the paper’s central ideas are. You can then start outlining what you want to talk about. Any subsequent passes will simply be to reinforce your understanding of the paper.

For a broader topic

For a broader topic, you should still choose to focus on a few papers in order to narrow the scope of your presentation. If you choose this, you likely have an idea in mind for how you wish to synthesize the ideas in the papers. Knowing this, you should focus your reading based on which points you hope to elucidate most. The process will very much feel like the process in the above section, except you’ll spend less time focusing on the intricate details of any one paper and you’ll focus more on the key ideas that you can use to build toward whatever main idea you’re focusing on.

In general, giving these types of talks is difficult. Even professors struggle to present so much content in a clear way. If you intend to give a talk like this, make sure to spend extra time in advance to really nail a cohesive argument. Otherwise, just stick to one paper since usually the time you have is only enough for one.

An example of a decent talk that synthesizes ideas in multiple papers is Justin Johnson’s lecture on Object Segmentation . This is obviously not a reading group talk and is an entire course lecture - but the principles are relatively similar since the topics presented here are from recent papers. Another good example is the talk Dr. Chai gave us in Fall 2020 .

Some of our own, more tame talks presenting multiple papers include John Day’s Brain-Inspired AI talk , Yash Gambhir’s Text Summarization talk , and my talk on using reinforcement learning for optimization in COVID-19 problems . If you watch them you’ll notice some of the difficulties we had with balancing our content and finishing in time.

Creating slides

Most of the time you’ll be preparing slides to assist you in your talk. Organizing your slides properly is the key to getting a good presentation going.

Something that helps me is using a general slide outline and then identifying where in the paper I can get the information for a specific section. Then I fill in the sections and occasionally add subsections based on the subtitles in the paper.

In general, you want to introduce the following points in any regular paper presentation. You can change the order to suit your preferred flow, but the one presented here works well normally. Note that you can use any number of slides for each section:

• Why did the authors explore this topic? Who and how does it help solve a big problem?
• What are the authors proposing or introducing?
• Make this clear at the beginning. Then your audience will know what to expect.
• What does your audience need to know (at a high level) before you dive into the details of the topic?
• This is not always necessary, but if you’re presenting something technically challenging you may want to briefly introduce this.
• This is the novel part of the paper. What did the authors do and how did they do it?
• How did they validate their methods and what did they compare it to? What are the deliverables?
• Restate the major contributions. Also, talk about the implications for the future.

General Principles

You’ve probably presented to someone before. In that case, you should be well aware of standard principles, but I’ll write some in case you aren’t:

• This is a technical talk. Please don’t make your readers lose you.
• Personally, I tend to put around 2 lines of text on a slide and then explain the rest verbally. Putting less text and explaining it instead helps me better understand the content too!
• I don’t need to tell you that a picture is worth a thousand words, but they’ll help a ton. You can usually just steal these from the paper and its supplementary materials. If they don’t have any and you feel that one would be appropriate, don’t be afraid to create one!
• Sometimes the talk is devoted to an equation or the theory you’re discussing is heavily reliant on equations (I can’t imagine some reinforcement learning papers without Bellman’s equation.). But if the paper has a lot of equations, try only to include the most important ones.

Take a look at my VideoBERT slides and note that I absolutely did not follow these principles and the above listed structure during that talk. I consider my VideoBERT talk to be of poor quality. Don’t worry about the technical content. (Note that this link is Michigan only)

Here are a few sample slides depicting how I would’ve roughly modified my VideoBERT talk to be easier to follow and listen to. I only wrote up to the methods section, because I just wanted to depict some of the principles in action. Again, don’t worry about the technical content. (This link is open to everyone)

Also, feel free to take a look at this slidedeck for general tips .

Presenting your slides

Presentation is very important for a technical talk. I’m pretty sure most presenters don’t want to bore their audience. During one reading group a while ago, I delivered a one hour talk that included even professors in the audience. After that talk I didn’t receive a single question. I can only speculate whether they got lost, whether we were out of time, or whether I just completely bored them. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen to you.

Here are some steps you can take to reduce the chance of losing your audience:

• Reiterating the importance of preparing your slides properly. Prepare them as if you were presenting them, and then practice presenting them at least once before your talk.
• This is a given - you should be speaking and never reading.
• Don’t go on diversions. Save them till the end.
• Leave room for questions during your presentation. I doubt most people will remember their questions by the end. A good rule might be to ask for questions every 5 minutes.
• Similarly, you should be gauging understanding as you go along. If the audience can attest to understand what you’re saying, you’re fine.
• Speak slowly. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather have my entire audience understand 80% of my presentation and not finish within time than finishing and not having anyone understand anything. I sometimes break this rule without realizing.

There are probably many more principles to follow, but in reading groups these are the ones I’ve found to be the most blatant errors that I wish I corrected.

Can I forgo preparing slides?

If you don’t want to prepare slides, you can either:

• Walk through the paper itself
• Prepare questions and facilitate a discussion rather than giving a talk

I wouldn’t advise a newcomer (or anyone, for that matter) to choose the first option. The point of preparing slides is to make material more presentable and to help you, the presenter, understand the paper better. I’ve only experienced people presenting straight from the paper when they knew what they were talking about but had last minute obligations come up. For reference, the last two times I saw this done were from a student who wrote the paper he was presenting on, and from a senior research scientist at Google Brain. It is generally okay, however, to supplement your slides during your talk by briefly visiting the paper to discuss something like a figure or a table, or to answer questions.

The second option is far more feasible, and at MSAIL we actually recommend this format. Discussion questions help the audience engage with the material more. However, good discussions usually occur around people with background, so be wary of your audience. You’ll usually be presenting something in addition to the questions - for example, last Winter we had a discussion about using vision to analyze CT scans for the purpose of detecting COVID-19. All we did was play a video prepared by another organization and then discussed it in detail. This is perfectly fine, given that you have an interesting topic.

Going forward

Yeah, preparing to present at a reading group is a lot of work the first time around. After a while, you’ll be comfortable enough with both approaching novel technical content and with your presentation skills, so you’ll be able to take shortcuts and structure things as you wish. You’ll also just become faster. In the long term, this skill will certainly help you as a researcher.

Gone are the days when the MSAIL Admin team was scrambling to prepare entire talks within 5 hours on the day of (we were quite notorious for this during the ‘19-‘20 school year). This happened because we had very few speakers, but we’re much better off now. I hope you never prepare a talk within such a constraint because I can guarantee that the talk will fail miserably. The further along you go as a researcher, the later you’ll be able to start preparing reading group presentations, but you’ll still wish you started earlier.

If you’re ready to try your hand at a talk, sign up with your reading group(s). For University of Michigan students, here are some reading groups you might be interested in:

Reach out to us at [email protected] if you’re interested in giving a talk at MSAIL or for help with preparing a talk. Happy presenting!

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How to Prepare a Paper Presentation

Last Updated: October 4, 2023 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Patrick Muñoz . Patrick is an internationally recognized Voice & Speech Coach, focusing on public speaking, vocal power, accent and dialects, accent reduction, voiceover, acting and speech therapy. He has worked with clients such as Penelope Cruz, Eva Longoria, and Roselyn Sanchez. He was voted LA's Favorite Voice and Dialect Coach by BACKSTAGE, is the voice and speech coach for Disney and Turner Classic Movies, and is a member of Voice and Speech Trainers Association. There are 9 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 368,252 times.

A paper is bad enough, but presentations are even more nerve-wracking. You've got the writing down, but how do you turn it into a dynamic, informative, enjoyable presentation? Why, here's how!

Guidelines and Audience

• Know how long the speech must be.
• Know how many points you're required to cover.
• Know if you must include sources or visuals.

• If you're presenting to people you know, it'll be easy to know what to break down and what to gloss over. But if you're presenting to unknown stockholders or faculty, for instance, you need to know about them and their knowledge levels, too. You may have to break your paper down into its most basic concepts. Find out what you can about their backgrounds.

• Does the facility have a computer and projector screen?
• Is there a working WiFi connection?
• Is there a microphone? A podium?
• Is there someone who can assist you in working the equipment before your presentation?

Script and Visuals

• Only have one point per notecard -- that way you won't end up searching the notecard for your information. And don't forget to number the cards in case you get mixed up! And the points on your cards shouldn't match your paper; instead of regurgitating information, discuss why the key points of your paper are important or the different points of view on this topic within the field.

• As you go through this outline, remove any jargon if it may not be understood.

• If you won't have access to the proper technology, print visual aids on poster board or foam-core board.
• If using presentation software, use words sparingly, but enough to get your point across. Think in phrases (and pictures!), not sentences. Acronyms and abbreviations are okay on the screen, but when you talk, address them fully. And remember to use large fonts -- not everyone's vision is fantastic. [7] X Research source

• It's okay to be a bit repetitive. Emphasizing important ideas will enhance comprehension and recall. When you've gone full circle, cycle back to a previous point to lead your audience to the right conclusion.
• Minimize the unnecessary details (the procedure you had to go through, etc.) when highlighting the main ideas you want to relay. You don't want to overload your audience with fluff, forcing them to miss the important stuff.
• Show enthusiasm! A very boring topic can be made interesting if there is passion behind it.

Practice, Practice, and More Practice

• If you can grab a friend who you think has a similar knowledge level to your audience, all the better. They'll help you see what points are foggier to minds with less expertise on the topic.

• It'll also help you with volume. Some people get rather timid when in the spotlight. You may not be aware that you're not loud enough!

• Do the same with your conclusion. Thank everyone for their time and open the floor for any questions, if allowed.
• Make eye contact with people in the audience to help build your connection with them.

What Is The Best Way To Start a Presentation?

Community Q&A

• Most people get nervous while public speaking. [10] X Research source You are not alone. [11] X Trustworthy Source Mayo Clinic Educational website from one of the world's leading hospitals Go to source Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 1
• Visual aids not only help the audience, but they can help jog your memory if you forget where you are in your presentation. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• Rehearse in front of a mirror before your presentation. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

• Answer questions only if it is related to your presentation. Keep these to the end of your talk. Thanks Helpful 76 Not Helpful 14

You Might Also Like

• ↑ https://theihs.org/blog/prepare-for-a-paper-presentation-at-an-academic-conference/
• ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/conference-papers/
• ↑ https://www.ncsl.org/legislators-staff/legislative-staff/legislative-staff-coordinating-committee/tips-for-making-effective-powerpoint-presentations.aspx
• ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qZMPW5g-v8
• ↑ https://twp.duke.edu/sites/twp.duke.edu/files/file-attachments/paper-to-talk.original.pdf
• ↑ http://www.cs.swarthmore.edu/~newhall/presentation.html
• ↑ https://www.forbes.com/sites/georgebradt/2014/09/10/big-presentation-dont-do-it-have-a-conversation-instead/#6d56a3f23c4b
• ↑ https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/smashing-the-brainblocks/201711/why-are-we-scared-public-speaking
• ↑ https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/specific-phobias/expert-answers/fear-of-public-speaking/faq-20058416

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To prepare a paper presentation, create an outline of your content, then write your script on note cards or slides using software like PowerPoint. Be sure to stick to one main point per card or slide! Next, design visual aids like graphics, charts, and bullet points to illustrate your content and help the audience follow along. Then, practice giving your presentation in front of friends and family until you feel ready to do it in class! For tips on creating an outline and organizing your information, read on! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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Presenting papers

You’ll present one or more research papers during class. Critically reading research papers is a skill! Here are some tips, ideas, and techniques to help learn it.

Reading the paper

This may be the first time you’re reading research papers, or even the first time you’re reading research papers in the systems area. Welcome!

Research papers are parts of a big conversation among the researchers and practitioners that make up the “research community.” Many papers are best understood as reactions to, and participants in, that conversation, and the ongoing determination of the research community’s values. An important, and often implicit, part of paper reading is learning those values. It’s hard to pick this up in advance. Instead, you just have to dive in and read papers critically. An understanding of the community will come.

The style of most papers is dense (and often just plain bad). But you can get through the density by reading critically.

Don’t try to understand every word of the paper on first read. Instead, try to pick up the most important points by skimming. Then go back in more depth.

On the first read, focus on the paper’s overall goals and techniques. First, read to develop a paper summary in your own words. Here are four questions the summary should answer:

• What is the goal of the paper’s research area? The goal can be something nebulous, like “improving security,” or something concrete, like “improving network utilization.” But in systems the goal usually ties back to something like “spending less money” or “handling more data.” Usually this comes out in the first couple sentences of the abstract and in the introduction. Often those sentences are clichés.
• What is the technical problem the paper is trying to solve? The problem is usually an obstacle to achieving the goal, and it should be concrete; for instance, “Big Data computations in the cloud are delayed too much by stragglers (nodes that complete their portion of the computation much slower than other nodes).” This also is found in the abstract or introduction, but it may be best explained in the conclusion section.
• What is the technical contribution that the paper uses to solve this problem? Is this contribution a new idea, or a combination of old ideas? A good introduction will present the contribution(s), but sometimes you have to dig deeper—into a section called “Design” or “Architecture”—to get to the technical meat.
• What is the evidence that proves the contribution actually addresses the problem? This is presented in depth in the “Evaluation” section, and should be previewed in the abstract and introduction.

Once you have answers to those questions, you can already think critically.

• How far apart are the goal and the problem? For instance, many security papers describe a large, society-level goal, using terms like “Security breaches are estimated to cost US commerce $10B a year,” but then actually address just a tiny slice of that overall goal.
• How much of the problem does the contribution address? Could you have achieved similar improvements using a simpler technique?
• How interesting is the technical contribution on its own? Sometimes a paper is interesting because it identifies and solves a new technical problem, even though its solution techniques seem obvious in retrospect. Sometimes a paper is interesting because it uses new solution techniques, even though those techniques address a problem that’s more easily solved in another way. The best papers do both, but that’s rare. The worst papers do neither.
• How much evidence is provided that the contribution works? Are the experiments well chosen?
• Does the paper actually advance the state of the art? How does it compare to related work ? This is usually addressed in a separate “Related Work” section, which might come second (I prefer it there) or right before the conclusion.

With thoughts about these questions in mind, you can now go back and read the paper in more depth.

• The paper will usually present many techniques and ideas. Which of them seem most important, and which are filler?
• Are there any cool tricks and techniques that you could use in your own systems?
• What would you do differently?

The aim of reading papers critically is not to prove the paper wrong. Always remember that the authors spent much more time working on the paper than you did, and authors rarely lie. (But it does happen!) Instead, read actively , as if you’re in dialogue with the paper. Ask the paper tough questions, and then read to get the responses. If you don’t get a response, that is a flaw in the paper; then ask, is that flaw technical or in the exposition?

Presenting the paper

First share the summary with us. Assume we’ve read the paper, but that we need to be reminded of its contents. Use slides if you need to. (In computer systems most papers are presented at conferences, and the authors’ slides from the conference are often available on the Web. Use them!) Then talk about its coolest ideas and its biggest gaps. Share with us what you might have done differently. Your critical thinking will engage the class more and help us all to better understand the work.

Presenting someone else’s research paper isn’t too different from presenting your own. Check out How to give a good research talk by Simon Peyton-Jones et al.

There’s some advice online about how to present at a journal club. Much of this advice applies specifically to medical papers, but some is good general advice. Some tips from Johns Hopkins

Reference management. Clean and simple.

How to read a scientific paper: a step-by-step guide

Scientific paper format

How to read a scientific paper in 3 steps, step 1: identify your motivations for reading a scientific paper, step 2: use selective reading to gain a high-level understanding of the scientific paper, step 3: read straight through to achieve a deep understanding of a scientific paper, frequently asked questions about reading a scientific paper efficiently, related articles.

A scientific paper is a complex document. Scientific papers are divided into multiple sections and frequently contain jargon and long sentences that make reading difficult. The process of reading a scientific paper to obtain information can often feel overwhelming for an early career researcher.

But the good news is that you can acquire the skill of efficiently reading a scientific paper, and you can learn how to painlessly obtain the information you need.

In this guide, we show you how to read a scientific paper step-by-step. You will learn:

• The scientific paper format
• How to identify your reasons for reading a scientific paper
• How to skim a paper
• How to achieve a deep understanding of a paper.

Using these steps for reading a scientific paper will help you:

• Obtain information efficiently
• Retain knowledge more effectively
• Allocate sufficient time to your reading task.

The steps below are the result of research into how scientists read scientific papers and our own experiences as scientists.

Firstly, how is a scientific paper structured?

The main sections are Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion. In the table below, we describe the purpose of each component of a scientific paper.

Because the structured format of a scientific paper makes it easy to find the information you need, a common technique for reading a scientific paper is to cherry-pick sections and jump around the paper.

In a YouTube video, Dr. Amina Yonis shows this nonlinear practice for reading a scientific paper. She justifies her technique by stating that “By reading research papers like this, you are enabling yourself to have a disciplined approach, and it prevents yourself from drowning in the details before you even get a bird’s-eye view”.

Selective reading is a skill that can help you read faster and engage with the material presented. In his article on active vs. passive reading of scientific papers, cell biologist Tung-Tien Sun defines active reading as "reading with questions in mind" , searching for the answers, and focusing on the parts of the paper that answer your questions.

Therefore, reading a scientific paper from start to finish isn't always necessary to understand it. How you read the paper depends on what you need to learn. For example, oceanographer Ken Hughes suggests that you may read a scientific paper to gain awareness of a theory or field, or you may read to actively solve a problem in your research.

To successfully read a scientific paper, we advise using three strategies:

• Identify your motivations for reading a scientific paper
• Use selective reading to gain a high-level understanding of the scientific paper
• Read straight through to achieve a deep understanding of a scientific paper .

All 3 steps require you to think critically and have questions in mind.

Before you sit down to read a scientific paper, ask yourself these three questions:

• Why do I need to read this paper?
• What information am I looking for?
• Where in the paper am I most likely to find the information I need?

Is it background reading or a literature review for a research project you are currently working on? Are you getting into a new field of research? Do you wish to compare your results with the ones presented in the paper? Are you following an author’s work, and need to keep up-to-date on their current research? Are you keeping tabs on emerging methods in your field?

All of these intentions require a different reading approach.

For example, if you're delving into a new field of research, you'll want to read the introduction to gather background information and seminal references. The discussion section will also be important to understand the broader context of the findings.

If you aim to extend the work presented in a paper, and this study will be the starting point for your work, it's crucial to read the paper deeply.

If your focus is on the study design and techniques used by the authors, you'll spend most of your time reading and understanding the methods section.

Sometimes you'll need to read a paper to discuss it in your own research. This may be to compare or contrast your work with the paper's content, or to stimulate a discussion on future applications of your work.

If you are following an author’s work, a quick skim might suffice to understand how the paper fits into their overall research program.

Tip: Knowing why you want to read the paper facilitates how you will read the paper. Depending on your needs, your approach may take the form of a surface-level reading or a deep and thorough reading.

Knowing your motivations will guide your navigation through the paper because you have already identified which sections are most likely to contain the information you need. Approaching reading a paper in this way saves you time and makes the task less daunting.

➡️ Learn more about how to write a literature review

Begin by gaining an overview of the paper by following these simple steps:

• Read the title. What type of paper is it? Is it a journal article, a review, a methods paper, or a commentary?
• Read the abstract . The abstract is a summary of the study. What is the study about? What question was addressed? What methods were used? What did the authors find, and what are the key findings? What do the authors think are the implications of the work? Reading the abstract immediately tells you whether you should invest the time to read the paper fully.
• Look at the headings and subheadings, which describe the sections and subsections of the paper. The headings and subheadings outline the story of the paper.
• Skim the introduction. An introduction has a clear structure. The first paragraph is background information on the topic. If you are new to the field, you will read this closely, whereas an expert in that field will skim this section. The second component defines the gap in knowledge that the paper aims to address. What is unknown, and what research is needed? What problem needs to be solved? Here, you should find the questions that will be addressed by the study, and the goal of the research. The final paragraph summarizes how the authors address their research question, for example, what hypothesis will be tested, and what predictions the authors make. As you read, make a note of key references. By the end of the introduction, you should understand the goal of the research.
• Go to the results section, and study the figures and tables. These are the data—the meat of the study. Try to comprehend the data before reading the captions. After studying the data, read the captions. Do not expect to understand everything immediately. Remember, this is the result of many years of work. Make a note of what you do not understand. In your second reading, you will read more deeply.
• Skim the discussion. There are three components. The first part of the discussion summarizes what the authors have found, and what they think the implications of the work are. The second part discusses some (usually not all!) limitations of the study, and the final part is a concluding statement.
• Glance at the methods. Get a brief overview of the techniques used in the study. Depending on your reading goals, you may spend a lot of time on this section in subsequent readings, or a cursory reading may be sufficient.
• Summarize what the paper is about—its key take-home message—in a sentence or two. Ask yourself if you have got the information you need.
• List any terminology you may need to look up before reading the paper again.
• Scan the reference list. Make a note of papers you may need to read for background information before delving further into the paper.

Congratulations, you have completed the first reading! You now have gained a high-level perspective of the study, which will be enough for many research purposes.

Now that you have an overview of the work and you have identified what information you want to obtain, you are ready to understand the paper on a deeper level. Deep understanding is achieved in the second and subsequent readings with note-taking and active reflection. Here is a step-by-step guide.

• Active engagement with the material
• Critical thinking
• Creative thinking
• Synthesis of information
• Consolidation of information into memory.

Highlighting sentences helps you quickly scan the paper and be reminded of the key points, which is helpful when you return to the paper later.

Notes may include ideas, connections to other work, questions, comments, and references to follow up on.

There are many ways for taking notes on a paper. You can:

• Print out the paper, and write your notes in the margins.
• Annotate the paper PDF from your desktop computer, or mobile device .
• Use personal knowledge management software, like Notion , Obsidian, or Evernote, for note-taking. Notes are easy to find in a structured database and can be linked to each other.
• Use reference management tools to take notes. Having your notes stored with the scientific papers you’ve read has the benefit of keeping all your ideas in one place. Some reference managers, like Paperpile, allow you to add notes to your papers, and highlight key sentences on PDFs .

Note-taking facilitates critical thinking and helps you evaluate the evidence that the authors present. Ask yourself questions like:

• What new contribution has the study made to the literature?
• How have the authors interpreted the results? (Remember, the authors have thought about their results more deeply than anybody else.)
• What do I think the results mean?
• Are the findings well-supported?
• What factors might have affected the results, and have the authors addressed them?
• Are there alternative explanations for the results?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of the study?
• What are the broader implications of the study?
• What should be done next?

Note-taking also encourages creative thinking . Ask yourself questions like:

• What new ideas have arisen from reading the paper?
• How does it connect with your work?
• What connections to other papers can you make?
• Write a summary of the paper in your own words. This is your attempt to integrate the new knowledge you have gained with what you already know from other sources and to consolidate that information into memory. You may find that you have to go back and re-read some sections to confirm some of the details.
• Discuss the paper with others. You may find that even at this stage, there are still aspects of the paper that you are striving to understand. It is now a good time to reach out to others—peers in your program, your advisor, or even on social media. In their 10 simple rules for reading a scientific paper , Maureen Carey and coauthors suggest that participating in journal clubs, where you meet with peers to discuss interesting or important scientific papers, is a great way to clarify your understanding.
• A scientific paper can be read over many days. According to research presented in the book " Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning " by writer Peter Brown and psychology professors Henry Roediger and Mark McDaniel, "spaced practice" is more effective for retaining information than focusing on a single skill or subject until it is mastered. This involves breaking up learning into separate periods of training or studying. Applying this research to reading a scientific paper suggests that spacing out your reading by breaking the work into separate reading sessions can help you better commit the information in a paper to memory.

A dense journal article may need many readings to be understood fully. It is useful to remember that many scientific papers result from years of hard work, and the expectation of achieving a thorough understanding in one sitting must be modified accordingly. But, the process of reading a scientific paper will get easier and faster with experience.

The best way to read a scientific paper depends on your needs. Before reading the paper, identify your motivations for reading a scientific paper, and pinpoint the information you need. This will help you decide between skimming the paper and reading the paper more thoroughly.

Don’t read the paper from beginning to end. Instead, be aware of the scientific paper format. Take note of the information you need before starting to read the paper. Then skim the paper, jumping to the appropriate sections in the paper, to get the information you require.

It varies. Skimming a scientific paper may take anywhere between 15 minutes to one hour. Reading a scientific paper to obtain a deep understanding may take anywhere between 1 and 6 hours. It is not uncommon to have to read a dense paper in chunks over numerous days.

First, read the introduction to understand the main thesis and findings of the paper. Pay attention to the last paragraph of the introduction, where you can find a high-level summary of the methods and results. Next, skim the paper by jumping to the results and discussion. Then carefully read the paper from start to finish, taking notes as you read. You will need more than one reading to fully understand a dense research paper.

To read a scientific paper critically, be an active reader. Take notes, highlight important sentences, and write down questions as you read. Study the data. Take care to evaluate the evidence presented in the paper.

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Open Access

Ten simple rules for effective presentation slides

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Biomedical Engineering and the Center for Public Health Genomics, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, United States of America

• Kristen M. Naegle

Published: December 2, 2021

• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009554
• Reader Comments

Citation: Naegle KM (2021) Ten simple rules for effective presentation slides. PLoS Comput Biol 17(12): e1009554. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009554

Copyright: © 2021 Kristen M. Naegle. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Funding: The author received no specific funding for this work.

Competing interests: The author has declared no competing interests exist.

Introduction

The “presentation slide” is the building block of all academic presentations, whether they are journal clubs, thesis committee meetings, short conference talks, or hour-long seminars. A slide is a single page projected on a screen, usually built on the premise of a title, body, and figures or tables and includes both what is shown and what is spoken about that slide. Multiple slides are strung together to tell the larger story of the presentation. While there have been excellent 10 simple rules on giving entire presentations [ 1 , 2 ], there was an absence in the fine details of how to design a slide for optimal effect—such as the design elements that allow slides to convey meaningful information, to keep the audience engaged and informed, and to deliver the information intended and in the time frame allowed. As all research presentations seek to teach, effective slide design borrows from the same principles as effective teaching, including the consideration of cognitive processing your audience is relying on to organize, process, and retain information. This is written for anyone who needs to prepare slides from any length scale and for most purposes of conveying research to broad audiences. The rules are broken into 3 primary areas. Rules 1 to 5 are about optimizing the scope of each slide. Rules 6 to 8 are about principles around designing elements of the slide. Rules 9 to 10 are about preparing for your presentation, with the slides as the central focus of that preparation.

Rule 1: Include only one idea per slide

Each slide should have one central objective to deliver—the main idea or question [ 3 – 5 ]. Often, this means breaking complex ideas down into manageable pieces (see Fig 1 , where “background” information has been split into 2 key concepts). In another example, if you are presenting a complex computational approach in a large flow diagram, introduce it in smaller units, building it up until you finish with the entire diagram. The progressive buildup of complex information means that audiences are prepared to understand the whole picture, once you have dedicated time to each of the parts. You can accomplish the buildup of components in several ways—for example, using presentation software to cover/uncover information. Personally, I choose to create separate slides for each piece of information content I introduce—where the final slide has the entire diagram, and I use cropping or a cover on duplicated slides that come before to hide what I’m not yet ready to include. I use this method in order to ensure that each slide in my deck truly presents one specific idea (the new content) and the amount of the new information on that slide can be described in 1 minute (Rule 2), but it comes with the trade-off—a change to the format of one of the slides in the series often means changes to all slides.

• PPT PowerPoint slide
• PNG larger image
• TIFF original image

Top left: A background slide that describes the background material on a project from my lab. The slide was created using a PowerPoint Design Template, which had to be modified to increase default text sizes for this figure (i.e., the default text sizes are even worse than shown here). Bottom row: The 2 new slides that break up the content into 2 explicit ideas about the background, using a central graphic. In the first slide, the graphic is an explicit example of the SH2 domain of PI3-kinase interacting with a phosphorylation site (Y754) on the PDGFR to describe the important details of what an SH2 domain and phosphotyrosine ligand are and how they interact. I use that same graphic in the second slide to generalize all binding events and include redundant text to drive home the central message (a lot of possible interactions might occur in the human proteome, more than we can currently measure). Top right highlights which rules were used to move from the original slide to the new slide. Specific changes as highlighted by Rule 7 include increasing contrast by changing the background color, increasing font size, changing to sans serif fonts, and removing all capital text and underlining (using bold to draw attention). PDGFR, platelet-derived growth factor receptor.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009554.g001

Rule 2: Spend only 1 minute per slide

When you present your slide in the talk, it should take 1 minute or less to discuss. This rule is really helpful for planning purposes—a 20-minute presentation should have somewhere around 20 slides. Also, frequently giving your audience new information to feast on helps keep them engaged. During practice, if you find yourself spending more than a minute on a slide, there’s too much for that one slide—it’s time to break up the content into multiple slides or even remove information that is not wholly central to the story you are trying to tell. Reduce, reduce, reduce, until you get to a single message, clearly described, which takes less than 1 minute to present.

Rule 3: Make use of your heading

When each slide conveys only one message, use the heading of that slide to write exactly the message you are trying to deliver. Instead of titling the slide “Results,” try “CTNND1 is central to metastasis” or “False-positive rates are highly sample specific.” Use this landmark signpost to ensure that all the content on that slide is related exactly to the heading and only the heading. Think of the slide heading as the introductory or concluding sentence of a paragraph and the slide content the rest of the paragraph that supports the main point of the paragraph. An audience member should be able to follow along with you in the “paragraph” and come to the same conclusion sentence as your header at the end of the slide.

Rule 4: Include only essential points

While you are speaking, audience members’ eyes and minds will be wandering over your slide. If you have a comment, detail, or figure on a slide, have a plan to explicitly identify and talk about it. If you don’t think it’s important enough to spend time on, then don’t have it on your slide. This is especially important when faculty are present. I often tell students that thesis committee members are like cats: If you put a shiny bauble in front of them, they’ll go after it. Be sure to only put the shiny baubles on slides that you want them to focus on. Putting together a thesis meeting for only faculty is really an exercise in herding cats (if you have cats, you know this is no easy feat). Clear and concise slide design will go a long way in helping you corral those easily distracted faculty members.

Rule 5: Give credit, where credit is due

An exception to Rule 4 is to include proper citations or references to work on your slide. When adding citations, names of other researchers, or other types of credit, use a consistent style and method for adding this information to your slides. Your audience will then be able to easily partition this information from the other content. A common mistake people make is to think “I’ll add that reference later,” but I highly recommend you put the proper reference on the slide at the time you make it, before you forget where it came from. Finally, in certain kinds of presentations, credits can make it clear who did the work. For the faculty members heading labs, it is an effective way to connect your audience with the personnel in the lab who did the work, which is a great career booster for that person. For graduate students, it is an effective way to delineate your contribution to the work, especially in meetings where the goal is to establish your credentials for meeting the rigors of a PhD checkpoint.

Rule 6: Use graphics effectively

As a rule, you should almost never have slides that only contain text. Build your slides around good visualizations. It is a visual presentation after all, and as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. However, on the flip side, don’t muddy the point of the slide by putting too many complex graphics on a single slide. A multipanel figure that you might include in a manuscript should often be broken into 1 panel per slide (see Rule 1 ). One way to ensure that you use the graphics effectively is to make a point to introduce the figure and its elements to the audience verbally, especially for data figures. For example, you might say the following: “This graph here shows the measured false-positive rate for an experiment and each point is a replicate of the experiment, the graph demonstrates …” If you have put too much on one slide to present in 1 minute (see Rule 2 ), then the complexity or number of the visualizations is too much for just one slide.

Rule 7: Design to avoid cognitive overload

The type of slide elements, the number of them, and how you present them all impact the ability for the audience to intake, organize, and remember the content. For example, a frequent mistake in slide design is to include full sentences, but reading and verbal processing use the same cognitive channels—therefore, an audience member can either read the slide, listen to you, or do some part of both (each poorly), as a result of cognitive overload [ 4 ]. The visual channel is separate, allowing images/videos to be processed with auditory information without cognitive overload [ 6 ] (Rule 6). As presentations are an exercise in listening, and not reading, do what you can to optimize the ability of the audience to listen. Use words sparingly as “guide posts” to you and the audience about major points of the slide. In fact, you can add short text fragments, redundant with the verbal component of the presentation, which has been shown to improve retention [ 7 ] (see Fig 1 for an example of redundant text that avoids cognitive overload). Be careful in the selection of a slide template to minimize accidentally adding elements that the audience must process, but are unimportant. David JP Phillips argues (and effectively demonstrates in his TEDx talk [ 5 ]) that the human brain can easily interpret 6 elements and more than that requires a 500% increase in human cognition load—so keep the total number of elements on the slide to 6 or less. Finally, in addition to the use of short text, white space, and the effective use of graphics/images, you can improve ease of cognitive processing further by considering color choices and font type and size. Here are a few suggestions for improving the experience for your audience, highlighting the importance of these elements for some specific groups:

• Use high contrast colors and simple backgrounds with low to no color—for persons with dyslexia or visual impairment.
• Use sans serif fonts and large font sizes (including figure legends), avoid italics, underlining (use bold font instead for emphasis), and all capital letters—for persons with dyslexia or visual impairment [ 8 ].
• Use color combinations and palettes that can be understood by those with different forms of color blindness [ 9 ]. There are excellent tools available to identify colors to use and ways to simulate your presentation or figures as they might be seen by a person with color blindness (easily found by a web search).
• In this increasing world of virtual presentation tools, consider practicing your talk with a closed captioning system capture your words. Use this to identify how to improve your speaking pace, volume, and annunciation to improve understanding by all members of your audience, but especially those with a hearing impairment.

Rule 8: Design the slide so that a distracted person gets the main takeaway

It is very difficult to stay focused on a presentation, especially if it is long or if it is part of a longer series of talks at a conference. Audience members may get distracted by an important email, or they may start dreaming of lunch. So, it’s important to look at your slide and ask “If they heard nothing I said, will they understand the key concept of this slide?” The other rules are set up to help with this, including clarity of the single point of the slide (Rule 1), titling it with a major conclusion (Rule 3), and the use of figures (Rule 6) and short text redundant to your verbal description (Rule 7). However, with each slide, step back and ask whether its main conclusion is conveyed, even if someone didn’t hear your accompanying dialog. Importantly, ask if the information on the slide is at the right level of abstraction. For example, do you have too many details about the experiment, which hides the conclusion of the experiment (i.e., breaking Rule 1)? If you are worried about not having enough details, keep a slide at the end of your slide deck (after your conclusions and acknowledgments) with the more detailed information that you can refer to during a question and answer period.

Rule 9: Iteratively improve slide design through practice

Well-designed slides that follow the first 8 rules are intended to help you deliver the message you intend and in the amount of time you intend to deliver it in. The best way to ensure that you nailed slide design for your presentation is to practice, typically a lot. The most important aspects of practicing a new presentation, with an eye toward slide design, are the following 2 key points: (1) practice to ensure that you hit, each time through, the most important points (for example, the text guide posts you left yourself and the title of the slide); and (2) practice to ensure that as you conclude the end of one slide, it leads directly to the next slide. Slide transitions, what you say as you end one slide and begin the next, are important to keeping the flow of the “story.” Practice is when I discover that the order of my presentation is poor or that I left myself too few guideposts to remember what was coming next. Additionally, during practice, the most frequent things I have to improve relate to Rule 2 (the slide takes too long to present, usually because I broke Rule 1, and I’m delivering too much information for one slide), Rule 4 (I have a nonessential detail on the slide), and Rule 5 (I forgot to give a key reference). The very best type of practice is in front of an audience (for example, your lab or peers), where, with fresh perspectives, they can help you identify places for improving slide content, design, and connections across the entirety of your talk.

Rule 10: Design to mitigate the impact of technical disasters

The real presentation almost never goes as we planned in our heads or during our practice. Maybe the speaker before you went over time and now you need to adjust. Maybe the computer the organizer is having you use won’t show your video. Maybe your internet is poor on the day you are giving a virtual presentation at a conference. Technical problems are routinely part of the practice of sharing your work through presentations. Hence, you can design your slides to limit the impact certain kinds of technical disasters create and also prepare alternate approaches. Here are just a few examples of the preparation you can do that will take you a long way toward avoiding a complete fiasco:

• Save your presentation as a PDF—if the version of Keynote or PowerPoint on a host computer cause issues, you still have a functional copy that has a higher guarantee of compatibility.
• In using videos, create a backup slide with screen shots of key results. For example, if I have a video of cell migration, I’ll be sure to have a copy of the start and end of the video, in case the video doesn’t play. Even if the video worked, you can pause on this backup slide and take the time to highlight the key results in words if someone could not see or understand the video.
• Avoid animations, such as figures or text that flash/fly-in/etc. Surveys suggest that no one likes movement in presentations [ 3 , 4 ]. There is likely a cognitive underpinning to the almost universal distaste of pointless animations that relates to the idea proposed by Kosslyn and colleagues that animations are salient perceptual units that captures direct attention [ 4 ]. Although perceptual salience can be used to draw attention to and improve retention of specific points, if you use this approach for unnecessary/unimportant things (like animation of your bullet point text, fly-ins of figures, etc.), then you will distract your audience from the important content. Finally, animations cause additional processing burdens for people with visual impairments [ 10 ] and create opportunities for technical disasters if the software on the host system is not compatible with your planned animation.

Conclusions

These rules are just a start in creating more engaging presentations that increase audience retention of your material. However, there are wonderful resources on continuing on the journey of becoming an amazing public speaker, which includes understanding the psychology and neuroscience behind human perception and learning. For example, as highlighted in Rule 7, David JP Phillips has a wonderful TEDx talk on the subject [ 5 ], and “PowerPoint presentation flaws and failures: A psychological analysis,” by Kosslyn and colleagues is deeply detailed about a number of aspects of human cognition and presentation style [ 4 ]. There are many books on the topic, including the popular “Presentation Zen” by Garr Reynolds [ 11 ]. Finally, although briefly touched on here, the visualization of data is an entire topic of its own that is worth perfecting for both written and oral presentations of work, with fantastic resources like Edward Tufte’s “The Visual Display of Quantitative Information” [ 12 ] or the article “Visualization of Biomedical Data” by O’Donoghue and colleagues [ 13 ].

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the countless presenters, colleagues, students, and mentors from which I have learned a great deal from on effective presentations. Also, a thank you to the wonderful resources published by organizations on how to increase inclusivity. A special thanks to Dr. Jason Papin and Dr. Michael Guertin on early feedback of this editorial.

• View Article
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• 3. Teaching VUC for Making Better PowerPoint Presentations. n.d. Available from: https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/making-better-powerpoint-presentations/#baddeley .
• 8. Creating a dyslexia friendly workplace. Dyslexia friendly style guide. nd. Available from: https://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/advice/employers/creating-a-dyslexia-friendly-workplace/dyslexia-friendly-style-guide .
• 9. Cravit R. How to Use Color Blind Friendly Palettes to Make Your Charts Accessible. 2019. Available from: https://venngage.com/blog/color-blind-friendly-palette/ .
• 10. Making your conference presentation more accessible to blind and partially sighted people. n.d. Available from: https://vocaleyes.co.uk/services/resources/guidelines-for-making-your-conference-presentation-more-accessible-to-blind-and-partially-sighted-people/ .
• 11. Reynolds G. Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery. 2nd ed. New Riders Pub; 2011.
• 12. Tufte ER. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. 2nd ed. Graphics Press; 2001.

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How to Prepare for a Paper Presentation at an Academic Conference

 In my previous post, I laid out a timeline for choosing an academic conference.  This post will lay out four steps to help you successfully prepare for a paper presentation at an academic conference.

Pay attention to the deadline for proposals . 

Your proposal outlines the paper you are going to write, not a paper you have written . You may treat your proposal as a commitment device to “force” you to write the paper, but the final paper may well differ from your original intention.

The Claremont Graduate University Writing Center offers some good examples of proposals here .

Write a winning abstract to get your paper accepted into the conference. 

Abstracts are an afterthought to many graduate students, but they are the what the reviewer looks at first. To get your paper accepted to a conference, you’ll need to write an abstract of 200 to 500 words .

The emphasis should be on brevity and clarity. It should tell the reader what your paper is about, why the reader should be interested, and why the paper should be accepted.

Additionally, it should:

• Specify your thesis
• Identify your paper fills a gap in the current literature.
• Outline what you actually do in the paper.
• Point out your original contribution.
• Include a concluding sentence.

Academic Conferences and Publishing International offers some additional advice on writing a conference abstract  as you prepare for your paper presentation at an academic conference.

Pay attention to your presentation itself.

In order to convey excitement about your paper, you need to think about your presentation as well as the findings you are communicating.

Note the conference time limit and stick to it. Practice while timing yourself, and do it in front of a mirror. I also recommend practicing in front of your peers; organizing a departmental brown bag lunch could be a great way to do this. As you are preparing, keep in mind that reading from notes is better than reading directly from your paper.

Once you arrive at the conference, check the location of the room as soon as you can before the event. Arrive early to make sure any audiovisual equipment you plan to use is working, and be ready to present without it in case it is not.

Always stand when giving your paper presentation at an academic conference. Begin by stating your name and institution. Establish eye contact across the room, and speak slowly and clearly to your audience. Explain the structure of your presentation. End with your contribution to your discipline. Finally, be polite (not defensive) when engaging in discussion and answering questions about your research.

By focusing on (a) making sure your work contributes something to your field (b) adhering to deadlines and convincing conference organizers that your paper is worth presenting and (c) creating a compelling presentation that aptly highlights the content of your research, you’ll make the most of your time at the conference.

Nigel Ashford

Previous post should i get a phd 5 questions to ask yourself before you decide, next post how to choose and prepare for academic conferences as a graduate student.

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6 Tips For Giving a Fabulous Academic Presentation

6-tips-for-giving-a-fabulous-academic-presentation.

Tanya Golash-Boza, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of California

January 11, 2022

One of the easiest ways to stand out at an academic conference is to give a fantastic presentation.

In this post, I will discuss a few simple techniques that can make your presentation stand out. Although, it does take time to make a good presentation, it is well worth the investment.

Tip #1: Use PowerPoint Judiciously

Images are powerful. Research shows that images help with memory and learning. Use this to your advantage by finding and using images that help you make your point. One trick I have learned is that you can use images that have blank space in them and you can put words in those images.

Here is one such example from a presentation I gave about immigration law enforcement.

PowerPoint is a great tool, so long as you use it effectively. Generally, this means using lots of visuals and relatively few words. Never use less than 24-point font. And, please, never put your presentation on the slides and read from the slides.

Tip #2: There is a formula to academic presentations. Use it.

Once you have become an expert at giving fabulous presentations, you can deviate from the formula. However, if you are new to presenting, you might want to follow it. This will vary slightly by field, however, I will give an example from my field – sociology – to give you an idea as to what the format should look like:

• Introduction/Overview/Hook
• Theoretical Framework/Research Question
• Methodology/Case Selection
• Background/Literature Review
• Discussion of Data/Results

Tip #3: The audience wants to hear about your research. Tell them.

One of the most common mistakes I see in people giving presentations is that they present only information I already know. This usually happens when they spend nearly all of the presentation going over the existing literature and giving background information on their particular case. You need only to discuss the literature with which you are directly engaging and contributing. Your background information should only include what is absolutely necessary. If you are giving a 15-minute presentation, by the 6 th minute, you need to be discussing your data or case study. At conferences, people are there to learn about your new and exciting research, not to hear a summary of old work.

Tip #4: Practice. Practice. Practice.

You should always practice your presentation in full before you deliver it. You might feel silly delivering your presentation to your cat or your toddler, but you need to do it and do it again. You need to practice to ensure that your presentation fits within the time parameters. Practicing also makes it flow better. You can’t practice too many times.

Tip #5: Keep To Your Time Limit

If you have ten minutes to present, prepare ten minutes of material. No more. Even if you only have seven minutes, you need to finish within the allotted time. If you write your presentation out, a general rule of thumb is two minutes per typed, double-spaced page. For a fifteen-minute talk, you should have no more than 7 double-spaced pages of material.

Tip #6: Don’t Read Your Presentation

Yes, I know that in some fields reading is the norm. But, can you honestly say that you find yourself engaged when listening to someone read their conference presentation? If you absolutely must read, I suggest you read in such a way that no one in the audience can tell you are reading. I have seen people do this successfully, and you can do it too if you write in a conversational tone, practice several times, and read your paper with emotion, conviction, and variation in tone.

What tips do you have for presenters? What is one of the best presentations you have seen? What made it so fantastic? Let us know in the comments below.

Want to learn more about the publishing process? The Wiley Researcher Academy is an online author training program designed to help researchers develop the skills and knowledge needed to be able to publish successfully. Learn more about Wiley Researcher Academy .

Image credit: Tanya Golash-Boza

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How to Give a Good Academic Paper Presentation

• Post author By Maria Angel Ferrero
• Post date August 17, 2020
• No Comments on How to Give a Good Academic Paper Presentation

The art of pitching your academic research

So, you’re about to present your first academic paper? You are preparing to defend your thesis? You are about to present your research to a bunch of experts?

But, you don’t know where to start? or, how to start?

That’s ok, you are in the right place.

In this short post, I’m going to show you how to do a good academic research presentation so that your audience actually understands and appreciates it.

The main goal of an academic research presentation — like any other type of presentation — is to carry your audience through a story and grab their attention during the whole story. But no matter how good a story is, if it’s not told properly it’ll lose its audience at the very first words.

And every good story needs a good structure, otherwise, your audience will get lost in a dead-end.

To avoid getting into that dead-end and losing your audience, you should structure your presentation around 5 main questions:

• Who are you and what’s your story about?
• Why should your audience — or anyone — care about your story, and why is it relevant to tell that story now?
• How did you get to write your story? Who are the main characters?
• What happens in the story? What happens to the characters?
• So, What? Why this ending is better? Why should I wait for a new episode?

The order in which these questions are answered throughout your presentation can vary. Good stories might also start at the end and crawl back to its beginnings. Play with the order and see what suits best your story, only you know better what works for your research.

So let’s go now through each of the questions, shall we?

Who are you and what’s your research about?

Introduce yourself — unless you have already been introduced. Sometimes we are so impatience to give our presentation that we forget the basics.

Many times when we choose a book to read we ask ourselves about the human that wrote the book. And, as any writer researchers should include a short biography of themselves in the presentation.

And this is not to brag about yourself or your experience, but to give a human touch to the research itself. Before anyone wants to hear your story — your research — you need to tell them why they should be listening to you.

A short introduction of 30 seconds will do, your name, your background, why you are here in this room presenting and anything else that might be relevant to the research you are doing.

Give a context to your story, a kind of foreword to your research. State your thesis clearly and tell your audience why the topic you are going to address is relevant. And why they should care.

Give a hook. Start with a kind of provocation to instill curiosity and need. Try to think out of the box and talk about something your audience will found interesting. Use analogies too much known or simpler things that everyone in the room would be able to understand. Don’t talk to the experts, they already know it.

To give you an example, this is how I started one of my papers on overconfidence and innovation:

If you had to choose between The Joker and Batman, who would you want to be?

My paper was nothing to do with superheroes — at least not in a common way — but I wanted to talk about the dual personality innovators have, thus The Joker vs Batman analogy.

Once you have given your hook and presented yourself, give your audience an idea of what you are going to talk about and what awaits them during the following minutes.

Give them a roadmap of the talk, even if it seems redundant to you. This doesn’t mean you have to list your table of contents, just a prelude of your story.

In total, one minute and one slide are enough.

Why should your audience care about your Research, and why is it relevant now?

The next 2 or 3 slides should introduce the subject to the audience. Very briefly. Usually, research presentations last between 10 to 15 minutes, but many are shifting to the startup pitch format of 3 to 5 minutes. So being concise and direct to point is quite important.

Telling your audience why the topic you are researching about is important and relevant it’s essential, but should not take all time. This is just the introduction, you need to save time for the main story.

There are mainly 6 elements that make a good introduction:

• Define the Problem:  Many speakers forget this simple point. No matter how difficult and technical the problem you are addressing is there is certainly a way to explain it concisely and clearly in less than one minute. Explain your problem as if your audience were 5 years old children, not because they are not smart or respectable, but because the simpler you get to explain a complex problem the more it shows your mastery and preparation. If the audience doesn’t understand the problem being attacked, then they won’t understand the rest of your talk, and you’ll lose them before you get to your great solution. For your slides, condense the problem into a very few carefully chosen words.  An example here again from my research: Is being extremely confident in ourselves good or bad for innovation?
• Motivate the Audience:  Explain why the problem is so important. How does the problem fit into the larger picture(e.g. entrepreneurship ecosystem, neuroscience,…)? What are its applications? What makes the problem nontrivial? If no one has done this research, why is it relevant now to do it? What are the circumstances that make it relevant now more than ever? Avoid broad statements such as  “Innovation is what drives economic growth, but there are few innovative individuals, so how can we encourage people to become innovators?”  Rather, focus on what really matters: “ universities are investing millions to develop entrepreneurship education program, still students graduating from these programs aren’t starting any venture.”
• Introduce Terminology:  scientific jargon is boring and complex, it should be kept to a minimum. However, sometimes is almost impossible not to refer to specific scientific terms. Any complex jargon should be introduced at the beginning of the presentation or when each term is introduced for the first time during the presentation. To avoid losing time tot his, you can prepare a short document with all the terms and definitions to hand out to the participants in the audience.
• Discuss Earlier Work: Do your research, you are not reinventing the wheel.  There is nothing more frustrating than listening to a talk that covers something that has already been published without making reference tot hose studies. It not only shows that you didn’t do your research and that you are underprepared, but it shows you don’t know how to conduct research. This doesn’t mean that you should have read and cited ALL the works and papers that talk about the topic of your research. This is only useful if you are doing a systematic review. But you have to be sure that you know, read and cite those that really matter. You have to explain why this work is different from past wor, or how you are improving or continuing the research.
• Emphasize the Contributions of the Paper:  Make sure that you explicitly and succinctly state the contributions made by your paper. That is the so what?. Give just a quick glimpse of your contributions and implications for the research and the practice. The audience wants to know this. Often it is the only thing that they carry away from the talk.
• Consider putting your Conclusion in the Introduction : Be bold. Let everyone know from the start where you are headed so that the audience can focus on what matters.

How did you get to your results? How did you conduct your study?

There should be 1 or 2 methods slides that allow the audience to understand how the research was conducted. You might include a flow chart describing the main ingredients of the methods used. Do not put too many details, just what it’s needed to understand the study. Many of the details are appropriate for the manuscript but not for the presentation. If the audience wants to have more details on the methods they can always read your full paper, or you can prepare backup slides with this information to share during the Q&As session. For example, you could just say:  “During 4 weeks we conducted semi-structured interviews with top managers and employees from different organizations. Our final sample was composed of 30 individuals, from which 10 were top managers and 15 were female and aged between 25 and 60 years.”  Further details are presented in backup slides or in the manuscript.

What did you find, what happened?

The next 3 slides should show the main results obtained with your research. If appropriate, it is nice to start with a slide showing the basic phenomena being studied (e.G. the process of innovation and how). It reminds your audience about the variables used and manipulated and the role they have in the situation being studied.

Next, show figures, pictures, or graphs that clearly illustrate the main results. Do not show charts and tables of raw data. No one is able to read an excel table on a presentation, if only it gives the creeps. So instead of putting large and ugly tables, no one is going to read, use beautiful and meaningful graphs and figures.

You can use free infographic apps to build awesome visual representations of your data. Apps like  Canva ,  Venngage , or  Piktochart  work great.

All figures should be clearly labeled. When showing figures, be sure to explain the figure axes before you talk about the data (e.g., “the X-axis shows time. The Y-axis shows economic profit).

When presenting the data try to be as simple as possible, this is the most complex part of your research. You might be an expert, but your audience probably is not and they need to understand your results if you want to convenience them with your research.

So, What? What are the outcomes, implications and future steps?

The last 2 slides are probably the most important section of your presentation. It’s the denouement of your story, and it should be good.

Nothing is more frustrating than reading or listening to a good story to arrive to a disappointing end. All the effort you did to tell the good story is lost if you don’t curate appropriately the ending.

Some people be distracted during the whole presentation and would only pay attention to your conclusions, so those conclusions better are good.

Before getting to your end, sum up what your study was about, your research questions and objectives, and then go to the conclusion. In this way, the lousy distracted audience will also get most of your research.

List the conclusions in clear, easy to understand language. You can read them to the audience. Also give one or two sentences about what this likely means — your interpretation — for the big picture, go back to the context and motives of your research. Explain how your results improve our understanding and contribute to theory and practice.

Don’t be afraid to talk about the flaws and limitations of your study. Not only this shows you are humble but that you are prepared enough and that you are aware that things can be improved. Remember that having contradictory results to what you expected is not a bad thing, they are still results, you need to find an explanation to this.

Once you know your limitations, tell your audience how can this be improved in future research. How can other scholars address the problems and flaws, what are the next steps, and what future research should focus on?

Your job as a presenter is to not only present the paper but also lead a discussion with your audience about your research. Talk about its strengths, weaknesses, and broader implications. To help focus the class discussion, end your presentation with a list of approximately three major questions/issues worthy of further discussion.

Please finalize your presentation with at least two or three major things that should be discussed. Discussion with the audience should be especially encouraged at this point, but you should be prepared to foster this by raising these issues.

So, when preparing your presentation think like one of the people in your audience. Think about what they would ask? What would they like to discuss further? What are the points that might trigger confusion or disagreement?

If you have these questions in mind you can prepare to give appropriate answers and be less stressed out by the uncertainty of your audience reaction. You can then prepare a couple of backup slides that will help you give responses to the questions being asked and that will help you make your point.

Final thoughts

Reading and understanding academic research papers can be a tough assignment, especially because it can be very specific and you might not know or understand many terms, methodologies, or even statistical models and analysis. So preparing a presentation of an academic paper, whether is yours or others’ work, takes time and must be taken seriously.

When you are preparing your draft for the presentation, keep in mind that your audience will rely on listening comprehension, not reading comprehension. That means that your ideas need to be clear and to the point, and organized in a way that makes it possible for your audience to follow you.

And since understanding was difficult for you who had the time to read and discuss the paper with your team, you can imagine how difficult it might be for an audience that hasn’t read the paper and moreover has no expertise (or not much) on the research topic you are presenting.

So you have to be very careful about how you present your article so that your audience understands what you are saying, feel involved and curious, and off course don’t sleep while you talk.

Scientific oral presentations are not simply readings of scientific manuscripts, so being in front of an audience reading scientific terms and statistical models and equations is out of the picture. You need to provoke curiosity and engagement so that at the end of your presentation people want to know more about your research.

Don’t forget that time is precious, and not everyone is ready to give their time to listen to things they don’t find amusing or intriguing. Being concise and simple is not an easy exercise, but is crucial for passing by a message.

Follow simple presentation rules:

• 1 slide takes 1 minute to present, so if you have 10 minutes to present don’t do more than 10 slides.
• Don’t use small size fonts, the minimum readable size is 20pt.
• Don’t use text when you don’t need it, the text should be only be used to highlight things that you want your audience to remember
• Use pictures whenever you can but don’t overuse them. Pictures have to be relevant to your speech.
• Be careful with grammar and errors. Read your slides thoroughly a couple of times before submitting them for a presentation. And ask someone else to read them also, they are more likely to find mistakes than you are as they are less biased and less attached to your topic.
• Finally, prepare, prepare, and prepare. Mastery is only possible through training. No matter how good you are at improvising, preparing for a presentation is key for succeeding at it.

And that’s it. Good luck!

• Tags Research , Research Paper , Science , Scientific Paper

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• How to present a research paper in PPT: best practices

A research paper presentation is frequently used at conferences and other events where you have a chance to share the results of your research and receive feedback from colleagues. Although it may appear as simple as summarizing the findings, successful examples of research paper presentations show that there is a little bit more to it.

In this article, we’ll walk you through the basic outline and steps to create a good research paper presentation. We’ll also explain what to include and what not to include in your presentation of research paper and share some of the most effective tips you can use to take your slides to the next level.

Research paper PowerPoint presentation outline

Creating a PowerPoint presentation for a research paper involves organizing and summarizing your key findings, methodology, and conclusions in a way that encourages your audience to interact with your work and share their interest in it with others. Here’s a basic research paper outline PowerPoint you can follow:

1. Title (1 slide)

Typically, your title slide should contain the following information:

• Title of the research paper
• Affiliation or institution
• Date of presentation

2. Introduction (1-3 slides)

On this slide of your presentation, briefly introduce the research topic and its significance and state the research question or objective.

3. Research questions or hypothesis (1 slide)

This slide should emphasize the objectives of your research or present the hypothesis.

4. Literature review (1 slide)

Your literature review has to provide context for your research by summarizing relevant literature. Additionally, it should highlight gaps or areas where your research contributes.

5. Methodology and data collection (1-2 slides)

This slide of your research paper PowerPoint has to explain the research design, methods, and procedures. It must also Include details about participants, materials, and data collection and emphasize special equipment you have used in your work.

6. Results (3-5 slides)

On this slide, you must present the results of your data analysis and discuss any trends, patterns, or significant findings. Moreover, you should use charts, graphs, and tables to illustrate data and highlight something novel in your results (if applicable).

7. Conclusion (1 slide)

Your conclusion slide has to summarize the main findings and their implications, as well as discuss the broader impact of your research. Usually, a single statement is enough.

8. Recommendations (1 slide)

If applicable, provide recommendations for future research or actions on this slide.

9. References (1-2 slides)

The references slide is where you list all the sources cited in your research paper.

10. Acknowledgments (1 slide)

On this presentation slide, acknowledge any individuals, organizations, or funding sources that contributed to your research.

11. Appendix (1 slide)

If applicable, include any supplementary materials, such as additional data or detailed charts, in your appendix slide.

The above outline is just a general guideline, so make sure to adjust it based on your specific research paper and the time allotted for the presentation.

Steps to creating a memorable research paper presentation

Creating a PowerPoint presentation for a research paper involves several critical steps needed to convey your findings and engage your audience effectively, and these steps are as follows:

Step 1. Understand your audience:

• Identify the audience for your presentation.
• Tailor your content and level of detail to match the audience’s background and knowledge.

Step 2. Define your key messages:

• Clearly articulate the main messages or findings of your research.
• Identify the key points you want your audience to remember.

Step 3. Design your research paper PPT presentation:

• Use a clean and professional design that complements your research topic.
• Choose readable fonts, consistent formatting, and a limited color palette.
• Opt for PowerPoint presentation services if slide design is not your strong side.

Step 4. Put content on slides:

• Follow the outline above to structure your presentation effectively; include key sections and topics.
• Organize your content logically, following the flow of your research paper.

Step 5. Final check:

• Proofread your slides for typos, errors, and inconsistencies.
• Ensure all visuals are clear, high-quality, and properly labeled.

Step 6. Save and share:

• Save your presentation and ensure compatibility with the equipment you’ll be using.
• If necessary, share a copy of your presentation with the audience.

By following these steps, you can create a well-organized and visually appealing research paper presentation PowerPoint that effectively conveys your research findings to the audience.

What to include and what not to include in your presentation

In addition to the must-know PowerPoint presentation recommendations, which we’ll cover later in this article, consider the following do’s and don’ts when you’re putting together your research paper presentation:

• Focus on the topic.
• Be brief and to the point.
• Attract the audience’s attention and highlight interesting details.
• Use only relevant visuals (maps, charts, pictures, graphs, etc.).
• Use numbers and bullet points to structure the content.
• Make clear statements regarding the essence and results of your research.

Don’ts:

• Don’t write down the whole outline of your paper and nothing else.
• Don’t put long, full sentences on your slides; split them into smaller ones.
• Don’t use distracting patterns, colors, pictures, and other visuals on your slides; the simpler, the better.
• Don’t use too complicated graphs or charts; only the ones that are easy to understand.
• Now that we’ve discussed the basics, let’s move on to the top tips for making a powerful presentation of your research paper.

8 tips on how to make research paper presentation that achieves its goals

You’ve probably been to a presentation where the presenter reads word for word from their PowerPoint outline. Or where the presentation is cluttered, chaotic, or contains too much data. The simple tips below will help you summarize a 10 to 15-page paper for a 15 to 20-minute talk and succeed, so read on!

Tip #1: Less is more

You want to provide enough information to make your audience want to know more. Including details but not too many and avoiding technical jargon, formulas, and long sentences are always good ways to achieve this.

Tip #2: Be professional

Avoid using too many colors, font changes, distracting backgrounds, animations, etc. Bullet points with a few words to highlight the important information are preferable to lengthy paragraphs. Additionally, include slide numbers on all PowerPoint slides except for the title slide, and make sure it is followed by a table of contents, offering a brief overview of the entire research paper.

Tip #3: Strive for balance

PowerPoint slides have limited space, so use it carefully. Typically, one to two points per slide or 5 lines for 5 words in a sentence are enough to present your ideas.

Tip #4: Use proper fonts and text size

The font you use should be easy to read and consistent throughout the slides. You can go with Arial, Times New Roman, Calibri, or a combination of these three. An ideal text size is 32 points, while a heading size is 44.

Tip #5: Concentrate on the visual side

A PowerPoint presentation is one of the best tools for presenting information visually. Use graphs instead of tables and topic-relevant illustrations instead of walls of text. Keep your visuals as clean and professional as the content of your presentation.

Tip #6: Practice your delivery

Always go through your presentation when you’re done to ensure a smooth and confident delivery and time yourself to stay within the allotted limit.

Tip #7: Get ready for questions

Anticipate potential questions from your audience and prepare thoughtful responses. Also, be ready to engage in discussions about your research.

Tip #8: Don’t be afraid to utilize professional help

If the mere thought of designing a presentation overwhelms you or you’re pressed for time, consider leveraging professional PowerPoint redesign services . A dedicated design team can transform your content or old presentation into effective slides, ensuring your message is communicated clearly and captivates your audience. This way, you can focus on refining your delivery and preparing for the presentation.

Lastly, remember that even experienced presenters get nervous before delivering research paper PowerPoint presentations in front of the audience. You cannot know everything; some things can be beyond your control, which is completely fine. You are at the event not only to share what you know but also to learn from others. So, no matter what, dress appropriately, look straight into the audience’s eyes, try to speak and move naturally, present your information enthusiastically, and have fun!

If you need help with slide design, get in touch with our dedicated design team and let qualified professionals turn your research findings into a visually appealing, polished presentation that leaves a lasting impression on your audience. Our experienced designers specialize in creating engaging layouts, incorporating compelling graphics, and ensuring a cohesive visual narrative that complements content on any subject.

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How to Make a PowerPoint Presentation of Your Research Paper

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A research paper presentation is often used at conferences and in other settings where you have an opportunity to share your research, and get feedback from your colleagues. Although it may seem as simple as summarizing your research and sharing your knowledge, successful research paper PowerPoint presentation examples show us that there’s a little bit more than that involved.

In this article, we’ll highlight how to make a PowerPoint presentation from a research paper, and what to include (as well as what NOT to include). We’ll also touch on how to present a research paper at a conference.

Purpose of a Research Paper Presentation

The purpose of presenting your paper at a conference or forum is different from the purpose of conducting your research and writing up your paper. In this setting, you want to highlight your work instead of including every detail of your research. Likewise, a presentation is an excellent opportunity to get direct feedback from your colleagues in the field. But, perhaps the main reason for presenting your research is to spark interest in your work, and entice the audience to read your research paper.

So, yes, your presentation should summarize your work, but it needs to do so in a way that encourages your audience to seek out your work, and share their interest in your work with others. It’s not enough just to present your research dryly, to get information out there. More important is to encourage engagement with you, your research, and your work.

Tips for Creating Your Research Paper Presentation

In addition to basic PowerPoint presentation recommendations, which we’ll cover later in this article, think about the following when you’re putting together your research paper presentation:

• Know your audience : First and foremost, who are you presenting to? Students? Experts in your field? Potential funders? Non-experts? The truth is that your audience will probably have a bit of a mix of all of the above. So, make sure you keep that in mind as you prepare your presentation.

Know more about: Discover the Target Audience .

• Your audience is human : In other words, they may be tired, they might be wondering why they’re there, and they will, at some point, be tuning out. So, take steps to help them stay interested in your presentation. You can do that by utilizing effective visuals, summarize your conclusions early, and keep your research easy to understand.
• Running outline : It’s not IF your audience will drift off, or get lost…it’s WHEN. Keep a running outline, either within the presentation or via a handout. Use visual and verbal clues to highlight where you are in the presentation.
• Where does your research fit in? You should know of work related to your research, but you don’t have to cite every example. In addition, keep references in your presentation to the end, or in the handout. Your audience is there to hear about your work.
• Plan B : Anticipate possible questions for your presentation, and prepare slides that answer those specific questions in more detail, but have them at the END of your presentation. You can then jump to them, IF needed.

What Makes a PowerPoint Presentation Effective?

You’ve probably attended a presentation where the presenter reads off of their PowerPoint outline, word for word. Or where the presentation is busy, disorganized, or includes too much information. Here are some simple tips for creating an effective PowerPoint Presentation.

• Less is more: You want to give enough information to make your audience want to read your paper. So include details, but not too many, and avoid too many formulas and technical jargon.
• Clean and professional : Avoid excessive colors, distracting backgrounds, font changes, animations, and too many words. Instead of whole paragraphs, bullet points with just a few words to summarize and highlight are best.
• Know your real-estate : Each slide has a limited amount of space. Use it wisely. Typically one, no more than two points per slide. Balance each slide visually. Utilize illustrations when needed; not extraneously.
• Keep things visual : Remember, a PowerPoint presentation is a powerful tool to present things visually. Use visual graphs over tables and scientific illustrations over long text. Keep your visuals clean and professional, just like any text you include in your presentation.

Know more about our Scientific Illustrations Services .

Another key to an effective presentation is to practice, practice, and then practice some more. When you’re done with your PowerPoint, go through it with friends and colleagues to see if you need to add (or delete excessive) information. Double and triple check for typos and errors. Know the presentation inside and out, so when you’re in front of your audience, you’ll feel confident and comfortable.

How to Present a Research Paper

If your PowerPoint presentation is solid, and you’ve practiced your presentation, that’s half the battle. Follow the basic advice to keep your audience engaged and interested by making eye contact, encouraging questions, and presenting your information with enthusiasm.

We encourage you to read our articles on how to present a scientific journal article and tips on giving good scientific presentations .

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Improve the flow and writing of your research paper with Language Editing Plus. This service includes unlimited editing, manuscript formatting for the journal of your choice, reference check and even a customized cover letter. Learn more here , and get started today!

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Tips for Presentations: Home

• Tips for speaking in public
• How to reduce anxiety
• Resources (books and video courses)
• How to reference your presentation

Introduction

• A reader chooses when and where to focus attention; a speaker must focus a listener’s attention on what he or she is saying at this moment.
• A reader controls how fast he or she will move through a text; a speaker controls how fast listeners will move through an oral presentation.
• Readers have the option of going back and re-reading; listeners must grasp material as the speaker presents it.
• Readers have many graphic cues about order and importance of points and about the relationship among ideas; listeners rely on the speaker to be their guide and interpreter.

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Appeal to emotion

• Tell a story. Audiences respond better and be more convinced with stories that data.
• Use examples and anecdotes.
• Use surprises. This could be using a video when the audience thinks they are only getting slides.

What do you need to say?

The information for your presentation usually comes from a paper, case study, analysis, essay, or report. Choose only the key points from your paper. Go back to the question you were asked when you originally wrote your paper.

Design is key

Your presentation needs an introduction, body, and conclusion. Plan what your presentation will look like before you begin. Use only the important points from your paper to plan for sections of your presentation. These points then become the focus.

For each major section of your presentation, follow the 4 S Structure :

• Signpost the point (“First I’m going to point out the problem with...” “My second argument is that...” “It can be concluded that...”)
• State the point clearly and succinctly.
• Support the point with data, cases, description, relevant studies, etc.
• Summarize the point.

It is from these that you then design your slides and choose corresponding images and text.

10/20/30 rule

This rule states that a Power Point presentation should have no more than 10 slides, be 20 minutes long, and use no less than 30-point font.

This rule will keep the presentation on track so that you keep to time, as well as having a presentation that moves at a good pace and that is readable.

Do you need it?

• Use PowerPoint only if it will enhance audience attention, understanding, or retention.
• Be selective about what you put on slides. Don’t put the entire presentation on slides.
• Use visual and audio effects only if they serve your purpose and do not call attention to themselves. Make the technology serve the presentation. Don’t let it dominate.
• These are tools to help you tell your story. Don’t let the tools become the story.

Never read your presentation word for word. A good presentation is one where the presenter makes eye contact with his or her audience over the entire presentation. This means not reading your paper - your eyes are down, you lose your audience.

To help with this, make good notes, use cue cards, or put all notes on one sheet of paper. You can then glance at your notes for prompts. Better yet, learn and understand the material for your presentation, practice, and then use the images and text in your visual presentation as cues.

Tone and pacing

Avoid becoming monotone. Use variations in speed, inflections, and force to enhance your meaning and hold audience attention. Practice pronouncing words with which you are unfamiliar.

Some further points

Often times, a presenter does not notice their voice and body habits, which can be distracting when presenting. Remember, presenting is visual and oral story telling. With this in mind, understanding how a presentation looks and sounds is important. Keep these elements in mind:

Voice - “um,” “uh,” “okay”; everything sounding like a question (raising voice at the end of sentences); nervous laugh at the end of sentences; clearing the throat a lot, reading too quickly.

Body language - flipping hair back, playing with pen/pointer etc., rolling and unrolling notes, pushing sleeves up and down, playing with keys or coins in pockets, stepping back and forth/tapping foot, rocking body, touching face/adjusting glasses, turning rings on hand, waving hands around, tugging at shirt.

Visual aids - flipping overheads/slides too fast, talking to the screen.

Before you start!

Before you start working on your presentation:

• Check emails from your lecturer and the assignment question for how it should be presented,
• Check your learning materials and recommended reading on the course page,
• Read all instructions carefully - make sure you understand them and follow them exactly.

Here are some tips to keep in mind when creating an effective PowerPoint presentation:

• Remember to avoid too much text. You should keep your text brief and include talking points only. Detailed notes can be inserted into the notes section of PowerPoint, but only you should see those notes, unless a professor asks to see your notes to evaluate your PowerPoint as an assignment.
• Be consistent and clear with your font choices. Helvetica is a nice font for presentations. Make sure your font is large enough that an audience in a room would be able to see your text, even if audience members are sitting in the back of the room.
• Be careful with your color choices for text and background. You want to make sure your audience can read your text easily. Black on white text is easiest to read but is also boring for a presentation. Still, when you add color, just be sure you are adding color that works and doesn’t distract.
• Add images. Text on slides for every slide is boring. Add appropriate images to your slides. Relevant charts and graphs are excellent, as are pictures that will connect to your content.
• Make sure your main points are clear. Remember to connect your ideas well and provide background information and transitions when necessary.
• Keep your audience in mind. Your audience will affect the overall tone and appearance of your presentation. Sometimes, humor can be appropriate. Other times, a more serious tone may be necessary. Just as you evaluate your situation any time you write a paper, you should evaluate your situation for creating a PowerPoint presentation.

( Source: PowerPoints - Excelsior Online Writing Lab, licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution-4.0 International License .)

5 Things Every Presenter Needs To Know About People from Weinschenk on Vimeo .

Wienot films. (2011, May 9). How to give an awesome (PowerPoint) presentation. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i68a6M5FFBc

• Present Your Data Like a Pro Harvard Business Review article by Joel Schwartzberg

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Content included in this guide is adapted from:

• Handout from  St Mary's University
• Tips for Presentations from COM Library Libguides
• Presentation Tips ( The DO-IT Center ) 
• Next: Tips for speaking in public >>
• Last Updated: Apr 11, 2024 10:12 AM
• URL: https://lit.libguides.com/presentations

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