Editorial

Scientific Posters at the EANM Annual Congress

It has been a long-standing tradition that scientific post-ers form an integral and vital part of the scientific pro-gramme of a major professional congress. This has in-deed also been the case for our EANM Annual Con-gress, and scientific poster exhibits form part of mostimportant international medical congresses.

In recent years many congresses have tried to in-crease the significance and prominence given to posterexhibits. There are a number of reasons for this. First,the quality of the presented material is often very highand interesting, and useful information is put on display.Scientific posters have an immense potential educationalvalue. Secondly, it is clear for anyone who has ever pre-pared a poster that it usually represents real hard work –it takes time and care to prepare a good poster exhibit.Thirdly, it is an important forum for dissemination oforiginal information which cannot be presented in a dif-ferent form, i.e. an oral presentation, owing to lack ofsession time during the days available for the congress.For some data poster presentations are actually more ap-propriate since more time is available for viewers to as-similate methods, formulae graphs and illustrations. It isalso important to appreciate that a poster can and shouldreach a much wider audience than that for an oral pre-sentation. In view of the multiplicity of parallel oral ses-sions at most conferences, a poster which is exhibitedthroughout the conference does reach potentially all theparticipants in the event.

It is also apparent that it is not easy to find the bestformula for the optimal utilisation of scientific postersessions. Almost every conceivable modality has beentried, including discussion of posters by theme with aleading discussant, video transmission of posters intohalls for individual short presentation and discussion,one-minute oral discussion poster sessions: you name it,it has been tried. Efforts have also been made to makethese poster sessions more “palatable”, and wine andcheese events have been organised around the specificdiscussion of themes or groups of posters. Last but notleast, it has been decided, again in order to increase theawareness and importance of the poster programme, thatabstracts submitted to conference for poster presentation

will also be published in the Congress issue of the Euro-pean Journal of Nuclear Medicine.

The publication of an abstract does entail a number ofconsequences. The data become part of peer-reviewedliterature and can be cited; furthermore, publication con-fers a degree of credibility and renders the authors ac-countable for the accuracy of the data printed. Interest-ingly it also entails expenditure, both for the CongressOrganiser and for the publisher.

It has become apparent that the number of poster ex-hibits which, after acceptance, have not reached theCongress in any shape or form is increasing. There isnothing more disturbing than to watch empty posterspaces at poster exhibits. This is a trend which has nowbeen detected and which will require action. Naturallythere will always be special and rare circumstanceswhere authors can fully justify why an accepted posterhas not been exhibited. Nevertheless, what is rare is rareand should remain an exception. There is something elsewhich is developing and this will be investigated.

It is simply not acceptable to submit abstracts forposter presentation, have these judged and accepted by ajury and then not exhibit these at the respective confer-ence. It is unfair to all attendees of a scientific confer-ence, it is unfair to those who took the trouble and carein the preparation of posters, and it is unfair to those col-leagues who might have been able to exhibit a poster inlieu of the absentees! Both the EANM Executive Com-mittee and the Editor of the EJNM are beginning to dis-cuss the implications of the trend as described above,should it be confirmed or indeed apparent at further con-ferences. A number of mechanisms are at our disposaland in these days of data bases and information technol-ogy, it will be not too difficult to spot whether this phe-nomenon is of real concern, whether there are recurringculprits and what are the real causes for this situation. Itmay even be, as we hope, that the simple publication ofthis editorial will have the desired effect.

A. Bischof-Delaloye, EANM PresidentP.J. Ell, Editor EJNM

Eur J Nucl Med (1999) 26:1Vol. 26, No. 1, January 1999 – © Springer-Verlag 1999