HOW TO ‘SURVIVE ’ AFTER GRADUATING IN MATERIALS SCIENCE V: Presentations at conferences (oral and poster)

This article describes our views and advice of how to give excellent oral presentations for Materials Science journals (and hopefully for broader audiences). Most of this discussion also applies to physics, chemistry and engineering audiences. Hereafter we will discuss the most usual forms of oral scientific communications, including oral presentations and poster presentations, invited talks and plenary talks at conferences, seminars and colloquia. Besides the ‘technical ’ or ‘nuts-and-bolts’ aspects of scientific oral communication, we once again emphasize a fundamental concept that we developed in the previous articles, namely: learn to play from the other side. We remind the reader that anything that matters in the world of science is peer-reviewed before it is seen by the ultimate readers. Therefore, we once again advise the reader to place him/herself in the mindset of those who are going to evaluate their work to anticipate their reactions and forestall objections. [As a matter of background, we also remind the reader that this is the fifth article of a series. It follows the first (in which we described how the graduate course on ‘Survival Skills for Scientists ’ was created at Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS) in Varennes (QC))10, the second (in which we offered basic advice on how to apply the skills and knowledge acquired in graduate school to finding a job and developing a career in the ‘real world ’ of science after graduating), the third (in which we described the Peer Review System and how it is used as a form of quality control in modern science)7 and the fourth article (in which we gave tips on how to write compelling papers)] 1