Research Poster
Definition
A research poster condenses a piece of work onto one sheet: question, method, figures, results, conclusion, references, authors and affiliations. Physically it is typically A0, 841 by 1189 millimetres, printed once and carried to the venue in a tube. The file behind it is a single PDF, often tens of megabytes because the figures are at print resolution, and that file is exactly what people want afterwards. Putting it at an address, with the address printed on the poster itself, replaces the ritual of strangers photographing your corner at an angle. It is not a publication and should not be dressed up as one, but it is citable as a conference presentation and belongs on your CV.
Why It Matters
Whether the file opens or downloads decides whether it is read at all. Someone standing in a hall scans a code, receives a 40 MB download into a folder they will never revisit, and that is the end of it; the same file rendered in the browser gets read there and then. Size is the other half of the problem — a poster built from uncompressed TIFFs can pass 100 MB, which on conference wifi may not arrive at all. Flattening the figures to somewhere between 150 and 200 dpi keeps the poster sharp at print size while removing most of the weight.
How It Works
Export at full size as a PDF and check it opens at 100 per cent with the small type still legible. Serve it with a Content-Type of application/pdf and a Content-Disposition of inline, so the browser renders it in its built-in viewer where the reader can zoom, rather than saving it straight to disk. Keep the address short, because it is going onto the printed sheet as a QR code and often as readable text underneath — a long address with a random string in it is neither readable nor printable. Consider putting a page in front of the file: a short HTML page carrying the title, authors, abstract and a link to the PDF is indexable by search engines and gives you somewhere to add the eventual paper. Then do not move the file, because the printed code cannot be changed.
Real-World Example
A PhD student exports her poster and gets a 62 MB PDF. Before travelling she downsamples the figures to 9 MB, uploads it to bakshi-poster-2026.99helpers.site and prints the code in the bottom corner of the sheet. Over two days the page records around forty opens, four of which turn into emails. The old routine, photographs of the board at an angle, produced none.
Common Mistakes
- ✕Serving the PDF as a forced download — the reader ends up with a file in a folder instead of a poster on screen, and most never open it
- ✕Uploading the print-ready export untouched — 80 MB over conference wifi arrives slowly or not at all
- ✕Printing an address you have not tested — a code leading to a typo cannot be fixed once the sheet is on the board
Related Terms
Preprint
A preprint is a complete research paper made public before, or instead of, journal peer review. It is normally a PDF at a fixed address that other work can cite while the paper is still under review.
Course Handout
A course handout is the reading, slide deck, problem sheet or set of notes a teacher gives a class, published at an address students can reach all term. It is usually a PDF or a plain page, linked from a syllabus or a slide.
QR Code
A QR code is a square barcode that stores a short piece of text, most often a URL, so a phone camera can open it without anyone typing. It is a picture of a link.
Content-Disposition
Content-Disposition is an HTTP response header that tells the browser whether to show a file in the window or save it to disk, and what name to suggest when it saves. It is how one URL can either open a PDF in a tab or start a download.
PDF Hosting
Publishing a .pdf at a web address so it opens in the reader's browser rather than landing in their downloads folder. The header the host sends decides which of those happens.
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