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Guidelines for Scholars/Presenters
This page contains information for scholars presenting papers at IAMCR Annual Conferences. This information addresses academic practices at IAMCR conference,. Please remember these are suggested guidelines intended to be helpful on a voluntary basis; they are not strict rules. For more information on the different types of sessions, please see the Guidelines for Section Heads and Working Group Chairs.
Academic Standards for Presenters
IAMCR strives to hold high academic standards for its conference, while also encouraging both established and new scholars to present new ideas and new works. Individual scholarly are encouraged to attend sessions organized by different Sections and Working Groups to help build and grow ideas and make connections with other scholars.
Individuals may submit 1 paper per Section or Working Group as lead author, and a maximum of 2 papers to a single IAMCR conference in general. Presenters are expected to bring fully developed work to the conference. Prior to the conference, it is expected that a completed paper will be submitted to Section, Working Group, Session Chairs, and/or Discussants. This is especially important for panels with discussants. A developed work typically includes an introduction with a problem statement, a review of relevant literature, analysis, conclusion, and references.
Commitment to Present (No Show/Cancellation Standards)
If a paper proposal is accepted for presentation to an IAMCR conference, the author (or at least one of the authors for a multi-authored paper) is expected to attend.
It is understood that the availability of travel funding is not always known to scholars before annual deadlines for IAMCR proposal submissions, which are typically in February. For this reason, scholars who submit a proposal and have it accepted sometimes cannot or do not attend the conference. Nevertheless, presenters who do not appear to present their paper can cause considerable disarray, especially if more than one presenter does not appear for the same panel session, lowering the quality of panel sessions and conferences as a whole.
Simply not attending the conference, or not communicating with the session chair, not only affects the quality of the conference, but it also affects relationships between scholars. Please note that Section Heads and Working Group Chairs may take into consideration whether individuals have a track record of not showing up when vetting for future conferences. In other words, an individual’s behavior can impact whether her/his paper or abstract even goes into the review process for future conferences.
Therefore, if no author is able to attend, then the lead author should make every effort to find someone else to present the paper on behalf of the non-attending author or authors. If no individual can be found to present the paper, then the session chair should be contacted as soon as possible. It may be possible to find a substitute paper and author. If none of these alternatives is possible, then the session chair should be given a copy of the presentation/paper to present in brief at the conference. This expectation also applies to poster session scholars.
Preparing a Paper Presentation
Most paper presentations are 12-15 minutes in length, although some sessions—such as high density sessions—have presentations 5-7 minutes in length. Session chairs should inform presenters of the session type and length of presentations. Because presentation time is limited, scholars should not expect to read their papers in full. Instead presenters are encouraged to talk about their work (i.e. work from an outline) and describe it, with the aim of encouraging audience members to seek a copy to read or to have a discussion with the presenter after the session.
If a presenter wishes to read from a short presentation script, here are some rough guidelines. For presenters reading scripts: 300 words of typed text takes about 2 minutes to read. Also, presenters should look up every so often to make eye contact with the audience and especially with the session chair who will be giving time signals during the presenter’s allotted time.
For individuals whose native language is not one of the three official IAMCR languages, or who are programmed into a panel where they will not be presenting in their native language, it can be helpful to prepare a short abstract written in one of the official languages, to communicate the key ideas of the presentation. It can also be useful to employ a PowerPoint presentation to present the key ideas in the language best understood by most of the anticipate audience, emphasizing research questions, methods used, summary of main findings, and discussion (See also the Scholarly Review Committee’s Note on Language).
Things to Remember
- Going over the time limit only prevents further discussion (it cuts into the session's time, which cannot be extended), and is disrespectful to the other presenters and the audience.
- Session chairs are encouraged to be strict with time. Presenters will be interrupted and stopped by the session chair if they do not keep to their allotted time.
- Technology should be used appropriately: technology should enhance a presentation, not be the presentation. Presenters should account for the setup of technology in the presentation time limit, or should set up before the session begins.
- Presenters should usually avoid telling the audience too much biographical information - this cuts into the time allotted to the presentation and the content of the paper. Also, it is understood that presentations are based upon larger works (full papers, book projects, dissertations, etc.) and that they will not capture all of the nuances of the author's ideas. It is therefore unnecessary for presenters to inform the audience of how difficult it is to condense ideas into 12-15 minutes, since most audience members are also scholars and already understand that preparing a presentation is a difficult task. There are many opportunities for authors to talk about their work after the session with interested individuals.
- It is often helpful for presenters to have hard copies of their papers available to distribute to interested audience members.
Preparing a Poster Presentation
An effective poster presentation functions in a similar fashion to a traditional paper presentation: it serves to promote scholars' work and stimulate scholarly discussion. A poster should concisely present the major points of the author's research and should also provide information on how one might contact the author. Because a poster session will contain many poster presentations, it is important for scholars to have a poster that is easy to read, and that can facilitate discussion about the research project.
A poster should take approximately 5 minutes for a viewer to read. The amount of text should be limited, and the language on the poster should be simplified and clear. Photographs, charts, graphs, and tables should be used when possible. The font of the poster should be larger - it should be legible from about 4-6 feet away (usually, this is a font size of 18-24 in a font such as Arial or Helvetica).
Posters should contain the major components of an article. Conventional sections in a poster include an abstract, introduction (which will include objectives & hypotheses), methodology, results, conclusion, and contact information.
Things to Remember
- Although it is tempting to put more information on a poster, too much information can become confusing for viewers and distract them from further inquiry into the research project.
- Presenters are responsible for providing their own push-pins.
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Guidelines for Scholars and Presenters
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