Scientific presentation guidelines

Oral presentation guidelines
Poster presentation guidelines
Live pitch guidelines (for both oral and poster presenters)

Oral presentation guidelines

Oral presentations for EPSC2021 should be submitted in the form of a 10-minute video (15 minutes for solicited authors) in .mp4 format. Session conveners will check that videos do not exceed the 10-minutes limit (15-minutes limit respectively for solicited authors) and will contact authors for resubmission if they do. We kindly request that authors consider the following guidelines:

• Your oral presentations will be in English and cover the same material as your abstract.
• Your video will consist of you presenting a set of slides or other visuals, preferably accompanied by a webcam video of you delivering the content, though this is not required. For further instructions please refer to the Tutorial.
• The aspect ratio of your slides should preferentially be 16:9 (not 4:3), so that videos are also rendered at that aspect ratio The aspect ratio is chosen at the moment of creating your slide show in the software tool of your choice.
• Please include an introductory slide with your title, name, affiliation and contact details as you would for a live presentation.
• Be creative. Make good use of visuals and audio to make your talk engaging and accessible (see notes below).
• Text on slides should be clear and concise with correct spelling. Please use fonts that are clear to read (e.g. Arial, Calibri or Verdana), and ensure there is good colour contrast between the text and the background.
• Prepare all diagrams or charts neatly and legibly beforehand, in a size sufficient to be read on screen (this includes annotations).
• Ensure that you leave viewers enough time to read and digest the material or data that you show. We recommend no more than one slide per minute speaking time.
• Bullet points and enumerated lists are easier to digest than large blocks of text.
• Your video must only include content that you are entitled to use. You must not include third-party intellectual property (such as copyrighted imagery, music, video clips etc) unless you have permission or are otherwise legally entitled to do so. Please make sure that you include the required credits or acknowledgements in your video.
• Each session will have a dedicated Slack channel for asynchronous discussion, so please monitor this regularly over the full duration of the conference to engage with attendees interested in your work. You should also feel free to advertise your oral presentation via the session-wide discussion board, and via social media hashtag #EPSC2021.
• Please note that the Slack channels will only be accessible to EPSC2021 registered participants.

Accessibility and readability

• The minimum font size you should use for body is 24pt or 18pt for minor text (e.g. the slide number). Use sans serif fonts such as Arial, Calibri, Verdana or Helvetica that are easier to read.
• You should ensure that there is sufficient contrast between your text and the background (you can check this with online tools e.g. at: https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/). Try to use colour schemes suitable for participants with colour vision deficiencies (e.g., red-green colour blindness).
• Make sure that you speak clearly and not too quickly, aim for about 140-150 words/minute.
• If your presentation includes visuals e.g. images or video, make sure you describe what people are seeing as part of your narration for your presentation.
• In PowerPoint, you can use automatic subtitles when presenting your talk (Slideshow/Always use subtitles). However, if you choose the “Public” option when submitting your talk, you agree to have it uploaded to the EPSC2021 Vimeo Channel and we will generate Vimeo's automatic closed captions for your talk. You will be given the opportunity to correct these or provide translations.
• PowerPoint offers an in-built accessibility checker (Tools>Check Accessibility), which can draw attention to accessibility issues in your presentation.

Public/Private settings for oral presentations

• When you upload your presentation, you will be asked to mark it as “Public” or “Private”.
• Public videos will be uploaded to the EPSC2021 Vimeo Channel and will be publicly accessible to EPSC registered participants and to the wider public. We encourage you to choose this open access option, and it is likely that your presentation will receive more views. Note that commenting will be restricted to EPSC participants, via the Slack channel.
• If your presentation contains material that you do not wish to be shared publicly, you can choose the “Private” option. In this case, your video will be accessible only to registered EPSC2021 participants.
• Oral presentations will be available via the Copernicus website for the duration of EPSC2021 and on the archived site for one year afterwards. The “Public” presentations will be available on the EPSC2021 Vimeo channel during and after the meeting, although they may be removed at a later date on request.

Poster presentation guidelines

Poster presentations for EPSC2021 must be formatted to enable comfortable on-screen viewing by participants. The 'traditional style' of a single large sheet of A0 is not appropriate and will not be accepted. Any authors uploading presentations in A0 format will be contacted by the conveners and asked to resubmit. We request that authors follow these guidelines:

• Your poster presentation should be in English and cover the same material as your abstract.
• Posters should be uploaded as PDF documents containing a maximum of six landscape slides (the equivalent of standard PowerPoint slides). For details of how to make an interactive poster, see the Tutorial.
• The slides must be self-contained and are designed to be read: a bit more text can be added than would be appropriate for an oral presentation.
• You are free to organise your slides as you wish, but a potential structure is as follows:
  ‒ Slide 1: Title/author details; abstract/overview of key results.
  ‒ Slide 2: Introduction, and necessary background.
  ‒ Slides 3-4: Methodology and results.
  ‒ Slide 5: Discussion, conclusions.
  ‒ Slide 6: Acknowledgements/references.
• Your title/name/affiliation/contact details should be clearly highlighted at the top of slide 1.
• We encourage you to have your name and a slide number on each successive slide.
• Text on slides should be clear and concise with correct spelling. Please use fonts that are clear to read (e.g. Arial, Calibri or Verdana), and ensure there is good colour contrast between the text and the background.
• Prepare all diagrams or charts neatly and legibly beforehand, in a size sufficient to be read on screen, including annotations (see notes on accessibility below).
• Links to web-based content are welcome.
• Make good use of colour to highlight different features within the text and charts.
• Bullet points and enumerated lists are easier to digest than large blocks of text.
• Be aware that some users may have restricted bandwidth capabilities. Where possible, please down-sample images in your poster to printable standard (150-300 dpi). In Adobe Acrobat, this can be achieved by “Save as Other > Optimized PDF”, adjusting the pixel sampling accordingly. On a PC, PowerPoint offers size options when exporting to PDF.
• Please note that the Mac version of PowerPoint does not save hyperlinks when it exports a file as a PDF. To save an interactive poster from PowerPoint on a Mac, use an online converter tool (e.g., https://smallpdf.com/ppt-to-pdf) or upload your PowerPoint file to Google Drive, open it in Google Slides and download it as a PDF (you may need to check the formatting).
• Each session will have a dedicated Slack channel for asynchronous discussion, so please monitor this regularly over the full duration of the conference.
• You should feel free to advertise your poster via the session-wide discussion board, and via social media. Indeed, the six slides can be posted as social-media images to promote discussion, using the hashtag #EPSC2021. Please note that the Slack channels will only be accessible to EPSC2021 registered participants.

Accessibility and readability

• The minimum font size you should use is 16pt.
• Use sans serif fonts such as Arial, Calibri, Verdana or Helvetica that are easier to read.
• You should ensure that there is sufficient contrast between your text and the background (you can check this with online tools e.g. at: https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/). Try to use colour schemes suitable for participants with colour vision deficiencies (e.g., red-green colour blindness).
• Optimise your poster for screen readers by using the built-in title and sub-title fields in PowerPoint and Keynote to provide a navigable structure, and by adding alt-text descriptions to images. Try not to embed text within images, as a screen reader will not be able to pick this up.
• PowerPoint offers an in-built accessibility checker tool (Tools>Check Accessibility), which can draw attention to accessibility issues in your presentation.

Public/Private settings for poster presentations

• When you upload your poster presentation, you will be asked to mark it as “Public” or “Private”. We encourage you to choose the open access “Public” option, and it is likely that your presentation will receive more views.
• If your presentation contains material that you do not wish to be shared publicly, you can choose the “Private” option. In this case, your poster will only be accessible to registered EPSC2021 participants.
• Note that commenting will be restricted to EPSC participants, via the Slack channel.
• Posters will be available via the Copernicus website for the duration of EPSC2021 and on the archived site for one year afterwards.