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Ten simple rules for effective presentation slides

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Biomedical Engineering and the Center for Public Health Genomics, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, United States of America

• Kristen M. Naegle

Published: December 2, 2021

• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009554
• Reader Comments

Citation: Naegle KM (2021) Ten simple rules for effective presentation slides. PLoS Comput Biol 17(12): e1009554. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009554

Copyright: © 2021 Kristen M. Naegle. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Funding: The author received no specific funding for this work.

Competing interests: The author has declared no competing interests exist.

Introduction

The “presentation slide” is the building block of all academic presentations, whether they are journal clubs, thesis committee meetings, short conference talks, or hour-long seminars. A slide is a single page projected on a screen, usually built on the premise of a title, body, and figures or tables and includes both what is shown and what is spoken about that slide. Multiple slides are strung together to tell the larger story of the presentation. While there have been excellent 10 simple rules on giving entire presentations [ 1 , 2 ], there was an absence in the fine details of how to design a slide for optimal effect—such as the design elements that allow slides to convey meaningful information, to keep the audience engaged and informed, and to deliver the information intended and in the time frame allowed. As all research presentations seek to teach, effective slide design borrows from the same principles as effective teaching, including the consideration of cognitive processing your audience is relying on to organize, process, and retain information. This is written for anyone who needs to prepare slides from any length scale and for most purposes of conveying research to broad audiences. The rules are broken into 3 primary areas. Rules 1 to 5 are about optimizing the scope of each slide. Rules 6 to 8 are about principles around designing elements of the slide. Rules 9 to 10 are about preparing for your presentation, with the slides as the central focus of that preparation.

Rule 1: Include only one idea per slide

Each slide should have one central objective to deliver—the main idea or question [ 3 – 5 ]. Often, this means breaking complex ideas down into manageable pieces (see Fig 1 , where “background” information has been split into 2 key concepts). In another example, if you are presenting a complex computational approach in a large flow diagram, introduce it in smaller units, building it up until you finish with the entire diagram. The progressive buildup of complex information means that audiences are prepared to understand the whole picture, once you have dedicated time to each of the parts. You can accomplish the buildup of components in several ways—for example, using presentation software to cover/uncover information. Personally, I choose to create separate slides for each piece of information content I introduce—where the final slide has the entire diagram, and I use cropping or a cover on duplicated slides that come before to hide what I’m not yet ready to include. I use this method in order to ensure that each slide in my deck truly presents one specific idea (the new content) and the amount of the new information on that slide can be described in 1 minute (Rule 2), but it comes with the trade-off—a change to the format of one of the slides in the series often means changes to all slides.

• PPT PowerPoint slide
• PNG larger image
• TIFF original image

Top left: A background slide that describes the background material on a project from my lab. The slide was created using a PowerPoint Design Template, which had to be modified to increase default text sizes for this figure (i.e., the default text sizes are even worse than shown here). Bottom row: The 2 new slides that break up the content into 2 explicit ideas about the background, using a central graphic. In the first slide, the graphic is an explicit example of the SH2 domain of PI3-kinase interacting with a phosphorylation site (Y754) on the PDGFR to describe the important details of what an SH2 domain and phosphotyrosine ligand are and how they interact. I use that same graphic in the second slide to generalize all binding events and include redundant text to drive home the central message (a lot of possible interactions might occur in the human proteome, more than we can currently measure). Top right highlights which rules were used to move from the original slide to the new slide. Specific changes as highlighted by Rule 7 include increasing contrast by changing the background color, increasing font size, changing to sans serif fonts, and removing all capital text and underlining (using bold to draw attention). PDGFR, platelet-derived growth factor receptor.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009554.g001

Rule 2: Spend only 1 minute per slide

When you present your slide in the talk, it should take 1 minute or less to discuss. This rule is really helpful for planning purposes—a 20-minute presentation should have somewhere around 20 slides. Also, frequently giving your audience new information to feast on helps keep them engaged. During practice, if you find yourself spending more than a minute on a slide, there’s too much for that one slide—it’s time to break up the content into multiple slides or even remove information that is not wholly central to the story you are trying to tell. Reduce, reduce, reduce, until you get to a single message, clearly described, which takes less than 1 minute to present.

Rule 3: Make use of your heading

When each slide conveys only one message, use the heading of that slide to write exactly the message you are trying to deliver. Instead of titling the slide “Results,” try “CTNND1 is central to metastasis” or “False-positive rates are highly sample specific.” Use this landmark signpost to ensure that all the content on that slide is related exactly to the heading and only the heading. Think of the slide heading as the introductory or concluding sentence of a paragraph and the slide content the rest of the paragraph that supports the main point of the paragraph. An audience member should be able to follow along with you in the “paragraph” and come to the same conclusion sentence as your header at the end of the slide.

Rule 4: Include only essential points

While you are speaking, audience members’ eyes and minds will be wandering over your slide. If you have a comment, detail, or figure on a slide, have a plan to explicitly identify and talk about it. If you don’t think it’s important enough to spend time on, then don’t have it on your slide. This is especially important when faculty are present. I often tell students that thesis committee members are like cats: If you put a shiny bauble in front of them, they’ll go after it. Be sure to only put the shiny baubles on slides that you want them to focus on. Putting together a thesis meeting for only faculty is really an exercise in herding cats (if you have cats, you know this is no easy feat). Clear and concise slide design will go a long way in helping you corral those easily distracted faculty members.

Rule 5: Give credit, where credit is due

An exception to Rule 4 is to include proper citations or references to work on your slide. When adding citations, names of other researchers, or other types of credit, use a consistent style and method for adding this information to your slides. Your audience will then be able to easily partition this information from the other content. A common mistake people make is to think “I’ll add that reference later,” but I highly recommend you put the proper reference on the slide at the time you make it, before you forget where it came from. Finally, in certain kinds of presentations, credits can make it clear who did the work. For the faculty members heading labs, it is an effective way to connect your audience with the personnel in the lab who did the work, which is a great career booster for that person. For graduate students, it is an effective way to delineate your contribution to the work, especially in meetings where the goal is to establish your credentials for meeting the rigors of a PhD checkpoint.

Rule 6: Use graphics effectively

As a rule, you should almost never have slides that only contain text. Build your slides around good visualizations. It is a visual presentation after all, and as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. However, on the flip side, don’t muddy the point of the slide by putting too many complex graphics on a single slide. A multipanel figure that you might include in a manuscript should often be broken into 1 panel per slide (see Rule 1 ). One way to ensure that you use the graphics effectively is to make a point to introduce the figure and its elements to the audience verbally, especially for data figures. For example, you might say the following: “This graph here shows the measured false-positive rate for an experiment and each point is a replicate of the experiment, the graph demonstrates …” If you have put too much on one slide to present in 1 minute (see Rule 2 ), then the complexity or number of the visualizations is too much for just one slide.

Rule 7: Design to avoid cognitive overload

The type of slide elements, the number of them, and how you present them all impact the ability for the audience to intake, organize, and remember the content. For example, a frequent mistake in slide design is to include full sentences, but reading and verbal processing use the same cognitive channels—therefore, an audience member can either read the slide, listen to you, or do some part of both (each poorly), as a result of cognitive overload [ 4 ]. The visual channel is separate, allowing images/videos to be processed with auditory information without cognitive overload [ 6 ] (Rule 6). As presentations are an exercise in listening, and not reading, do what you can to optimize the ability of the audience to listen. Use words sparingly as “guide posts” to you and the audience about major points of the slide. In fact, you can add short text fragments, redundant with the verbal component of the presentation, which has been shown to improve retention [ 7 ] (see Fig 1 for an example of redundant text that avoids cognitive overload). Be careful in the selection of a slide template to minimize accidentally adding elements that the audience must process, but are unimportant. David JP Phillips argues (and effectively demonstrates in his TEDx talk [ 5 ]) that the human brain can easily interpret 6 elements and more than that requires a 500% increase in human cognition load—so keep the total number of elements on the slide to 6 or less. Finally, in addition to the use of short text, white space, and the effective use of graphics/images, you can improve ease of cognitive processing further by considering color choices and font type and size. Here are a few suggestions for improving the experience for your audience, highlighting the importance of these elements for some specific groups:

• Use high contrast colors and simple backgrounds with low to no color—for persons with dyslexia or visual impairment.
• Use sans serif fonts and large font sizes (including figure legends), avoid italics, underlining (use bold font instead for emphasis), and all capital letters—for persons with dyslexia or visual impairment [ 8 ].
• Use color combinations and palettes that can be understood by those with different forms of color blindness [ 9 ]. There are excellent tools available to identify colors to use and ways to simulate your presentation or figures as they might be seen by a person with color blindness (easily found by a web search).
• In this increasing world of virtual presentation tools, consider practicing your talk with a closed captioning system capture your words. Use this to identify how to improve your speaking pace, volume, and annunciation to improve understanding by all members of your audience, but especially those with a hearing impairment.

Rule 8: Design the slide so that a distracted person gets the main takeaway

It is very difficult to stay focused on a presentation, especially if it is long or if it is part of a longer series of talks at a conference. Audience members may get distracted by an important email, or they may start dreaming of lunch. So, it’s important to look at your slide and ask “If they heard nothing I said, will they understand the key concept of this slide?” The other rules are set up to help with this, including clarity of the single point of the slide (Rule 1), titling it with a major conclusion (Rule 3), and the use of figures (Rule 6) and short text redundant to your verbal description (Rule 7). However, with each slide, step back and ask whether its main conclusion is conveyed, even if someone didn’t hear your accompanying dialog. Importantly, ask if the information on the slide is at the right level of abstraction. For example, do you have too many details about the experiment, which hides the conclusion of the experiment (i.e., breaking Rule 1)? If you are worried about not having enough details, keep a slide at the end of your slide deck (after your conclusions and acknowledgments) with the more detailed information that you can refer to during a question and answer period.

Rule 9: Iteratively improve slide design through practice

Well-designed slides that follow the first 8 rules are intended to help you deliver the message you intend and in the amount of time you intend to deliver it in. The best way to ensure that you nailed slide design for your presentation is to practice, typically a lot. The most important aspects of practicing a new presentation, with an eye toward slide design, are the following 2 key points: (1) practice to ensure that you hit, each time through, the most important points (for example, the text guide posts you left yourself and the title of the slide); and (2) practice to ensure that as you conclude the end of one slide, it leads directly to the next slide. Slide transitions, what you say as you end one slide and begin the next, are important to keeping the flow of the “story.” Practice is when I discover that the order of my presentation is poor or that I left myself too few guideposts to remember what was coming next. Additionally, during practice, the most frequent things I have to improve relate to Rule 2 (the slide takes too long to present, usually because I broke Rule 1, and I’m delivering too much information for one slide), Rule 4 (I have a nonessential detail on the slide), and Rule 5 (I forgot to give a key reference). The very best type of practice is in front of an audience (for example, your lab or peers), where, with fresh perspectives, they can help you identify places for improving slide content, design, and connections across the entirety of your talk.

Rule 10: Design to mitigate the impact of technical disasters

The real presentation almost never goes as we planned in our heads or during our practice. Maybe the speaker before you went over time and now you need to adjust. Maybe the computer the organizer is having you use won’t show your video. Maybe your internet is poor on the day you are giving a virtual presentation at a conference. Technical problems are routinely part of the practice of sharing your work through presentations. Hence, you can design your slides to limit the impact certain kinds of technical disasters create and also prepare alternate approaches. Here are just a few examples of the preparation you can do that will take you a long way toward avoiding a complete fiasco:

• Save your presentation as a PDF—if the version of Keynote or PowerPoint on a host computer cause issues, you still have a functional copy that has a higher guarantee of compatibility.
• In using videos, create a backup slide with screen shots of key results. For example, if I have a video of cell migration, I’ll be sure to have a copy of the start and end of the video, in case the video doesn’t play. Even if the video worked, you can pause on this backup slide and take the time to highlight the key results in words if someone could not see or understand the video.
• Avoid animations, such as figures or text that flash/fly-in/etc. Surveys suggest that no one likes movement in presentations [ 3 , 4 ]. There is likely a cognitive underpinning to the almost universal distaste of pointless animations that relates to the idea proposed by Kosslyn and colleagues that animations are salient perceptual units that captures direct attention [ 4 ]. Although perceptual salience can be used to draw attention to and improve retention of specific points, if you use this approach for unnecessary/unimportant things (like animation of your bullet point text, fly-ins of figures, etc.), then you will distract your audience from the important content. Finally, animations cause additional processing burdens for people with visual impairments [ 10 ] and create opportunities for technical disasters if the software on the host system is not compatible with your planned animation.

Conclusions

These rules are just a start in creating more engaging presentations that increase audience retention of your material. However, there are wonderful resources on continuing on the journey of becoming an amazing public speaker, which includes understanding the psychology and neuroscience behind human perception and learning. For example, as highlighted in Rule 7, David JP Phillips has a wonderful TEDx talk on the subject [ 5 ], and “PowerPoint presentation flaws and failures: A psychological analysis,” by Kosslyn and colleagues is deeply detailed about a number of aspects of human cognition and presentation style [ 4 ]. There are many books on the topic, including the popular “Presentation Zen” by Garr Reynolds [ 11 ]. Finally, although briefly touched on here, the visualization of data is an entire topic of its own that is worth perfecting for both written and oral presentations of work, with fantastic resources like Edward Tufte’s “The Visual Display of Quantitative Information” [ 12 ] or the article “Visualization of Biomedical Data” by O’Donoghue and colleagues [ 13 ].

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the countless presenters, colleagues, students, and mentors from which I have learned a great deal from on effective presentations. Also, a thank you to the wonderful resources published by organizations on how to increase inclusivity. A special thanks to Dr. Jason Papin and Dr. Michael Guertin on early feedback of this editorial.

• View Article
• PubMed/NCBI
• Google Scholar
• 3. Teaching VUC for Making Better PowerPoint Presentations. n.d. Available from: https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/making-better-powerpoint-presentations/#baddeley .
• 8. Creating a dyslexia friendly workplace. Dyslexia friendly style guide. nd. Available from: https://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/advice/employers/creating-a-dyslexia-friendly-workplace/dyslexia-friendly-style-guide .
• 9. Cravit R. How to Use Color Blind Friendly Palettes to Make Your Charts Accessible. 2019. Available from: https://venngage.com/blog/color-blind-friendly-palette/ .
• 10. Making your conference presentation more accessible to blind and partially sighted people. n.d. Available from: https://vocaleyes.co.uk/services/resources/guidelines-for-making-your-conference-presentation-more-accessible-to-blind-and-partially-sighted-people/ .
• 11. Reynolds G. Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery. 2nd ed. New Riders Pub; 2011.
• 12. Tufte ER. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. 2nd ed. Graphics Press; 2001.

Conference Presentation References

This page contains reference examples for works presented at conferences and meetings, including the following:

• Conference presentation
• Abstract of a conference presentation

1. Conference presentation

Evans, A. C., Jr., Garbarino, J., Bocanegra, E., Kinscherff, R. T., & Márquez-Greene, N. (2019, August 8–11). Gun violence: An event on the power of community [Conference presentation]. APA 2019 Convention, Chicago, IL, United States. https://convention.apa.org/2019-video

• Parenthetical citation : (Evans et al., 2019)
• Narrative citation : Evans et al. (2019)
• Provide the names of the presenters in the author element of the reference.
• Provide the full dates of the conference in the date element of the reference.
• Describe the presentation in square brackets after the title. The description is flexible (e.g., “[Conference session],” “[Paper presentation],” “[Poster session],” “[Keynote address]”).
• Provide the name of the conference or meeting and its location in the source element of the reference.
• If video of the conference presentation is available, include a link at the end of the reference.

2. Abstract of a conference presentation

Cacioppo, S. (2019, April 25–28). Evolutionary theory of social connections: Past, present, and future [Conference presentation abstract]. Ninety-ninth annual convention of the Western Psychological Association, Pasadena, CA, United States. https://westernpsych.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/WPA-Program-2019-Final-2.pdf

• Parenthetical citation : (Cacioppo, 2019)
• Narrative citation : Cacioppo (2019)
• To cite only the abstract of a conference presentation, include the word “abstract” as part of the bracketed description (e.g., “[Conference presentation abstract]”).

Conference presentation references are covered in the seventh edition Publication Manual Section 10.5

Home / Guides / Citation Guides / How to Cite Sources / How to Cite a PowerPoint Presentation in APA, MLA or Chicago

How to Cite a PowerPoint Presentation in APA, MLA or Chicago

Let’s be honest: Sometimes the best information for a paper comes straight from a professor’s PowerPoint presentation. But did you know that source needs to be cited?

Whether you’re making use of your instructor’s lecture materials or pulling information from a Powerpoint found online, you need to make sure to cite your sources if you use information from it in a project or paper.

Here’s a run -t hrough of everything this page includes:  

• Cite a PowerPoint Presentation in MLA format
• Cite a PowerPoint Presentation in APA format
• Cite a PowerPoint Presentation in Chicago Style

By now, you’re probably familiar with how to cite websites, books or journal articles, but not as knowledgeable about how to cite a Powerpoint presentation. In actuality, citing PowerPoint presentations aren’t all that different from citing written materials, so don’t let yourself be phased! It’s not too hard and compiling an MLA works cited or APA reference page doesn’t take too long—each one should take just a few minutes to create.

To help you with the process, we’ve put together a handy guide demonstrating how to cite a PowerPoint presentation in three commonly used citation styles: MLA, APA and Chicago.

Let’s start by looking for basic information you’ll need for the citation.

Information you may need to cite a PowerPoint Presentation:

• Author or authors of the presentation
• Presentation title
• Date of publication/presentation
• Place of publication/where the presentation was given
• URL (if used to locate the presentation)

Cite a PowerPoint Presentation in MLA format:

MLA format citation structure:

Author Last Name, First Name. Presentation Title. Month Year, URL. PowerPoint Presentation.

Example citation :

Park, Lisa. Effective Working Teams . Jan. 2011, https://www.company.meetings/teams. PowerPoint Presentation.

In-text citation structure:

(Last Name)

Example in-text citation:

Cite a PowerPoint Presentation in APA format:  

APA reference structure:

Author or Presenter Last Name, Middle Initial. First Initial. (Date of publication). Title of presentation [PowerPoint presentation]. Conference Name, Location. URL

Example reference:

Park, L. (2011, March 24-28). Effective working teams [PowerPoint presentation]. Regional Dairy Workers National Conference, New York, NY, United States. https://www.company.meetings/teams

Cite a PowerPoint Presentation in Chicago Style:

Chicago citation structure:

Author Last Name, First Name. “Presentation Title.” Lecture, Location of Lecture, Month Day, Year.

Example citation:

Park, Lisa. “Effective Working Teams.” Lecture, The Plaza Hotel, New York, NY, January 11, 2011.

Troubleshooting

Solution #1: how to cite a powerpoint that has multiple authors..

For a presentation with multiple authors, list the authors alphabetically by last name for the full reference citation. The citation will list each author by Last Name, First Initial.

If the PowerPoint has just two authors, separate them with a comma and an ampersand (&). If the PowerPoint has more than two authors, list the authors separated by commas.

Reference examples:

Felner, D., & Nguy, A. (2021 April 10-12). The history of Claymation [Slideshow]. Animation Now, Los Angeles, CA, United States.

Felner, D., Nguy, A., Becham, G. (2021 April 10-12). The history of Claymation [Slideshow]. Animation Now, Los Angeles, CA, United States.

For an in-text citation for two authors, give both surnames separated by an ampersand (&) followed by a comma and the year of publication or presentation.

For an in-text citation for three or more authors, list the first author’s surname followed by “et al.” followed by a comma and the year of publication or presentation.

In-text citation examples:

(Felner & Nguy, 2021)

(Felner et al., 2021)

For a PowerPoint with two presenters or authors, include both names in the full works-cited citation. The names need to be written as follows: First presenter’s Last Name, First Name, and then the second presenter’s First Name and Last Name.

For an in-text citation, simply list the surnames of both presenters.

In-text citation example:

(Nguy and Felner)

Work-cited entry example:

Nguy, Anna and Dominic Felner. The History of Claymation. Apr. 2021. PowerPoint Presentation.

For a PowerPoint with three or more presenters, only list one presenter’s name followed by a comma and “et al.”

For an in-text citation for three or more authors or presenters , list the surname given in the full works-cited citation followed by “et al.”

(Nguy et al.)

Nguy, Anna et al. The History of Claymation. Apr. 2021. PowerPoint Presentation.

Solution #2 How to cite a slideshow that wasn’t made with PowerPoint

If making a full works-cited citation for a slideshow that was made with another program other than PowerPoint, include the medium in brackets instead of PowerPoint.

If the presentation is not in PowerPoint, and you can’t determine what software was used, include the word “slideshow” in brackets in place of PowerPoint.

Nguy, A. (2021 April 10-12). The history of Claymation [Prezi presentation]. Animation Now, Los Angeles, CA, United States.

Nguy, A. (2021 April 10-12). The history of Claymation [Slideshow]. Animation Now, Los Angeles, CA, United States.

The in-text citation will be formatted like any other APA in-text citation (author last name, year).

(Nguy, 2021)

At the end of your full works-cited citation, include the program the slideshow was made with, formatted as:  ______ Presentation.

If you are uncertain of the program used, end your citation with “slideshow” followed by a period. Nguy, Anna. The history of Claymation. Apr. 2021. Prezi Presentation. Nguy, Anna. The history of Claymation . Apr. 2021. Slideshow.

The in-text citation will be formatted like any other MLA in-text citation (author last name).

Hello all paper writers! Take a moment to try our spell checker , or refresh your knowledge on English basics with our EasyBib grammar guides ! Discover a determiner definition , learn what is an adverb , review an interjection list , and more.   

Updated April 26, 2021.

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To cite PowerPoint presentation slides, include the author name, year/date of presentation, the title, the source description, the website and/or university name, and the URL where the source can be found.

If the PowerPoint presentation is not accessible to the reader, cite the slides as personal communication.

If you want to cite a PowerPoint in MLA or APA style, you need to have basic information including the name of the author(s), title of the presentation, date and place of publication, and URL. For in-text citations, you need to include only the author name(s) in MLA style and author name(s) and year in APA style.  

APA in-text citations

(Author Surname, publication year)

(Dhanalakshmi, 2004)

MLA in-text citations

(Author Surname)

(Dhanalakshmi)

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How to prepare and deliver an effective oral presentation

• Related content
• Peer review
• Lucia Hartigan , registrar 1 ,
• Fionnuala Mone , fellow in maternal fetal medicine 1 ,
• Mary Higgins , consultant obstetrician 2
• 1 National Maternity Hospital, Dublin, Ireland
• 2 National Maternity Hospital, Dublin; Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Medicine and Medical Sciences, University College Dublin
• luciahartigan{at}hotmail.com

The success of an oral presentation lies in the speaker’s ability to transmit information to the audience. Lucia Hartigan and colleagues describe what they have learnt about delivering an effective scientific oral presentation from their own experiences, and their mistakes

The objective of an oral presentation is to portray large amounts of often complex information in a clear, bite sized fashion. Although some of the success lies in the content, the rest lies in the speaker’s skills in transmitting the information to the audience. 1

Preparation

It is important to be as well prepared as possible. Look at the venue in person, and find out the time allowed for your presentation and for questions, and the size of the audience and their backgrounds, which will allow the presentation to be pitched at the appropriate level.

See what the ambience and temperature are like and check that the format of your presentation is compatible with the available computer. This is particularly important when embedding videos. Before you begin, look at the video on stand-by and make sure the lights are dimmed and the speakers are functioning.

For visual aids, Microsoft PowerPoint or Apple Mac Keynote programmes are usual, although Prezi is increasing in popularity. Save the presentation on a USB stick, with email or cloud storage backup to avoid last minute disasters.

When preparing the presentation, start with an opening slide containing the title of the study, your name, and the date. Begin by addressing and thanking the audience and the organisation that has invited you to speak. Typically, the format includes background, study aims, methodology, results, strengths and weaknesses of the study, and conclusions.

If the study takes a lecturing format, consider including “any questions?” on a slide before you conclude, which will allow the audience to remember the take home messages. Ideally, the audience should remember three of the main points from the presentation. 2

Have a maximum of four short points per slide. If you can display something as a diagram, video, or a graph, use this instead of text and talk around it.

Animation is available in both Microsoft PowerPoint and the Apple Mac Keynote programme, and its use in presentations has been demonstrated to assist in the retention and recall of facts. 3 Do not overuse it, though, as it could make you appear unprofessional. If you show a video or diagram don’t just sit back—use a laser pointer to explain what is happening.

Rehearse your presentation in front of at least one person. Request feedback and amend accordingly. If possible, practise in the venue itself so things will not be unfamiliar on the day. If you appear comfortable, the audience will feel comfortable. Ask colleagues and seniors what questions they would ask and prepare responses to these questions.

It is important to dress appropriately, stand up straight, and project your voice towards the back of the room. Practise using a microphone, or any other presentation aids, in advance. If you don’t have your own presenting style, think of the style of inspirational scientific speakers you have seen and imitate it.

Try to present slides at the rate of around one slide a minute. If you talk too much, you will lose your audience’s attention. The slides or videos should be an adjunct to your presentation, so do not hide behind them, and be proud of the work you are presenting. You should avoid reading the wording on the slides, but instead talk around the content on them.

Maintain eye contact with the audience and remember to smile and pause after each comment, giving your nerves time to settle. Speak slowly and concisely, highlighting key points.

Do not assume that the audience is completely familiar with the topic you are passionate about, but don’t patronise them either. Use every presentation as an opportunity to teach, even your seniors. The information you are presenting may be new to them, but it is always important to know your audience’s background. You can then ensure you do not patronise world experts.

To maintain the audience’s attention, vary the tone and inflection of your voice. If appropriate, use humour, though you should run any comments or jokes past others beforehand and make sure they are culturally appropriate. Check every now and again that the audience is following and offer them the opportunity to ask questions.

Finishing up is the most important part, as this is when you send your take home message with the audience. Slow down, even though time is important at this stage. Conclude with the three key points from the study and leave the slide up for a further few seconds. Do not ramble on. Give the audience a chance to digest the presentation. Conclude by acknowledging those who assisted you in the study, and thank the audience and organisation. If you are presenting in North America, it is usual practice to conclude with an image of the team. If you wish to show references, insert a text box on the appropriate slide with the primary author, year, and paper, although this is not always required.

Answering questions can often feel like the most daunting part, but don’t look upon this as negative. Assume that the audience has listened and is interested in your research. Listen carefully, and if you are unsure about what someone is saying, ask for the question to be rephrased. Thank the audience member for asking the question and keep responses brief and concise. If you are unsure of the answer you can say that the questioner has raised an interesting point that you will have to investigate further. Have someone in the audience who will write down the questions for you, and remember that this is effectively free peer review.

Be proud of your achievements and try to do justice to the work that you and the rest of your group have done. You deserve to be up on that stage, so show off what you have achieved.

Competing interests: We have read and understood the BMJ Group policy on declaration of interests and declare the following interests: None.

• ↵ Rovira A, Auger C, Naidich TP. How to prepare an oral presentation and a conference. Radiologica 2013 ; 55 (suppl 1): 2 -7S. OpenUrl
• ↵ Bourne PE. Ten simple rules for making good oral presentations. PLos Comput Biol 2007 ; 3 : e77 . OpenUrl PubMed
• ↵ Naqvi SH, Mobasher F, Afzal MA, Umair M, Kohli AN, Bukhari MH. Effectiveness of teaching methods in a medical institute: perceptions of medical students to teaching aids. J Pak Med Assoc 2013 ; 63 : 859 -64. OpenUrl

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Journal Club: How to Prepare Effectively and Smash Your Presentation

Journal Club. So much more than reading a paper aloud. So many ways to mess it up. Got to present one? Then read our journal club toolkit.

Published September 14, 2022

I have a Master’s Degree in Chemistry and a Ph.D. in Structural Biology. I am interested in how the shape and connectivity of molecules relate to their reactivity and function.

Journal club. It’s so much more than orally dictating a paper to your peers.

It’s an opportunity to get a bunch of intelligent people in one place to share ideas. It’s a means to expand the scientific vocabulary of you and the audience. It’s a way to stimulate inventive research design.

But there are so many ways it can go wrong.

Poorly explained papers dictated blandly to an unengaged audience. Confusing heaps of data shoehorned into long presentations. Everybody stood awkwardly outside a meeting room you thought would be free.

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Whether you are unsure what journal club is, are thinking of starting one, or simply want to up your presentation game—you’ve landed on the ultimate journal club guide.

The whats, the whys, and the hows, all in one place.

What Is a Journal Club in Science?

A journal club is a series of meetings in which somebody is elected to present a research paper, its methods, and findings to a group of colleagues.

The broad goal is to stimulate discussion and ideas that the attendees may apply to their own work. Alternatively, someone may choose a paper because it’s particularly impactful or ingenious.

Usually, the presenter alternates per a rota, and attendance may be optional or compulsory.

The presenter is expected to choose, analyze, and present the paper to the attendees with accompanying slides.

The presentation is then followed by a discussion of the paper by the attendees. This is usually in the form of a series of questions and answers directed toward the presenter. Ergo , the presenter is expected to know and understand the paper and subject area to a moderate extent.

Why Have a Journal Club?

I get it. You’re a busy person. There’s a difficult research problem standing between you and your next tenure.

Why bother spending the time and energy participating in a series of meetings that don’t get you closer to achieving your scientific goals?

The answer: journal club does get you closer to achieving your scientific goals!

But it does this in indirect ways that subtly make you a better scientist. For example:

• It probably takes you out of your comfort zone .
• It makes you a better communicator.
• It makes you better at analyzing data.
• It improves your ability to critique research.
• It makes you survey relevant literature.
• It exposes you and your audience to new concepts.
• It exposes your audience to relevant literature.
• It improves the reading habits of you and your audience.
• It gets clever people talking to each other.
• It gives people a break from practical science.

It also provides a platform for people to share ideas based on their collective scientific experience. And every participant has a unique set of skills. So every participant has the potential to provide valuable insight.

This is what a good journal club should illicit.

Think of journal club as reading a book. It’s going to enrich you and add beneficially to the sum of your mental furniture, but you won’t know how until you’ve read it.

Need empirical evidence to convince you? Okay!

In 1988 a group of medical interns was split into two groups. One received journal club teaching and the other received a series of seminars. Approximately 86% of the journal club group reported improved reading habits. This compares to 0% in the group who received seminar-based teaching. [1]

Journal Club Template Structure

So now you know what journal club is, you might wonder, “how is it organized and structured?”

That’s what the rest of this article delves into. If you’re in a rush and need to head back to the lab, here’s a graphical summary (Figure 1).

Nobody likes meetings that flounder around and run over time. And while I have no data to prove it, I reckon people take less away from such meetings. Here’s a basic journal club template that assumes you are the presenter.

Introduce the Paper, Topic, Journal, and Authors

Let your audience know what you will be talking about before diving right in. Remember that repetition (of the important bits) can be a good thing.

Introducing the journal in which the paper is published will give your audience a rough idea of the prestige of the work.

And introducing the authors and their respective institutes gives your audience the option of stowing this information away and following it up with further reading in their own time.

Provide a Reason Why You Chose the Paper

Have the authors managed to circumvent sacrificing animals to achieve a goal that traditionally necessitated animal harm? Have the authors repurposed a method and applied it to a problem it’s not traditionally associated with? Is it simply a monumental feat of work and success?

People are probably more likely to listen and engage with you if they know why, in all politeness, you have chosen to use their time to talk about a given paper.

It also helps them focus on the relevant bits of your presentation and form cogent questions.

Orally Present Key Findings and Methods of the Paper

Simple. Read the paper. Understand it. Make some slides. Present.

Okay, there are a lot of ways you can get this wrong and make a hash of it. We’ll tell you how to avoid these pitfalls later on.

But for now, acknowledge that a journal club meeting starts with a presentation that sets up the main bit of it—the discussion.

Invite Your Audience to Participate in a Discussion

The discussion is the primary and arguably most beneficial component of journal club since it gives the audience a platform to share ideas. Ideas formulated by their previous experience.

And I’ve said already that these contributions are unique and have the potential to be valuable to your work.

That’s why the discussion element is important.

Their questions might concur and elaborate on the contents of the paper and your presentation of it.

Alternatively, they might disagree with the methods and/or conclusions. They might even disagree with your presentation of technical topics.

Try not to be daunted, however, as all of this ultimately adds to your knowledge, and it should all be conducted in a constructive spirit.

Summarize the Meeting and Thank Your Audience for Attending

There’s no particularly enlightening reason as to why to do these things. Summarizing helps people come away from the meeting feeling like it was a positive and rewarding thing to attend.

And thanking people for their time is a simple courtesy.

How Do You Organize It?

Basic steps if you are the organizer.

Okay, we’ve just learned what goes into speaking at the journal club. But presenter or not, the responsibility of organizing it might fall to you.

So, logistically , how do you prepare a journal club? Simply follow these 5 steps:

• Distribute copies of the research article to potential participants.
• Arrange a meeting time and location.
• Organize a speaker.
• Hold the journal club.
• Seek feedback on the quality of the meeting.

Apart from point 5, these are fairly self-explanatory. Regarding point 5, feedback is essential to growing as a scientist and presenter. The easiest way to seek feedback is simply to ask.

Alternatively, you could create a form for all the meetings in the series and ask the audience to complete and return it to you.

Basic Steps If You Are the Speaker

If somebody has done all the logistics for you, great! Don’t get complacent, however.

Why not use the time to elevate your presentation to make your journal club contribution memorable and beneficial?

Don’t worry about the “hows” because we’re going to elaborate on these points, but here are 5 things you can do to ace your presentation:

• Don’t leave it to the last minute.
• Know your audience.
• Keep your presentation slides simple.
• Keep your audience engaged.
• Be open to questions and critiques.

Regarding point 1, giving yourself sufficient time to thoroughly read the article you have chosen to present ensures you are familiar with the material in it. This is essential because you will be asked questions about it. A confident reply is the foundation of an enlightening discussion.

Regarding point 3, we’re going to tell you exactly how to prepare effective slides in its own section later. But if you are in a rush, minimize the use of excessive text. And if you provide background information, stick to diagrams that give an overview of results from previous work. Remember: a picture speaks louder than a thousand words.

Regarding point 4, engagement is critical. So carry out a practice run to make sure you are happy with the flow of your presentation and to give you an idea of your timing. It is important to stick to the time that is allotted for you.

This provides good practice for more formal conference settings where you will be stopped if you run over time. It’s also good manners and shows consideration for the attendees.

And regarding point 5, as the presenter, questions are likely to be directed toward you. So anticipate questions from the outset and prepare for the obvious ones to the best of your ability.

There’s a limit to everyone’s knowledge, but being unable to provide any sort of response will be embarrassing and make you seem unprepared.

Anticipate that people might also disagree with any definitions you make and even with your presentation of other people’s data. Whether or not you agree is a different matter, but present your reasons in a calm and professional manner.

If someone is rude, don’t rise to it and respond calmly and courteously. This shouldn’t happen too often, but we all have “those people” around us.

How Do You Choose a Journal Club Paper?

Consider the quality of the journal.

Just to be clear, I don’t mean the paper itself but the journal it’s published in.

An obscure journal is more likely to contain science that’s either boring, sloppy, wrong, or all three.

And people are giving up their time and hope to be stimulated. So oblige them!

Journal impact factor and rejection rate (the ratio of accepted to rejected articles) can help you decide whether a paper is worth discussing.

Consider the Impact and Scope of the Paper

Similar to the above, but remember, dross gets published in high-impact journals too. Hopefully, you’ve read the paper you want to present. But ask yourself what makes this particular paper stand out from the millions of others to be worth presenting.

Keep It Relevant and Keep It Interesting

When choosing a paper to present, keep your audience in mind. Choose something that is relevant to the particular group you are presenting to. If only you and a few other people understand the topic, it can come off as elitist.

How Do You Break Down and Present the Paper?

Know and provide the background material.

Before you dive into the data, spend a few minutes talking about the context of the paper. What did the authors know before they started this work? How did they formulate their hypothesis? Why did they choose to address it in this way?

You may want to reference an earlier paper from the same group if the paper represents a continuation of it, but keep it brief.

Try to explain how this paper tackles an unanswered question in the field.

Understand the Hypothesis and Methods of the Paper

Make a point of stating the  hypothesis  or  main question  of the paper, so everyone understands the goal of the study and has a foundation for the presentation and discussion.

Everyone needs to start on the same foot and remain on the same page as the meeting progresses.

Turn the Paper into a Progression of Scientific Questions

Present the data as a logical series of questions and answers. A well-written paper will already have done the hard work for you. It will be organized carefully so that each figure answers a specific question, and each new question builds on the answer from the previous figure.

If you’re having trouble grasping the flow of the paper, try writing up a brief outline of the main points. Try putting the experiments and conclusions in your own words, too.

Feel free to leave out parts of the figures that you think are unnecessary, or pull extra data from the supplemental figures if it will help you explain the paper better.

Ask Yourself Questions about the Paper Before You Present

We’ve touched on this already. This is to prepare you for any questions that are likely to be asked of you. When you read the paper, what bits didn’t you understand?

Simplify Unfamiliar and Difficult Concepts

Not everyone will be familiar with the same concepts. For example, most biologists will not have a rigorous definition of entropy committed to memory or know its units. The concept of entropy might crop up in a biophysics paper, however.

Put yourself in the audience’s shoes and anticipate what they might not fully understand given their respective backgrounds.

If you are unsure, ask them if they need a definition or include a short definition in your slides.

Sum Up Important Conclusions

After you’ve finished explaining the nitty-gritty details of the paper, conclude your presentation of the data with a list of significant findings.

Every conclusion will tie in directly to proving the major conclusion of the paper. It should be clear at this point how the data answers the main question.

How Do You Present a Journal Club Powerpoint?

Okay, so we’ve just gone through the steps required to break down a paper to present it effectively at journal club. But this needs to be paired with a PowerPoint presentation, and the two bridged orally by your talk. How do you ace this?

Provide Broad Context to the Research

We are all bogged down by minutia and reagents out of necessity.

Being bogged down is research. But it helps to come up for air. Ultimately, how will the research you are about to discuss benefit the Earth and its inhabitants when said research is translated into actual products?

Science can be for its own sake, but funded science rarely is. Reminding the journal club audience of the widest aims of the nominated field provides a clear starting point for the discussion and shows that you understand the efficacy of the research at its most basic level.

The Golden Rule: A Slide per Minute

Remember during lectures when the lecturer would open PowerPoint, and you would see, with dismay, that their slides went up to 90 or something daft? Then the last 20 get rushed through, but that’s what the exam question ends up being based on.

Don’t be that person!

A 10-15 minute talk should be accompanied by? 10-15 slides! Less is more.

Be Judicious about the Information You Choose to Present

If you are present everything in the paper, people might as well just read it in their own time, and we can call journal club off.

Try to abstract only the key findings. Sometimes technical data is necessary for what you are speaking about because their value affects the efficacy of the data and validity of the conclusions.

Most of the time, however, the exact experimental conditions can be left out and given on request. It’s good practice to put all the technical data that you anticipate being asked for in a few slides at the end of your talk.

Use your judgment.

Keep the Amount of Information per Slide Low for Clarity

Your audience is already listening to you and looking at the slides, so they have a limited capacity for what they can absorb. Overwhelming them with visual queues and talking to them will disengage them.

Have only a few clearly related images that apply directly to what you speaking about at the time. Annotate them with the only key facts from your talk and develop the bigger picture verbally.

This will be hard at first because you must be on the ball and confident with your subject area and speaking to an audience.

And definitely use circles, boxes, and arrows to highlight important parts of figures, and add a flowchart or diagram to explain an unfamiliar method.

Keep It Short Overall

The exact length of your meeting is up to you or the organizer. A 15-minute talk followed by a 30-minute discussion is about the right length, Add in tea and coffee and hellos, and you get to an hour.

We tend to speak at 125-150 words per minute. All these words should not be on your slides, however. So, commit a rough script to memory and rehearse it.

You’ll find that the main points you need to mention start to stand out and fall into place naturally. Plus, your slides will serve as visual queue cards.

How Do You Ask a Question in Journal Club?

A well-organized journal club will have clear expectations of whether or not questions should be asked only during the discussion, or whether interruptions during the presentation are allowed.

And I don’t mean literally how do you soliloquize, but rather how do you get an effective discussion going.

Presenters: Ask Questions to the Audience

We all know how it goes. “Any questions?” Silence.

Scientists, by their very nature, are usually introverted. Any ideas they might want to contribute to a discussion are typically outweighed by the fear of looking silly in front of their peers. Or they think everyone already knows the item they wish to contribute. Or don’t want to be publicly disproven. And so on.

Prepare some questions to ask the audience in advance. As soon as a few people speak, everyone tends to loosen up. Take advantage of this.

Audience: Think About Topics to Praise or Critique

Aside from seeking clarification on any unclear topics, you could ask questions on:

• Does the data support the conclusions?
• Are the conclusions relevant?
• Are the methods valid?
• What are the drawbacks and limitations of the conclusions?
• Are there better methods to test the hypothesis?
• How will the research be translated into real-world benefits?
• Are there obvious follow-up experiments?
• How well is the burden of proof met?
• Is the data physiologically relevant?
• Do you agree with the conclusions?

How to Keep It Fun

Make it interactive.

Quizzes and polls are a great way to do this! And QR codes make it really easy to do on-the-fly. Remember, scientists, are shy. So why not seek their participation in an anonymized form?

You could poll your audience on the quality of the work. You could make a fun quiz based on the material you’ve covered. You could do a live “what happened next?” You could even get your feedback this way. Here’s what to do:

• Create your quiz or poll using Google forms .
• Make a shareable link.
• Paste the link into a free QR code generator .
• Put the QR code in the appropriate bit of your talk.

Use Multimedia

Talking to your audience without anything to break it up is a guaranteed way of sending them all to sleep.

Consider embedding demonstration videos and animations in your talk. Or even just pausing to interject with your own anecdotes will keep everyone concentrated on you.

Keep It Informal

At the end of the day, we’re all scientists. Perhaps at different stages of our careers, but we’ve all had similar-ish trajectories. So there’s no need for haughtiness.

And research institutes are usually aggressively casual in terms of dress code, coffee breaks, and impromptu chats. Asking everyone to don a suit won’t add any value to a journal club.

Your Journal Club Toolkit in Summary

Anyone can read a paper, but the value lies in understanding it and applying it to your own research and thought process.

Remember, journal club is about extracting wisdom from your colleagues in the form of a discussion while disseminating wisdom to them in a digestible format.

Need some inspiration for your journal club? Check out the online repositories hosted by PNAS and NASPAG to get your juices flowing.

We’ve covered a lot of information, from parsing papers to organizational logistics, and effective presentation. So why not bookmark this page so you can come back to it all when it’s your turn to present?

While you’re here, why not ensure you’re always prepared for your next journal club and download bitesize bio’s free journal club checklist ?

And if you present at journal club and realize we’ve left something obvious out. Get in touch and let us know. We’ll add it to the article!

• Linzer M et al . (1988) Impact of a medical journal club on house-staff reading habits, knowledge, and critical appraisal skills . JAMA 260 :2537–41

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APA Citation Style, 7th Edition: Posters & Conference Sessions

• APA 6/7 Comparison Guide
• New & Notable Changes
• Student Paper Layout
• Journal Article with One Author
• Journal Article with Two Authors
• Journal Article with Three or more Authors
• Help?! I can't find the DOI
• One Author/Editor
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• In-Text Citations & Paraphrasing
• References Page
• Free APA 7th edition Resources, Handouts, & Tutorials

Citing Conference sessions, Poster abstracts, and Poster presentations

Conference sessions, poster abstracts, and poster presentations follow a significantly different format than other types of APA references.

• The author of the work is always listed first.
• Next, the FULL date of the conference is listed in the date area, so if a conference is held over several days, you need to list the date the conference starts, through the date the conference ends.
• Next add the title of the work and put it in italics, then add (in square brackets), whether it's a [Poster session], a [Poster abstract], or a [Conference session] and then add a period.
• In the source area share 1) the name of the conference or organization - or both (comma), 2) the name of the city or town the conference was held (comma), 3) the abbreviation of the state or the region (depending on the country) (comma), 4) the country the conference was held.
• Lastly share the URL of the WORK (not the conference in general) as a live hyperlink. 

Examples: 

Conference session : .

Hinck, J., Brewington, J., & Harding, K. (2018, September 12-14). Nurse educators - Making a difference in self and others to strengthen networks and partnerships [Conference session]. National League for Nursing, Chicago, IL, United States.  https://tinyurl.com/37bx7uku  

In-Text Citation (Paraphrase):

(Hinck, et al., 2018). 

Poster Abstract :

Jackson, C., McCalmont, J., Ward, J. Solanki, E., Seguin, R., & Perry, C. K. (2017, October 10). Mujeres fuertes y corazones saludables: Adaptation of the Strong Women - Healthy Hearts (SWHH) program for rural Latinas using an intervention mapping approach [Poster Abstract]. 2017 Oregon Public Health Association Annual Meeting, Portland, OR, United States.  https://tinyurl.com/y2panrdm  

(Jackson, et al., 2017). 

Poster Presentation :

NOTE: Because the poster presentations of this conference were presented in a journal, there are actually two ways you could cite this particular poster abstract, either way is acceptable in APA .  

Option 1 - Referencing ONLY the poster abstract itself : 

Leckenby, S., & Acklaghi, H. (2017, November 19-23). Is point-of-care troponin enough in decision making process in emergency departments [Poster Presentation]. ACEM ASM 2017 "Impossible is Just a Perspective" Darling Harbour, Sydney, Austalia.   https://tinyurl.com/cpkjbsu5

(Leckenby & Acklaghi, 2017). 

Option 2 - Referencing the poster abstract within the actual journal & supplement that printed the conference abstract : 

Leckenby, S., & Acklaghi, H. (2018). Is point-of-care troponin enough in decision making process in emergency departments [Poster Presentation]. Emergency Medicine Australasia, 30 (S1), 43-44.  https://doi.org/10.1111/1742-6723.12962  

Carrie Forbes, MLS

Page References

Citation information has been adapted from the APA Manual (7th Edition). Please refer to page 332-333 of the APA Manual (7th Edition) for more information.

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APA Style 7th Edition: Citing Your Sources

• Basics of APA Formatting
• In Text Quick View
• Block Quotes
• Books & eBooks
• Thesis/Dissertation
• Audiovisual
• Conference Presentations

Standard Format

Formatting rules, various examples.

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Adapted from American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed).  https://doi.org/10.1037/0000165-000

• Date should match the date(s) of the full conference
• Conference Proceedings published in journal or book should follow the same format for a journal or edited book chapter

See Ch. 10 pp. 313-352 of APA Manual for more examples and formatting rules

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APA Citation Style, 7th edition: Conferences

• General Style Guidelines
• One Author or Editor
• Two Authors or Editors
• Three to Five Authors or Editors
• Article or Chapter in an Edited Book
• Article in a Reference Book
• Edition other than the First
• Translation
• Government Publication
• Journal Article with 1 Author
• Journal Article with 2 Authors
• Journal Article with 3–20 Authors
• Journal Article 21 or more Authors
• Magazine Article
• Newspaper Article
• Basic Web Page
• Web page from a University site
• Web Page with No Author
• Entry in a Reference Work
• Government Document
• Film and Television
• Youtube Video
• Audio Podcast
• Electronic Image
• Twitter/Instagram
• Lecture/PPT
• Conferences
• Secondary Sources
• Citation Support
• Avoiding Plagiarism
• Formatting Your Paper

About Citing Sources

For each type of source in this guide, both the general form and an example will be provided.

The following format will be used:

In-Text Citation (Paraphrase) - entry that appears in the body of your paper when you express the ideas of a researcher or author using your own words.  For more tips on paraphrasing check out The OWL at Purdue .

In-Text Citation (Quotation) - entry that appears in the body of your paper after a direct quote.

References - entry that appears at the end of your paper.

Information on citing and several of the examples were drawn from the APA Manual (7th ed.) .

Conference Sessions, Papers, and Posters

Note: Conference sessions, papers, and posters all follow the same citation style. The only change is in the brackets following the title of the contribution, denoting the format. Use the description provided by the conference, e.g. [Poster presentation], [Key-note address], [Conference session], etc.

General Format

In-Text Citation (Paraphrase):

(Presenter Surname, Year)

In-Text Citation (Quotation):

References:

Presenter Surname, First Initial. Second Initial. (Year, Month Day-Day). Presentation title [Format]. Conference Name, Location. DOI or URL of website.

Tip: Include the full run of the conference in the date section, not just the day of the presentation.

(Pearson, 2018)

Pearson, J. (2018, September 27-30). Fat talk and its effects on state-based body image in women [Poster presentation]. Australian Psychological Society Congress, Sydney, NSW, Australia. http://bit.ly/2XGSThP 

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How to make a good (and interesting) presentation in journal club.

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Who says science needs to be hard and dry?

When I give presentation in journal club, I always select the kind of papers that tell a "fun" story- I believe we can learn more by discussing "how the author(s) come up with such idea?" question. Over the years, the topics of my selected papers have ranged from how bugs determine the color of laid eggs to whether getting cancer is just bad luck. Many people have told me that they like how the papers I selected arouse interest and discussion from the audience in journal club. Here I'd like to explain how we all can benefit our research by reading and interpreting research papers from a different perspective.

To begin with, we have to understand that the purpose of scientific research is very different from that of scientific publication, and the latter can facilitate but does not achieve the former. Therefore, it is important for a career scientist to be able to distinguish these from each other, get to know the structural elements of both, and identify what can be learned from them for her/his own research.   

First of all, we don’t only study cancer. We study the natural history of life. Ultimately, all biological studies address different perspectives of life. Keeping in mind the quote "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution" (Theodosius Dobzhansky, 1973), any paper is relevant.   

Second, in most studies, the authors observe the world through the lens of the contemporary paradigm or prevailing models. Many papers in top-tier journals attempt to find the “last piece” of the puzzle in the established model (and many “elite” authors are very good at this). An idea that does not fit into any of the paradigms will have a hard time getting published. A good example is Carl Woese. He single-handedly redefined the history of life but was mostly ignored until his later years because people of his time did not know where his idea should be placed (if you don’t know who he is, please Google him).

Third, we have to understand how a paper is written. Running a study is like constructing a skyscraper. You dig ground to make a foundation, lift pillars, construct floor by floor. Finally, you reach the top and finish the roof. When the construction is completed, you remove all the scaffolds and auxiliaries, clean up all the garbage, and decorate the environment. Now a brand new, beautiful building stands in front of people. But when someone asks you how such a marvelous building is constructed, you say: "I started constructing it from the roof, followed by the top floor, and floor by floor built down until the first floor touched the ground. This is a perfect plan, isn’t it?” Unfortunately, this is often how a study is presented at publication nowadays. If you follow the authors’ plans, most papers are over-decorated in a similar fashion, making them quite indistinguishable, with everything arranged perfectly and logically, even though the study hadn’t truly evolved in that way, sacrificing many critical elements that may give implications or insights to the field. For example, a discovery made by chance is described as a process following a logical design without mentioning the accident, thus the critical elements involved in the discovering circumstances may be lost forever, resulting in low reproducibility. Alternatively, following a “perfect” plan, a paper may be over-decorated with mechanism studies, and the real drivers of the phenomenon are overlooked.    

The route out of these “conceptual traps”, I believe, comes from a genuine observation or curious question that can catch people by surprise. For example, one of my all-time favorite papers is “Genetic Variations Associated with Red Hair Color and Fear of Dental Pain, Anxiety Regarding Dental Care and Avoidance of Dental Care” - yes, this is the real title. The study was initiated by an urban legend circulating among dentists: redheads have a worse response to anesthesia and terrible tooth conditions. The author - a dentist - wanted to test if it was true. What would you think if you heard such a rumor as a dentist? As you can imagine, this study is not high-profile journal material (it was published in a dental house journal, J. Am. Dental Assoc., 2009, 140:896-905). Because I study pigment cells, the results gave me a “think-out-of-the-box” moment: pigment variation and neural response are intertwined together evolutionarily. 

With these thoughts in mind, I would like to share a few “tips” for selecting a paper and preparing a presentation for journal club:

● Select a paper with a subject that might interest both scientists and non-scientists. A genuine question out of curiosity is always intriguing. Studies in lifestyle and behavior are fun because the audience can connect with them personally.

● In many cases, why the researcher asked the question and how she/he solved it are more valuable - and interesting - than the discovery itself. Even a wrong question can lead to a good observation. 

● Discuss what led the authors to the current study in the historic and/or conceptual (paradigm) perspective. This is necessary, in my opinion. For example, Joan Masague copied the in vivo cycling methodology from Isaiah J. Fidler, who got the idea from Luria-Delbruck distribution in bacterial resistance to phage. From here, we can easily see how studies of bacterial resistance heavily impacted the concept of clonal selection in cancer research. It would be very interesting to discuss the extent/limit of this concept in cancer research. Digging into the history of the research field can bring implications beyond the imagination.  

● Figure out if the question and the hypothesis are the “roof” or the “foundation” of the study. This will also arouse fun discussion.

● Examine whether the “mechanism” is required or decorative for the conclusion. Here is one of my favorite examples. In 1846, Hungarian clinician Ignaz Semmelweis published his findings in Vienna that washing deliverers’ hands with chlorinated lime solutions could effectively reduce maternal mortality in obstetrical clinics. Although the experimental data was solid, the idea was rejected by the most renowned doctors at the time, including Rudolf Virchow. The reason? Semmelweis could not offer an explanation fitting the contemporary scientific concept (i.e., “mechanism”) for his findings. The practice of hand disinfection did not prevail until Pasteur’s germ theory emerged in 1880, 15 years after Semmelweis had died in a mental institute. During this period, more women died unnecessarily because elite doctors demanded mechanisms in a scientific paper.

● Try to discuss how the findings can be applied to other fields. For example, after discovery of immune checkpoints, many immunologists tried to activate them to cure autoimmunity. Imagine this: if you read such a paper in those years, how would you think about its implication in cancer research?         

Actually, all the statements above involve only two factors: zooming out and then zooming in on the question. Believe me, doing this will easily facilitate many fun discussions.

Here are some more practical, step-by-step suggestions for the slides for journal club:

1. Start with a brief background of the field: a historic account to explain “how we got here”, and/or introduction to the current and alternative paradigms. Do these paradigms make sense in terms of biological evolution or life history? 

2. Summarize the model system and focused pathway/process being used and studied that is related to the paper. What is the scope of the model being used, and how relevant is it to the real world?

3. What is the author’s question? Why did she/he ask it? Is the question derived from the current model, or from an unexpected observation?  

4. What are the key claims in the paper? (We put this first so we can hang all the data against their claims. Ironically, the hypothesis in the paper may already give a good clue since it is often added after all the results were generated.)

5. A summary of the study design is helpful, especially for complicated projects.

6. Pick and choose key data that support the central conclusion, summarize everything else.

7. How much could the results answer the question? Alternatively, what is the paradigm-shifting discovery?

8. What is the implication of the results? How can we make use of the information in the paper in our own work? In what ways could the results impact other fields? What are the unanswered questions?

All the questions here can be asked during your presentation to arouse questions or discussion from the audience. 

Case Study: Ising C., et al. NLRP3 inflammasome activation drives tau pathology. Nature (2019).

Conclusion:  1. fibrillar amyloid-beta -> NLRP3 inflammasome -> tau kinase/phosphatase -> tau pathology  2. Neurofibrillary tangles develop downstream of amyloid-beta-induced microglial activation.

Historic context: What is the “driver” of Alzheimer disease (AD) identified by pathological and genetic studies in the history of research?

Evolutionary context: Why is there neurodegeneration disease?  1. Do other animals get neurodegeneration disease? Are the genes involved in AD conserved in other animals? What are the functions of the conserved and divergent genes? 2. “Why would we have in our brains proteins such as α-synuclein or tau that, without substantive modification appears to be able to accumulate and cause some rather distressing diseases?” (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4662249/) 3. What is the common cause of microglia activation? Is neurodegeneration disease the price we pay to prevent parasite infection in brain? 4. Does the conclusion of this study fit in any evolutionary biology explanation? If so, is the explanation supported by any epidemiological data worldwide?

Results: 1. How much in pathology can the identified mechanism explain? 2. Can boundary condition of the model be mapped to human data?

Biomedical relevance: 1. Is there any study in diet and life style related to the conclusion, so a preventive/diagnostic measure can be suggested? 2. Disease of aging and cancer are two extreme ends in the same spectrum. Is the activation of microglia relevant to the occurrence or suppression of brain tumors?

The author would like to thank Dr. Sarah Spaeh for her editorial assistance. 

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This is an excellent article, not only about how to present but where adn what to look for. Most big findings are serendipitous, and boggles our mind. Keeping an open mind, looking for crazy connections everywhere, not just in high tier journals, is a w3onderful suggestion. Thank you

Hi, Sarawati,

I am glad that this article is helpful for you! There are so many interesting and important papers out there, not necessarily in the top-tier journals. For example, Luria-Delbruck distribution was published in the journal Gene in 1943. The work, which won them Nobel Prize, is the foundation of research in the evolution of cells, but the modern impact factor of the journal was like 4.0.

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Recommended content, what is a hypothesis, is ai a hype, circle of connections, career transition in my 50s, in memory of a young postdoc.

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Seven tips for giving an engaging and memorable presentation

Effective and memorable presentations should be fun, and informative for the presenters and the learners. Engaging presenters stimulate connections with the audience. Excellent presentations not only provide information, but also give opportunities to apply new ideas during and after the talk to ‘real-life’ situations, and add relevant ‘take-home’ messages. 1 In this article we highlight educational techniques that can be used to enhance the impact of a presentation. Although all these techniques can be incorporated in the modified form into large plenary lectures, we suggest that the ‘think-pair-share’, ‘role-playing’, and ‘flipped classroom’ techniques may be more effective in smaller classroom settings.

Tip 1: Know your audience—before and during your talk

Every audience has a different level of interest, knowledge, and experience. A presentation about asthma should be different when given to patients compared with intensivists. The presenter should have a clear a priori idea of why the learners are coming to this lecture, what may motivate them, and what would be valuable to them . Whenever feasible, an assessment of the audience's needs is helpful for the presenter to focus on meaningful points. Sometimes needs-based assessments are prepared in advance, depending on the lecture or meeting, and this information may be available from the organisers of the meeting. However, if the information is not available beforehand, there are methods for collecting real-time assessments that are themselves engaging to learners. Another benefit of engaging audiences in this way is that an audience response system (ARS) can provide real-time feedback before, during, and after a presentation. 2 ARS can range from low-technology (hand raising), to newer generation ‘iClicker’ devices, or online websites such as Poll Everywhere, which can also be used to collect free-text responses. The audience's responses can help learners reinforce the importance of the topic, and provide a gauge for the presenter to customise subsequent information. Furthermore, research has shown that incorporation of multiple-choice questions to allow for ‘test-taking’ is an effective way of solidifying new knowledge. 2 Advantages of web-based ARS programs are that they are free, user-friendly, and accessible by various mobile devices. The potential disadvantages are reliability of Wi-Fi or cell phone carrier connectivity in a lecture theatre. In the absence of connectivity, an invitation to raise hands can engage participants, although without anonymity.

Tip 2: Tell a story

Stories connect people. A story that is personal to the speaker can evoke memories that are relatable and add concrete meaning to the presentation. 3 Consider starting your presentation with a story that shows why the topic is important to you. In addition, stories focus the audience on the speaker, rather than a slideshow. Even when the stories are not based on personal experiences, they can invoke learners to imagine themselves in similar situations applying knowledge to solve a problem. Descriptions of clinical cases that focus on initial presentations of patients allow learners to imagine seeing that patient and stimulate critical thinking. Experiencing the case vicariously makes the learning more memorable.

Tip 3: Trigger videos

Trigger videos are short (ideally 30 s to 3 min) audiovisual clips that represent a case or problem. Videos can be created using a handheld video recorder or smartphone, and edited using movie-editing software. Alternatively, videos can be found online and incorporated into presentations with appropriate attributions. Chosen well, trigger videos can present a thought-provoking dilemma that encourages discussion and debate. 4 They can alter the dynamics of a presentation. Success requires careful linking or embedding the videos into the presentation, making sure they play on the computer and projector, and confirming appropriate loudness of the audio settings.

Tip 4: Think-pair-share

When introducing a novel concept to a small group, consider using the ‘think-pair-share’ technique. In this technique, learners first think quietly about the challenging idea, then pair with neighbours to discuss, and then share their collective thoughts with the audience. 5 This technique gives the audience time to pause, think, and reflect on educational content. Encouraging the audience to come to work with the knowledge in a collaborative way incorporates experiential learning into your presentation. To be successful, allow for extra time in the presentation, ensure the audience's seating arrangement is conducive to small conversations, and display summarised ideas for referencing throughout the presentation. 5 , 6

Tip 5: Role play

When presenting an abstract concept that is controversial or thought-provoking, the use of scripted actors can be helpful. Both exemplary and poor examples can be demonstrated for topics such as obtaining informed consent, speaking up about safety concerns, or giving difficult feedback. Similarly, small group role-play can allow audience members to practice and experiment with actions and language with their peers. 7 The instructor should introduce the exercise in a way that helps assure psychological safety among learners, with an emphasis on deliberate practice rather than perfect performance.

Tip 6: ‘Flip’ the classroom

In situations where homework is assigned, consider ‘flipping’ the classroom experience where work is prepared by the learners before the teaching session. Preparatory work can comprise reading material or watching videos of lectures or demonstrations. This allows for more active collaborative learning, for example learners can solve a diagnostic challenge together, debate the pros and cons of a controversial topic, or practice skills. 8 The classroom experience is enriched by the interaction of many learners, rather than the perspective of a single presenter.

Tip 7: Applying the ‘take-home message’

Many are familiar with the framework of ‘ tell them what you are going to say, say it, and then summarise what you just said. ’ We advocate an additional component in the conclusion, where learners are challenged to commit to a change in their behaviour as a result of something they just learned: ‘ What is something you can do differently and better tomorrow or with your next patient as a result of this presentation? ’ Incorporating this question in the evaluation of a presentation can help facilitate behaviour change by having the learners write an example. Similarly, incentives can be offered for behaviour change: ‘ We have your email addresses, and with your permission we would like to follow-up with you in 2 weeks to see if you have any stories to share about applying this new information. We'll be collecting the responses and having a raffle to select one person to receive a gift card... ’ Not only does this provide an incentive to experimentation, but it also gives valuable and often heart-warming feedback to the presenter.

Dynamic educational techniques increase the engagement of the audience. We emphasise the importance of connecting with the learners and obtaining a commitment to apply the new knowledge for change and improvement. The extent to which these techniques are used will depend on the level of audience expertise, time constraints, and access to audiovisual aids. When used, they can result in a more memorable experience for both learners and presenters.

Declaration of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Biographies

Christine Mai MD MS-HPEd is assistant professor of anesthesia at Harvard Medical School and program director of the Pediatric Anesthesia Fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital. Her clinical and research interests are in simulation education and graduate medical education.

Rebecca Minehart MD MS-HPEd is assistant professor of anesthesia at Harvard Medical School and program director of the Obstetric Anesthesia Fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital.

May Pian-Smith MD is associate professor of anesthesia at Harvard Medical School and director of quality and safety for the Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care and Pain Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Matrix codes: 1H02, 2H02, 3J02

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How to properly cite other papers in my slides?

We recently submitted a paper, and now I'm creating some slides about it for future presentation. There are papers that we have cited in our paper and I need to cite them in slides too because they are directly related to our work. What I would like to do is inline citing when you just mention author's name, or conference name, or the year. I have seen works in which what is mentioned is the first author's family name, e.g. (Patterson, 2013) . And I've seen those who just mention conference name and year, e.g. (PPoPP, 2012) .

I want to know which one is more appropriate, or actually correct? Where to use one, and where to use the other? Or should I use something different?

• 3 There are no rules. But if one of the authors is in the audience, make sure you say his/her name loudly. ;-) –  David Ketcheson Commented Feb 11, 2014 at 4:14
• 1 Relevat: Should I add references to conference presentations? –  MasterPJ Commented Feb 11, 2014 at 9:50

3 Answers 3

As an applied mathematician, I like to go for the format [Author1, Author2 JST '99], where "JST" is an abbreviation for the journal. I truncate longer author lists with et al , and add initials in some cases to reduce ambiguity [Li RC, Guo CH, LAA '05]. With the help of a macro, I put the citations in square brackets (following the LaTeX usage), in a different color (dark grey) and font ( \small / \footnotesize ).

Of course every solution to this problem is a compromise between brevity, readability and googleability, but it seems to me that this one works well in my field.

Well, in my field, it's certainly the habit to mention only the authors and the year, unless it's really old. So I would have

Theorem [Doe, Soe, 2010; Smith 1997] There is ...

The reasons are:

If someone needs the full citation, he has the proceedings / book of abstracts.

The only interesting things in the citation are:

• It's not your result, you borrow it from elsewhere
• Which people did it -- quite likely you have some of them in the auditorium, they can get upset if you don't credit them, and they'll be pleased if you point them out.
• How old is it -- is it something known for years, or is it a "hot result"?

If you publish the presentation online after the conference, it might be a good habit to add the whole bibliography of the proceedings as a last slide. It can be in a small font since it's only for people to read it on the computer.

The key of a talk is not to be precise, but to show the most relevant information!

My suggestion is probably not applicable to presentations using a lot of citations, or using them on a lot of pages (but then, I think a good presentation shouldn't cite too much, so it's okay).

In addition to using whichever citation style best works for you ( (Smith, 1995), [Smith et. al., CSJ, 2007]*, or even just [1] ), plus changing the text color sounds like a good idea, why don't you add the expanded citation in the slide footnote in a smaller font? If it's not more than 1-2 or maybe 3 cites per slide, on no more than a few slides, it could work nicely and even allow you to use the basic [1], [2,3] citation style.

Also it could be a good idea to include the list of most important citations on the last slide (maybe not showing it in the presentation, but useful for possible questions).

Something like this: :) * Smith, Jones and Doe: "Very important article" , Cool Science Journal, 2007 or: [1] Jones and Smith: "Yet another important article" , 2000

• Why don't you do that? For the same reason why you have all text on slides so huge: Either people can't read it at all, or they can, but they concentrate on reading the footnote instead of listening to you. –  yo' Commented Feb 11, 2014 at 13:59
• 2 Well, it is an oral presentation, and you can point out (or even write, as you suggested) the important name and year. Not everybody will look towards the footnote, and I don't see the harm putting them there for those that are possibly really interested in the reference. When I was composing a table-slide for several methods, their names did not fit in the table at all, and the footnote solution worked quite fine. –  penelope Commented Feb 11, 2014 at 14:05

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Conference Proceedings: A How-To-Find Guide

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Citing Conference Papers and Proceedings

How to cite a conference paper or conference proceeding varies depending on how the paper/proceeding was made available and the style manual required by each journal or discipline. There is no such thing as a separate style guide just for conference papers.

• Conference papers can be published as part of a proceedings volume,
• Proceedings can be published in special issues of association journals (this is especially like to happen for larger associations that sponsor a conference if the association also publishes a professional journal),
• Publishers may acquire “selected papers” from a conference and publish them together as a book – often with a unique title and a note that they are reprints of some of the papers presented at x conference,
• Conference organizers may make proceedings/papers freely available on the Internet,
• Authors may make text or presentation files available on their personal/professional web page.

Typically, if a researcher is citing something from a conference, it is a specific paper or presentation rather than the entire conference proceeding.

CSE, ACS, APA, IEEE, and Chicago Manual of Style all give instructions for how to cite conference papers. All of them agree on some basic principles:

If the paper is published in a journal, cite it as a journal article

If the paper is published in a book, cite it similar to a book chapter

If citing the whole proceeding, cite it similar to a book

If the proceeding has a unique title, include that as well as the name of the conference.

All style manuals vary on specific details to include when citing an unpublished conference paper or presentation; unfortunately, very few style manuals include the conference name and location if published as a book or a journal article.

Differences for specific style manuals

ACS Style – does not include the title of the paper itself or the page numbers.

APA – uses only author initials, not full names – only the first word in the title is capitalized (unless it includes proper nouns)

Chicago Manual of Style – the main differences from APA are that the title of the presentation/paper is given in “quotes” – the title words are all capitalized properly – and the author names are spelled out in full rather than abbreviated.

Book chapter format ( ACS Style Guide , 3 rd ed., 2006, p.307-309):

Garrone, E.; Ugliengo, P. In Structure and Reactivity of Surfaces , Proceedings of the European Conference, Trieste, Italy, Sept 13-20, 1988; Zecchina, A., Cost, G., Morterra, C., Eds.; Elsevier: Amsterdam, 1988.

Book chapter format ( Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association , 6 th Ed., 2009, section 7.04):

Morrison, R. S., Cronin, G. M., Hemsworth, P. H. (2011, November). Sow housing in Australia – current Australian welfare research and future directions. In R. J. van Barneveld (Ed.), Manipulating pig production XIII (pp.219-238). Proceedings of the Thirteenth Biennial Conference of the Australasian Pig Science Association (APSA), Adelaide, Australia. Werribee. Australia: Australian Pig Science Association.

Unpublished presentation ( Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association , 6 th Ed., 2009, section 7.04):

Liu, S. (2005, May). Defending against business crises with the help of intelligent agent based early warning solutions. Paper presented at the Seventh International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems, Miami, FL. Abstract retrieved from http://www.iceis.org/iceis2005/abstracts_2005.htm

Unpublished presentation (Chicago Manual of Style, 16 th edition, 2009, 14.226):

Valle, Jose J. and John R. Eyler. “An FT-ICR Free Electron Laser User Facility for Determination of IRMPD Spectra of Gas-Phase Ions.” Paper presented at the 51 st ASMS Conference on Mass Spectrometry and Allied Topics, Montreal, Canada, June 8-12, 2003.

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• How to Cite a Journal Article | APA, MLA, & Chicago Examples

How to Cite a Journal Article | APA, MLA, & Chicago Examples

Published on March 9, 2021 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on January 17, 2024.

To cite an article from an academic journal, you need an in-text citation and a corresponding reference listing the name(s) of the author(s), the publication date, the article title and journal name, the volume and issue numbers, the page range, and the URL or DOI .

Different citation styles present this information differently. The main citation styles are APA , MLA , and Chicago style .

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Citing an article in apa style, citing an article in mla style, citing an article in chicago style, frequently asked questions about citations.

In an APA Style journal article reference , the article title is in plain text and sentence case, while the journal name appears in italics, in title case.

The in-text citation lists up to two authors; for three or more, use “ et al. ”

When citing a journal article in print or from a database, don’t include a URL. You can still include the DOI if available.

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In an MLA Works Cited entry for a journal article , the article title appears in quotation marks, the name of the journal in italics—both in title case.

List up to two authors in both the in-text citation and the Works Cited entry. For three or more, use “et al.”

A DOI is always included when available; a URL appears if no DOI is available but the article was accessed online . If you accessed the article in print and no DOI is available, you can omit this part.

You can also use our free MLA Citation Generator to create your journal article citations.

Generate accurate MLA citations with Scribbr

In Chicago notes and bibliography style, you include a bibliography entry for each source, and cite them in the text using footnotes .

A bibliography entry for a journal article lists the title of the article in quotation marks and the journal name in italics—both in title case. List up to 10 authors in full; use “et al.” for 11 or more.

In the footnote, use “et al.” for four or more authors.

A DOI or URL (preferably a DOI) is included for articles consulted online; for articles consulted in print, omit this part.

Chicago also offers an alternative author-date style of citation. Examples of how to cite journal articles in this style can be found here .

The elements included in journal article citations across APA , MLA , and Chicago style are the name(s) of the author(s), the title of the article, the year of publication, the name of the journal, the volume and issue numbers, the page range of the article, and, when accessed online, the DOI or URL.

In MLA and Chicago style, you also include the specific month or season of publication alongside the year, when this information is available.

The DOI is usually clearly visible when you open a journal article on an academic database. It is often listed near the publication date, and includes “doi.org” or “DOI:”. If the database has a “cite this article” button, this should also produce a citation with the DOI included.

If you can’t find the DOI, you can search on Crossref using information like the author, the article title, and the journal name.

The abbreviation “ et al. ” (Latin for “and others”) is used to shorten citations of sources with multiple authors.

“Et al.” is used in APA in-text citations of sources with 3+ authors, e.g. (Smith et al., 2019). It is not used in APA reference entries .

Use “et al.” for 3+ authors in MLA in-text citations and Works Cited entries.

Use “et al.” for 4+ authors in a Chicago in-text citation , and for 10+ authors in a Chicago bibliography entry.

Check if your university or course guidelines specify which citation style to use. If the choice is left up to you, consider which style is most commonly used in your field.

• APA Style is the most popular citation style, widely used in the social and behavioral sciences.
• MLA style is the second most popular, used mainly in the humanities.
• Chicago notes and bibliography style is also popular in the humanities, especially history.
• Chicago author-date style tends to be used in the sciences.

Other more specialized styles exist for certain fields, such as Bluebook and OSCOLA for law.

The most important thing is to choose one style and use it consistently throughout your text.

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

Caulfield, J. (2024, January 17). How to Cite a Journal Article | APA, MLA, & Chicago Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved August 29, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/citing-sources/cite-a-journal-article/

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• RIT Libraries
• How to AMA Cite
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The 11th edition of the AMA Manual of style was created by the American Medical Association for the health, medical and scientific fields. This is a quick visual guide only. You must consult Chapter 3 in the online AMA manual for detailed explanations.

• In-text citing with superscripts
• Reference List Format
• Online Journal format
• More than 6 authors format
• Entire Book format
• Book Chapter format
• Citing Websites
• Govt report, social media, personal communications, etc.
• Package Inserts

Presentations

For further information go to ama manual 3.13.9 meeting presentations and other unpublished material..

References to unpublished material may include articles or abstracts that have been presented at a society meeting and published as part of the meeting proceedings or materials.

3.13.9.1 Items Presented at a Meeting.

UPDATE:  Guidance has been added to chapter  3.13.9.1 , Items Presented at a Meeting, to provide an example of how to cite materials from a virtual or hybrid meeting. This addition was made  May 26, 2022 .

Oral or poster presentations follow these formats. Note that example 4 is a virtual meeting. Hybrid meetings can list the location, the meeting URL, both, or neither depending on what information is available and how the author viewed the content.

1.  Pasternak B. Carvedilol vs metoprolol succinate and risk of mortality in patients with heart failure: national cohort study. Paper presented at: European Society of Cardiology Congress; August 31, 2014; Barcelona, Spain.

2.  Minocchieri S, Berry CA, Pillow J. Nebulized surfactant for treatment of respiratory distress in the first hours of life: the CureNeb study. Abstract presented at: Annual Meeting of the Pediatric Academic Society; May 6, 2013; Washington, DC. Session 3500.

3.  Nevidomskyte D, Meissner MH, Tran N, Murray S, Farrokhi E. Influence of gender on abdominal aortic aneurysm repair in the community. Poster presented at: Vascular Annual Meeting; June 5-7, 2014; Boston, MA.

4.  McNamee JJ, Gillies MA, Barrett NA, et al; for the REST Investigators. The REST Trial: ultra-low tidal volume ventilation & extracorporeal CO2 removal. Presented at: Critical Care Reviews; October 4, 2021.  https://criticalcarereviews.com/meetings/eccr21

Once these presentations are published, they take the form of reference to a book, journal, or other medium in which they are ultimately published, as in example 5 (see  3.12.1 , References to Books, Complete Data, and  3.11.1 , References to Journal Articles, Complete Data):

4.  Huang G-M, Huang K-Y, Lee T-Y, Tzu-Ya Weng J. An interpretable rule-based diagnostic classification of diabetic nephropathy among type 2 diabetes patients.  BMC Bioinformatics.  2015;16(suppl 1):S5. Selected articles from the Thirteenth Asia Pacific Bioinformatics Conference (APBC 2015). doi:10.1186/1471-2105-16-S1-S5

In example 4, the entire journal supplement is dedicated to publishing articles from a meeting.

5.  Resnick ML. The effect of affect: decision making in the emotional context of health care. In:  Proceedings of the 2012 Symposium on Human Factors and Ergonomics in Health Care: Bridging the Gap . Human Factors and Ergonomics Society; 2012:39-44.

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