How to get an oral presentation at a prestigious conference?

Last year I had several discussions with young scientists ???? ???? who were disappointed that instead of oral presentation?? the scientific committee of their favorite prestigious conference downgraded?? their contribution to a poster??. Personally, I don't see it as a downgrade and posters do have many advantages but let's not discuss them here.

Instead, I will give you a few tips how to increase your chances to secure an oral presentation. Remember, if the work you want to present is absolutely brilliant you don't need any advice. But if it's very good every little thing may count!

First of all, be aware how the selection process works. There could be a few hundreds abstracts and there are a dozen senior scientists in the scientific committee. Typically, each of them will receive about 50 abstract to evaluate so that each work is judged by at least five different scientists and their grades are averaged. Only abstracts with the highest grades receive oral presentations.

Why is it so important to know how the process looks like? Because members of the committee are quite overworked?? with many different tasks to perform and being on a scientific committee is an additional burden??! You have to realize that your abstract will be considered and judged within a few minutes?! If your key message is not obvious it will be overlooked and your abstract will receive poor grades.

Conclusion #1 Your abstract should be a written equivalent of an elevator pitch!

But that's nothing new, you may say, I always try to make abstracts of my articles appealing! Yes, but it's not the same. Your articles should be more toned down and be able to stand the test of time. The conference abstract is relevant here and now! Nobody will read it in the future! So make it clear why your research is important right now! Avoid hypothesizing about the future too! "This research will undoubtedly pave the way to...". Don't hype, focus on the present.

Conclusion #2 Don't copy the abstract from your article, craft?? it from scratch and emphasize how hour research is relevant here and now!

Remember that the editor and reviewers from a journal publication will see the rest of your work immediately after reading the abstract. The scientific committee of the conference sees the abstract and abstract only! So you CANNOT?? use the same style. For a journal, you can mention that the newly synthesized material?? was characterized by XRD, XPS, SIMS, TEM, EIS, and whatever else??. But for a conference abstract cut down the methodology as much as you can! Focus on the results! Naturally, you can mention a technique you used but don't list all of them, especially those routinely used which did not bring any cutting-edge results??. You will not have time to present them anyway, you can only keep them as backup slides in case somebody specifically asks for them. In other words, if you do not intend to have them in your presentation you should definitely remove them from the abstract!

Conclusion #3 Focus on the results, and reduce the methodology to a minimum.

Pay attention to how you cite your published articles. If you write "A recent article shows that..." a reviewer may think you are simply trying to reproduce someone's work - definitely not worth an oral presentation??♀? ??♂?! Write "In a recent article we have shown that...". It can create a very strong psychological effect, especially if you have published it in a prestigious journal??. After all, at least two independent reviewers and an editor have already accepted your work. Member of the scientific committee will probably trust their judgment. Especially because, as mentioned above, they tend to spend just a few minutes on each abstract. Why shouldn't they trust someone who already saw the whole thing and accepted it in a good journal?

But remember, to make it most advantageous you should be the first author of that paper. And it should be really recent! If you want to present something that you published three years ago, it's not really fresh and it's better to assign it as a poster. Nothing wrong with citing older papers but in such a case make sure you explain how you expanded that study in these years!

Conclusion #4 Pay special attention to how you cite your past articles.

Be very specific, avoid empty phrases like "our material offers much better performance". Be quantitative??! And compare to the existing standards: "Our material offers 65% higher charge density than XYZ which is the most widespread solution used nowadays". Don't be afraid to mention the weak points you intend to work on! "The most important concern is ten times higher price?? of the material and 30% faster degradation rate??".

Conclusion #5 Honest quantification of your results wins the game!

For some conferences, you can include an image??. Make the best of it! I know it can be tempting to just use the most important plot with relevant data??. But here is a trick, even though most conferences allow only one figure you can make it with two panels????. While I would still advise you to keep the plot, consider adding a panel with something that is visually appealing and summarizes your whole study! Something similar (or even identical!) to graphical abstracts which are required by many journals nowadays.

Conclusion #6 If you can submit an abstract with a figure, make it visually appealing. Avoid using only bare plots with the data, make them more eye-catching!

Ask your mentor and/or colleagues to review your abstract?? before submission. It is natural that we tend to oversimplify some parts which are very obvious to us. But your abstract will be judged by non-experts of your subfield so getting the opinion of someone who is also not focused on your research is crucial. Such a person should be able to identify confusing and unclear parts of your abstracts??. That is why you should ask more people, not just your mentor. Especially if the latter always comments "It's great, submit it asap" (I know it happens). It may take some time to find people who are willing to offer constructive criticism but I strongly encourage you to find them.

Conclusion #7 Never underestimate the power of an internal review!

Last but definitely not least. Take a look at the image I attached to this article. Obviously, it is AI-generated but I DID NOT asked it to make spelling errors. So yeah, this is unacceptable. I am not a native speaker myself but there are many tools that can correct your mistakes. I like using Grammarly Business but there are others too!

Conclusion #8 Don't never makes errories in you're tekst! ;)

I honestly don't know how universal these tips are (especially for different fields of science) but I was a member of a scientific committee several times and I can assure you that some abstracts would receive longed-for oral presentation if these advices were followed.

Do remember that good or bad luck will always be a very important factor. But learn from your mistakes and try again! You will get an acceptance letter??!