Posters · Glossary
Which citation style for a research poster?
Use the citation style your field or the conference already uses, usually APA in psychology and education and Vancouver in medicine and health, and keep the list to three to five references. A numbered style saves the most space on a board, because each citation in the text shrinks to a single bracketed or superscript number.
A reference list is the one block on a poster that almost nobody reads standing up, yet reviewers and examiners notice at once when it is inconsistent or wrong. Picking one style and applying it cleanly costs a few minutes and removes an easy reason to doubt the rest of the board.
Indunil Asanka · Co-founder
5 min read · Published
| APA | Vancouver | Harvard | |
|---|---|---|---|
| In text | Author and year in brackets, such as (Nguyen, 2024) | A number in brackets or superscript, such as [2] | Author and year, punctuation varies by guide |
| List order | Alphabetical by first author | In the order first cited | Alphabetical by first author |
| Space on a board | Longest, because every citation carries a name and year | Shortest, one or two characters per citation | Similar to APA |
| Usual fields | Psychology, education, social sciences | Medicine, nursing, public health, biomedical science | Business, humanities and many Australian and UK universities |
| Rule book | APA Publication Manual, 7th edition | NLM Citing Medicine, used under ICMJE recommendations | No single authority; each university publishes its own guide |
The rule that decides it before taste does
Start with the call for abstracts. Some conferences name a style, and some journals that publish conference abstracts require their house style on the board as well. If nothing is stated, use the style of the journals in your field, because the people walking past will be used to reading it. A psychology audience expects author and year; a clinical audience expects numbers. Students should also check the unit or school guide, since a marker may grade the poster against it. James Cook University's library, for example, publishes a full APA 7th edition guide for its students, and Imperial College London publishes one for Vancouver.
How each style works
APA is an author date system. The text names the author and year, and the list at the end is alphabetical, which lets a reader recognise familiar names quickly. The APA Style website sets out the reference elements: author, date, title and source. Vancouver is a numbered system that grew out of biomedical publishing. The first source cited becomes 1, the second 2, and the list runs in that order; the United States National Library of Medicine guide, Citing Medicine, gives the detailed formats. Harvard is a family of author date styles rather than one standard, which is why two Harvard guides can disagree about commas and italics.
Why numbered styles suit a board
Space is the constraint that settles most poster decisions. An author date citation such as (Okonkwo, Lindqvist and Park, 2023) can take a third of a line in a narrow column, and a results paragraph with four of them loses a sentence of content. A bracketed number takes two characters. Numbers also keep the reference list short, because a board cites few sources and the order of first mention is easy to follow. The trade off is that a reader cannot see who is cited without looking down at the list. If your field uses author date, keep it; if the choice is open, numbers win on a poster.
Mistakes that reviewers spot
Mixing styles is the most common, usually because references were pasted from different papers with their original formatting. Numbering that does not match the order of citation is next, especially after a section has been moved. Long lists are a third problem: fifteen references in small type say that the board was written as a paper. Missing identifiers matter too, since a DOI lets a reader find the paper in one step. Colin Purrington's poster advice warns that errors in citation formatting mark an author as inattentive to detail. Finally, a reference that the text never cites should be cut, however respectable it looks.
Where it shows up in the poster builder
Thirty four of the 40 poster layouts carry a reference block, and on all of them the entries are numbered automatically. The block holds three entries on 32 of those layouts and two on the other 2, so the list is short by design. Six layouts have no reference block at all, and on those the citations have to go in a section or behind the QR code. The generator treats the reference block as required, so a brief with no sources comes back with plausible looking references written to fill it. Replace every one with a real source you have read, in the style your field uses.
Choosing the three that earn a place
With room for only a few entries, pick by job rather than by prestige. One reference should support the gap your introduction describes, the evidence that the question matters. One should be the method, guideline or instrument the study followed, since a reader may want to check it. One can be the study you are extending or disagreeing with. Your own full paper, preprint or registration belongs behind the QR code if it is not yet published. Everything else, including background reading that shaped the work, can live in a longer list linked from that code. Three well chosen sources say more than ten skimmed ones.
Questions people ask
Do I need a reference list on a poster at all?
Most conferences and examiners expect one whenever the text relies on earlier work, and a board with specific claims and no sources looks unfinished. Keep it short and in small but readable type at the foot of a column. If the call for abstracts says references are optional, a QR code to a full list is an acceptable substitute.
Should figure sources be cited too?
Yes. If a chart reproduces or adapts data from a published source, cite it in the caption and include it in the list, and check that the licence allows reuse. If the data are your own, no citation is needed, although naming the dataset or registry in the caption helps a reader understand where the numbers came from.
Can I use et al. on a poster?
Each style sets its own rule. APA 7th edition uses the first author followed by et al. in text for works with three or more authors, while many Vancouver guides list up to six authors in the reference list before adding et al. On a poster, following the rule exactly matters more than saving a few characters with a shortcut.
Do reference managers handle poster formatting?
Tools such as Zotero, EndNote and Mendeley can output any of these styles and renumber a Vancouver list when order changes. The catch on a poster is that text is often edited outside the word processor, so automatic numbering can fall out of step. Do a final manual check of every number against the list before printing.
How should a DOI appear in a poster reference?
Current APA style writes the DOI as a full web address, starting with https://doi.org/, at the end of the reference. Vancouver guides also accept a DOI at the end of the entry. On a board, the DOI is the most useful part of the reference for a reader holding a phone, so it is worth keeping even when space is tight.
Can the style differ between the poster and the abstract?
It is best kept the same. The abstract book, the board and any handout are read together by the same people, and a change of style between them looks careless. If the conference requires a specific style for submitted abstracts, adopt that style on the poster too, even if your lab normally uses another one.
Make one with posters
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Create a poster with OneCraftRelated questions
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- What is IMRaD?What is IMRaD: the introduction, methods, results and discussion structure behind most research papers and posters, and how each part maps to a board.
- What is an ORCID iD?What is an ORCID iD: a free, persistent 16 digit identifier for a researcher. How it compares with Scopus and ResearcherID, and where it goes on a poster.
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Written and checked by the OneCraft team. Last checked .