Message from the President

“Let’s aim for promotion of both greater communication skills and less labor-intensive annual meeting operations.”

I am happy that many people plan to attend the 73rd annual meeting in Kyoto. I just learned a few days ago that the number of entries for the poster session at the upcoming annual meeting in March has reached a record high: 1130, including junior poster entries. I am grateful to the committee members who work behind the scenes to plan and deliver a great meeting. In my last essay, I wrote about the internationalization of our annual meetings. Although we will discontinue the English presentation award competition, we encourage young people to try oral presentations in English. I also mentioned that the bilingual sessions will no longer be attempted, but we will continue our efforts to make the meeting easy to navigate for English-only participants. I believe that internationalization of our annual meetings will provide excellent opportunities to those of you who want to be active in global ecological communities. In this essay, I would like to address “what is a good research presentation” with a greater emphasis on poster presentations.

Many students entering the poster award competition may hope to be evaluated mainly on the basis of the originality and depth of their research questions. On the other hand, it is a shame if only a small number of specialists can understand your posters. Our current rubric for poster awards lists categories under “communication excellence” before those under “research quality”. Remember, a concise and impactful title and a good abstract are crucial aspects of excellence in academic publication, without which your research articles won’t be read by many. For the same reason, the title and abstract of your poster must be easily understandable to anyone with a basic understanding of ecology. Some consider that specialists with in-depth knowledge of the topic must judge each poster. I politely disagree. The presenters should not be indulgent in assuming that his/her poster should be evaluated by specialists who can fill in gaps in a poorly prepared presentation. The division of an academic discipline into small, specialized topics is an unfortunate tendency, especially in ecology, which deals with biodiversity and the environment, addressing complex interactions at local and global levels. Students and postdocs, please consider that it is an even greater honor than receiving an official award if senior researchers of different disciplines stop at your poster and say, “That’s very interesting”. Excellent communication skills are crucial, whether you aspire to be a researcher or a contributing member of society.

One reason why I started to ponder this issue was the need to streamline the operation behind poster judging at our annual meetings. Currently, ESJ depends so heavily on the volunteer spirits of our members, especially those in the poster session committee and Dr. Nariaki Hasegawa who created the program-based matching system for poster judging. From meeting to meeting, a very detailed protocol has been passed down to refine the process and ensure it is fair and smooth. As a result, there is a surprising level of complexity in running the poster award program every year. The weight of responsibility on a small number of members is creating an unfair situation that impacts the sustainability of holding annual meetings year after year. How can we improve this situation by simplifying meeting operations? This is a task charged to the executive and board members of ESJ by its Future Planning Committee.

Personally, I think that it may be better to run poster sessions and award selection in much bigger categories within ecology, such as ecosystem ecology, plant ecology, animal ecology, microbial ecology, soil ecology, theoretical ecology, conservation ecology, and ecological education, without further subdividing the topics. Mixing within such a large grouping will allow greater interaction among subdisciplines, possibly leading to innovative ideas. Many ecological meetings in other countries do not fine-tune the operation of poster awards as much as we do. If a conflict of interest arises in judge assignments, the judge declines and seeks an alternative. ESJ annual meetings are attended by ecologists interested in various subdisciplines, who should interact with each other beyond the narrow subdisciplines. Indeed, much smaller topic-oriented meetings are more effective in deepening a particular topic. Interactions beyond narrow disciplinary divisions should be a main merit of attending large meetings.

Being able to explain your research to those outside of your own discipline is an essential skill, whether to succeed in job interviews at overseas universities and research organizations, to become a good teacher or a museum staff member, to be engaged in conservation actions, or to contribute to policy-relevant topics in environmental issues. If one really understands the background and significance of one’s own study, one should be able to explain it in an easy-to-understand way. At ESJ73 in March 2026, we will conduct the poster award sessions using the same protocol as in previous years. However, I personally wish that the poster award selection process would emphasize communication skills to a broader audience. This is because such skills are even more essential to most of the young members for their future careers.

November 10th, 2025
Kaoru Kitajima
President of the Ecological Society of Japan