Scientific posters are a primary means of scholarly communication at conferences. Given that posters are usually shared in PDF or similar format and that their structure varies greatly from poster to poster, their content remains largely inaccessible to programmatic discovery and analysis. We propose here a JSON schema for representing posters that enables:
- Machine-actionable analysis of poster content
- FAIR compliance when sharing posters
- AI-ready, structured representation for automated processing
👉 Latest schema (v0.2): poster_schema.json | Versioned: schemas/
This schema is developed as part of our development of posters.science, where we are also building a tool that takes the PDF file of a poster and automatically creates a JSON version compatible with this schema. Our vision is that anytime a poster is shared (as PDF or other similar format), it will be accompanied by a poster.json file that complies with this JSON schema to enable greater findability and reusability. We hope that this schema and its associated tools can be useful to anyone wanting to represent scientific posters in a machine-actionable format.
| Version | DataCite | Schema URL | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| v0.2 | 4.7 | https://posters.science/schema/v0.2/poster_schema.json |
Current |
| v0.1 | 4.6 | https://posters.science/schema/v0.1/poster_schema.json |
Frozen |
See CHANGELOG.md for details on what changed between versions.
The schema is based on the DataCite Metadata Schema (currently v4.7), with poster-specific adjustments, including extensions for conference-related information.
| Property | Requirement | Description |
|---|---|---|
creators |
Mandatory | Authors with ORCID and affiliation support |
titles |
Mandatory | Poster title(s) |
publisher |
Mandatory | Conference organizer or institution |
publicationYear |
Mandatory | Year of presentation |
subjects |
Recommended | Keywords and classification terms |
dates |
Recommended | Presentation and conference dates |
language |
Recommended | Primary language (ISO 639) |
types |
Mandatory | Resource type (Conference Poster) |
relatedIdentifiers |
Recommended | Links to papers, datasets, software |
formats |
Recommended | File format (PDF, PNG, etc.) |
rightsList |
Optional | License information |
descriptions |
Recommended | Abstract, Methods, Technical Info |
fundingReferences |
Recommended | Grant and funder information |
| Property | Description |
|---|---|
conference |
Conference name, location, dates, URI, acronym |
content |
Structured sections extracted from poster |
imageCaptions |
Captions for figures in the poster |
tableCaptions |
Captions for tables in the poster |
researchField |
Primary research field or discipline |
We provide an example in the example folder using the poster available at https://zenodo.org/records/17268692.
- DataCite Metadata Schema 4.7: schema.datacite.org
- ORCID: orcid.org - Author identifiers
- ROR: ror.org - Organization identifiers
- Crossref Funder Registry: Funding organization identifiers
This work is shared under the MIT License. See LICENSE for details.
Contributions and feedback are welcomed. Please open an issue or pull request on GitHub.
If you use this work, please cite this repository following the instructions provided in CITATION.cff.