Research presentation structure: slide by slide

What a research presentation consists of

The slide order follows the logic of the study. Each slide answers one question from the audience.

1. Title slide. Research topic, author, supervisor, institution, year.
2. Problem and relevance. What is wrong with the current state and why it matters now. Two or three references to recent work.
3. Aim. One sentence with an outcome verb: “identify”, “develop”, “assess”. One aim only.
4. Objectives. Three to five steps toward the aim. Each objective will match a point in the conclusions.
5. Object and subject. Object: what you study as a whole. Subject: which aspect of it. For example, object “river ecosystems”, subject “the effect of runoff on biodiversity”.
6. Hypothesis. A testable statement the study confirms or rejects. For descriptive work this slide can be dropped.
7. Methods. Which methods, on which data and why those. A diagram instead of a list.
8. Results. One result per slide, the title states the conclusion. Charts with labelled axes and units.
9. Conclusions. As many points as there are objectives, in the same order.
10. Sources. The works you relied on, with DOIs. This separates research from a book report.

How to word the aim, objectives, object and subject

• The aim answers “what will we have in the end”, not “what will we do”. “Study the literature” is an objective, not an aim.
• Objectives start with verbs: analyse, compare, develop, test, assess. Their order matches the order of the results.
• The object is broader than the subject. If they read the same, the subject is worded wrongly.
• A hypothesis must be refutable by data. “The topic is important” is not a hypothesis.
• The Methods slide explains the choice: why a survey rather than an experiment, why this sample and this period.

The results slide

The most common mistake: a full-slide table under the title “Results”. The audience does not know where to look. The title should state the conclusion: “Treatment cuts losses by 18 %”, and the table or chart supports it.

If there are many results, show the two or three main ones and move the rest to backup slides after the closing one. Keep detailed numbers with units and confidence intervals in the speaker notes.

Common mistakes

• Conclusions do not match the objectives in number and order.
• The aim is worded as a process: “consider”, “study”.
• Object and subject are swapped or identical.
• No sources: it is unclear what you established and what came from the literature.
• A “Thank you for your attention” slide instead of conclusions on screen during questions.

How to build a research presentation in scid.ai

Type “make a research presentation on…” in the chat and list the aim, objectives and results. scid.ai finds peer-reviewed sources for the Relevance and What-is-known slides, shows a slide plan, you fix the wording and get a PPTX with speaker notes and DOI references. Add your own charts in PowerPoint from the study data.