With the ever earlier abstract deadlines:
Did someone here already submitted a poster abstract on work that was still ongoing? I want to present a poster at a conference but don't have all the results yet. Obviously, you can't write about results that are not there. I could restrict it to the results that I already have, but would prefer the chance to expand the story of the poster with the potential new results. Therefore, I thought a rather generic abstract that doesn't imply a specific result would be the way to go. Is this an acceptable approach or an absolute no go? In case it's acceptable, any tipps on what to focus on? Just introduction to the problem/question and then methodology? Thanks in advance for any sort of advice ;)

Yes, this was part of one of a series of mandatory milestones for completing a PhD at my university. We all had to defend a poster at a conference as a component of our confirmation of candidature process around the 1 year mark. For many of us, the poster was based on our proposal, lit review, methodologies and pilot data. Good luck with it Dunham. I found this process useful for getting feedback and for consolidating some of my ideas.

Yeh, I've done two things along those lines. In the first case it was similar to what Pjlu has described - except mine had no pilot data. It was basically a proposal in poster format - no results. Then in the second case, I wrote an abstract and submitted it and alluded to what I thought the results would be. Then by the time it was time to present it, I had some results, so I added them (and also there was an opportunity to update the abstract at that particular conference - so I did that too).

Hi Dunham, yes keep it generic. As you said, intro and methods and then say results of x, but don't go into the specifics of what these are in case you don't get them by the time the conference comes round.

Thanks! I will do it like that.