Graphical abstracts boost paper citations

There is a new beast in town...

In the age of short form social media posts and lack of time to read, visual representations are extremely valuable. A new entity, called graphical abstract was born. 

A graphical abstract is a single image designed to assist the reader in quickly gaining an overview of the manuscript. It accompanies the written abstract but does not replace it. 

I would never dream of expanding on design concepts I know nothing about. So, I'll defer to the experts.👇

A lot of cool designs are available from some of the most well-known platforms, such as BioRender, Mind The Graph, and Animate Your Science.

Given the complexity of making design concepts work for summarising the main take-home message of a scientific paper, these are typically used on social media and journal websites.

They usually have little to no text at all, and communicate with other elements of the scientific paper, whilst still being self-explanatory.

The purpose of a graphical abstract is to increase readability by adding engaging graphics.

Indeed, the use of visual abstracts has been shown to increase overall engagement on social media, particularly among healthcare professionals (see here).


 





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