Are Graphical Abstracts a Good Idea?

Yes. Yes. Yes!

Earlier today I was flipping through my RSS feed of geoscience journals and clicked on the title of particularly juicy-looking paper. To my delight, a beautiful illustration was embedded below the abstract text. Normally, I'll quickly skim an abstract and decide whether or not to put more effort into the paper. I'm usually scanning for certain keywords -- that is, words that tell me a bit more about the methods, the geographical area, the time period, and so forth. The ability to also scan an illustration makes this information-gathering and decision-making process much more efficient.

What is a graphical abstract? Here's what Elsevier* says about graphical abstract in their section for authors (thanks to Matt Hall for pointing me to this):

A Graphical Abstract is a single, concise, pictorial and visual summary of the main findings of the article. This could either be the concluding figure from the article or a figure that is specially designed for the purpose, which captures the content of the article for readers at a single glance. The Graphical Abstract will be displayed in online search result lists, the online contents list and the online article, but will not (yet) appear in the article PDF file or print.

A Graphical Abstract should allow readers to quickly gain an understanding of the main take-home message of the paper and is intended to encourage browsing, promote interdisciplinary scholarship, and help readers identify more quickly which papers are most relevant to their research interests.

This is just one publisher's definition. While there would certainly be variations depending on the field of study and other factors, I think the basic idea is solid.

Here's what the example I came across today looked like in GoogleReader:

Isn't that a nice way to browse papers in your feeder? I think so.

One last thing. Before the science media folks start freaking out about the graphical equivalent of too much jargon let's get something straight: these images should communicate the technical details of the study. These images should not be just eye candy. They should not be stylized renderings that don't include critical information (proper annotation, scale, axis labels, etc.). They should not be photographs that have a loose, even if clever, connection to the paper. Save that for the blog post you write about your paper when it comes out. (You all are doing that, right? Right?)

That said, those submitting graphical abstracts should not feel they can get away with a horrid mess of a figure. It is possible to design a figure that communicates the technical information and is pleasing to the eye. Scientists should strive to make their figures as Edward Tufteian as possible. In fact, the process of designing that single figure that gets to the essence of a study is an important part of the paper-writing process. It's a good test of how well you understand your own text explanations.

If this graphical abstract idea catches on perhaps it will force us to put a lot of thought into making that key figure. I hope other journals start offering this because I'd like to do it for the papers I write in the future.

* I don't really want to get into the open-access discussion here. Not that it isn't important, it is. But it misses the point. Even if every single paper in every journal on the planet was freely available to anyone I still think graphical abstracts provide added scientific value.