͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏

Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more

A picture says more than a thousand words

Is a well designed infographic or visual abstract is the perfect introduction to an academic article?

Stephanie Decker FAcSS FBAM

Dec 5

∙

Preview

READ IN APP

Everyone who successfully publishes academic articles is familiar with the “helpful” emails from academic publishers on promoting your work online. Do video abstracts! Visual abstracts! Write a blog!

It’s not that I disagree. I increasingly appreciate my colleagues posting on LinkedIn (by now the only social media platform I follow professionally, in addition to Substack) when they publish something new, or when a new call for papers is out, or when they summarise their insight or learning from a seminar/conference/workshop. There is so much going on.

Thank you for giving me a short (but not Twitter-short) précis that makes me feel better informed. I genuinely appreciate it.

Research communication for academics

And video abstracts are nice, but I often lack the time to watch a video, even if it is short, and when I have the time, I might be travelling or commuting. But then, I am not of the YouTube generation. Nevertheless, academics talking to camera is not super-exciting. Because of that, I tried my hand at animations for my video abstracts, and that seems to have evergreened them to an extent.

But it takes a lot of time. It was fun to do once or twice, but as a free service, it is too costly in terms of my time.

And then, I thought, what I really want as a consumer of academic literature is a visual abstract that is aesthetically appealing and informationally effective (i.e., reasonably dense). So I have been experimenting with tools like Canva, but tbh I ran into the same problem as with video abstracts. Who has the time?

Once an article is accepted, proofed, online published, and subsequently print published, there is another urgent deadline for revisions, more proofs to correct, and likely conference deadlines (or never-ending internal bureaucratic deadlines for something or other)…

Essentially, once the piece is published, everyone pretty much needs to move on to the next thing. Let’s not forget that, unlike commercial authors, we don’t get paid directly for our writing.

I’ve long thought that what I want is someone to handle my social media, generate some nice visual abstracts, run them by me for correction and approval — basically a kinda research assistant focused on the dissemination aspects of my role.

Enter the AI

Amidst the anxiety of how it may take our jobs, our brains, etc., my first thought was: Ah, finally, the research / personal assistant who can take all the stuff I’m not so keen to waste my time — even better, someone who will never complain about the mind-numbing nature of it.

After the paywall, some tips & tricks to find the right AI to do your research communications for you… And yes, it finally can!...