The Tool
Practical skills assignment
- Look at a science graphics website, like biorender. Is there an image that would help you communicate your own research in clear and appealing graphics?
- Find a non-traditional format for scientific communication (one of the following: an interactive Notebook, a cartoon paper, a video abstract, ‘two-minute paper’, a podcast, an oral story, Twitter thread, dance, OR a blog post), and the associated paper. Give an example of something that is communicated more clearly in the non-traditional format.
- Find a figure or image on your, or your lab’s, website or social media feed that doesn’t have Alt Text (image description). Draft good Alt Text (or actually add it!).
- For a paper you know well, draft one of the following: an interactive executable paper, a cartoon paper, a video abstract, a ’two-minute paper’, a podcast, an oral story, a Twitter thread OR a blog post. This can be a draft; you’re not required to make a finished project. Attach your product with your response paper. Explicitly say who is your intended audience.
Useful Links and Resources
- Social Science Space. (2020). Seeing Social Science Bites Podcasts in a New Way.
- Journal of visualized experiments.
- OU Library guide for making a successful video abstract.
- Repository of many video abstracts.
- The leading strand: The mission is to highlight important research by translating it through visual experiences.
- Professional Science Communication.
- Significant Communication.
- Econimate: communicates economics papers in single-frame cartoons on Twitter.
- An example of Scientific Communication as Sequential Art vs. Collective Dynamics of ‘Small World’ Networks original paper.
- Two-Minute Papers, a YouTube channel for AI.
- AAAS Communication Toolkit a guide to communicating scientific results in different registers and media.
- Story Collider: true personal stories about science.
- https://scienceblogs.com
- Dance your PhD
- Super cool communication mechanism: Nutshell (h/t Joyce).
- A (failed?) attempt to incentivize better visualization and explanations: Distill (h/t Peng).
- What not to do: Scientific diagrams that look like shitposts (h/t Joyce).
- Baumer, K. M., Lopez, J. J., Naidu, S. V., et al. (2021). “Visualizing 3D imagery by mouth using candy-like models.” Science Advances 7(22): eabh0691.
- Nwagwu, W.E., & Onyancha, B.. (2015). “Back to the Beginning — The Journal is Dead, Long Live Science.” The Journal of Academic Librarianship. doi:10.1016/j.acalib.2015.06.005.
