Turbocharge Your Publications
Make your publications stand out! In this post, we provide some tips for maximising the impact and audience for your research publications (and learn some new skills along the way).
As academics we are expected to be a jack-of-all-trades: authors, administrators, communicators, project managers, student supervisors, marketing managers, graphical designers, finance manager…the list (unfortunately) goes on. This means that often we do our damn best at everything, while allowing other facets of our work to merely suffice.
One task where one has to bring together all these skills is academic journal articles. Writing a good article is challenging - we have all read a scientific publication, where the science is solid, but the main point of the research is lost in blocks of text and complicated figures. A good article has clear, engaging writing, informative graphs, eye-catching diagrams and a strong narrative – it’s not surprise that some people struggle with this.
In this blog post, we highlight some ways that you can make your articles more engaging, accessible and more likely to make an impact. And importantly – all of these skills are applicable to many endeavors outside of academia too!
“Academic publications can be very boring, but they don’t have to be.”
Title & Abstract
Your title should be concise - summarise the work without being too technical. If you want your work to be widely read and highly cited, then avoid unnecessary discipline-specific jargon in the title.
In your abstract, you should say what you did, why you did it, and what the findings of the study were. The abstract should serve to careful summarise the work and get the reader interested. Again, avoid too much discipline-specific jargon and try to keep the language aimed at a general audience.
Optimise Your Title and Abstract for Search Engines
It is easy to get lost in the huge volume of research papers being published daily. So, it is important to optimise the keywords used in both your title and abstract. In general, you should try to include terms that you think people will type into a search engine when looking for research in your field. You should then include the keywords used for the title within the abstract to maximise searchability. Search engine algorithms use repetition as a method of ranking the important of search terms, meaning that your article is more likely to be returned from a search query.
An example from my own research team: we recently published a paper on the nanostructure of a deep eutectic solvent (DES) at solid interfaces. Specifically, we used AFM imaging and molecular dynamic simulation to investigate the solid-liquid interfacial nanostructure of the DES choline chloride:glycerol (CholCl-Glyc) at both a muscovite (mica) and highly-ordered pyrolytic graphite interface (HOPG) substrate. The title could have easily been “AFM and molecular dynamic simulations elucidate the structure of the deep eutectic solvent (DES) choline chloride:glycerol at the interface of mica and HOPG”. This is too jargon-heavy and likely too specific for many searches; some people might be searching specially for this, but many others would more likely be searching for something general with the key words “nanostructure, deep eutectic solvent, interfaces” or similar. So instead, we titled the article “Nanostructure of a deep eutectic solvent at solid interfaces”. It is clean, concise, and hits all the keywords.
“Figure out what you are trying to say, then let the audience know why it is important.”
Story - What is the narrative for your paper?
Figure out what you are trying to say, then let the audience know why it is important. It’s easy to focus on the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of your work (what you did and how you did it), but what often gets overlooked is the ‘why’ – Why did you do the work? Why are the results important? This gives readers important context to understand how your work fits into the existing literature and what its impact might be.
Scrap (unnecessary) jargon – Say what you mean in simple language
It can be hard to read academic work, especially for the uninitiated. The means that jargon-heavy text can be prohibitive to not only non-experts, but also to scientists from different fields. If you want your work to be impactful, it has to reach a readership outside your narrow area of expertise. Our advice to improve readability: drop the jargon! Field specific heavy text can be alienating to a reader, and it is best to try to say more with fewer words. In most cases, there will be less technical ways to summarise you work. Sometimes specialist terminology will be necessary, in this case, then explain what you mean in simpler language as a follow-up sentence. Space is (generally) cheap, as journals usually don’t charge per page for publication, meaning that an extra sentence can go a long way for conveying your thoughts to your audience. Remember, if your reader becomes disengaged, then the battle is already lost.
“A simple diagram is better than no diagram”
Learn (some) Graphic Design
An informative schematic, well-designed flow diagram, graphical abstract, a false coloured microscopic image, or pictorial representation (cartoon) can bring your data to life. A graph and data-heavy manuscript without diagrams to illustrate your data can make the article inaccessible. A bit of illustration can go a long way to elevate your publications to the next level. You don’t have to become a graphic designer, but knowing some of the basics of graphic design programs can help you create much clearer and more engaging figures. A simple diagram is better than no diagram.
Programs range from high-end (and expensive) platforms such as Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, more affordable alternatives (Affinity Designer is a good Illustrator alternative) to free programs such as Gimp (free), Blender (3D modelling, free). You can also check if your university has a license for any of the paid programs.
With the power of Youtube tutorials and online courses it has never been easier to learn graphical design skills with very little (or no) monetary investment.
Graphing - Get away from Excel
I’ll be blunt: Excel is bad for graphing. It looks ugly, it’s hard to make uniform figures, formatting is a pain, and most people poorly execute its functions. Luckily, there are alternatives which allow you to make informative and accessible graphs. Origin Pro, or Graphpad Prism, which are paid-for-software allow you to customise every aspect of your graphs (and save templates so you can make uniform figures). However, if you are on a tighter budget (and many students are) then these open-source programs are great alternatives: SciDaVis (free) or GnuPlot (free), Veusz (Free, Open Source), Plotly (Freemium, Open Source), and Xcos (Free, Open Source).
Colour Schemes – Colourblind People Exist.
The purpose of displaying data visually is for the reader to be able to see it. However, many people, such as those who are colourblind, cannot see the standard red/green colour schemes which many programs use as their default. Barrier-free use of colours in your images and graphs is important to improve the accessibility of your research. Recently, many default colour palettes have been designed to make producing colourblind-friendly content straightforward. Here is a good resource. When graphing it is advisable to use a combination of symbols and colours, so that data sets are easily distinguishable – this is also useful for when someone prints your article in black and white.
