Occasionally, I have a controversial opinion about research communication.* This week it is: The best graphical abstracts have orienting text. OoOoOoOo! Provocative, right?** Let's break down this assertion. What's a graphical abstract? A graphical abstract is an illustrated summary of…
If you listened to pop music in the late 90’s, you surely remember this little gem by Eiffel 65. (<-- Click this link now and you'll have a great soundtrack for reading the rest of this post!) I was doing…
Remember when I posted about my love for art supplies? Well, last month, artists Liz Butler and Glendon Mellow gave me a great excuse to use them and call it work: Often, science art focuses on the natural sciences. And…
Imagine, if you will, that I asked you to order a pizza. “Sure. What kind of pizza?” you ask. Whatever people will like. OK, who are these “people”? Everyone at our meeting! Can you be a bit more specific? Um,…
Hey, friends! College football kicked off last weekend,* and the NFL season starts next week. That makes it the perfect time to share my favorite football analogy.** Picture this: Your rival team (blue) kicks off. Your (yellow) team’s punt returner…
Two weeks ago, I realized that one of my fundamental beliefs about the world was wrong. Over the past several years, I’ve facilitated a bunch of workshops on designing and presenting scientific posters. Broadly, those workshops cover what content should…
Professional areas like science and law are dominated by written and spoken communication. For scientists, peer-reviewed journal articles and scientific conference presentations are the flagship communication formats. And then legal professionals spend much of their time reading and writing legal…
I’ve had Scott Berinato’s Good Charts on my bookshelf for a couple of years and finally had a chance to read it in June. I read a decent pile of research communication books and articles each year, and the same…
Before I started Data Soapbox, I was a practicing researcher. I designed research studies and collected, analyzed, and reported the data. As time went on, I got more and more interested in the reporting part of my job, to the…
Is your child gunning for my job as Head Nerd at Data Soapbox? (No?) Do they really like animal facts, at least? (Of course.)* Great! Allow me to recommend Steve Jenkins’s Animals by the Numbers: A Book of Animal Infographics.…