The Best Resources for Free Scientific Stock Illustrations and Photos (2024)

When crafting a scientific paper, poster, or PowerPoint presentation, the thought of creating the necessary images can be daunting after extensive writing. Clear and precise visuals are crucial in scientific communication, but did you know that you can alleviate this burden by using free professional clipart and stock photos?  Here, we introduce several free image resources with tons of scientific clipart and elements perfect for enhancing your publication. However, remember to check the journal’s policy on third-party content, as some journals require all images to ...

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Presenting to Diverse Audiences (scientists or non-scientists)

When giving a presentation to an audience with varying levels of knowledge on your topic, it can be challenging to strike a balance between providing enough detail for the experts and not losing the novice audience. Preparing such talks opens up a taunting dilemma that can increase your anxiety and hinder presentation effectiveness. This is also one of the questions I often get from my workshop participants (scientist). Fortunately, there are several strategies you can use. If you are new to your topic and inexperienced in presenting, I suggest you to choose a single ...

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How to Choose a PowerPoint Aspect Ratio: 4:3 or 16:9?

which aspect ratio should you choose for your powerpoint presentation slides
When designing a PowerPoint presentation, one of the first choices one makes is the slide size. PowerPoint has switched to default 16:9 aspect ratio of the presentations a couple of years ago, which follows the trend of "wide-everything", including smartphones, computer monitors, TVs, and projectors & beamers. But with the craze to wide-everything, is 16:9 slide presentation aspect ratio the best choice for all circumstances? Here are my thoughts. (more…)

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Humans Are Visual Creatures

Here we gathered some interesting facts to emphasize why using visual aids in scientific communication is so important. (more…)

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The »7 C’s of Effective Communication« Applied to Science

The concept of »7 C’s of Effective Communication« first appeared in business, where time is precious and there is no room for mistakes done out of misinformation. The »7 C's« stand for seven essential principles of communication starting with the letter C. Each one represents a requirement that the message should meet to be effective. Applying these principles to your communication ensures that your message will be in sync with the recipient's understanding and free from ballast. (more…)

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What is Effective Communication?

Communication, spontaneous and strategic Communication is all around us. It is the process of exchanging information or ideas between individuals or groups. The purpose of communication is to share information and coordinate actions in order to achieve a common goal or understanding. But what contributes to making the communication effective? Is there any way for us to become more effective communicators? (more…)

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How to Create an Effective Graphical Abstract • Guide

What is a graphical abstract? A graphical abstract (also called 'visual TOC' or 'TOC figure' or 'visual abstract') is a figure that succinctly visually conveys what your research is about. They have been a part of scientific publications for decades in some research fields (e.g. chemistry) but have only recently penetrated other research fields. As there is not a lot of literature on graphical abstracts, I'll share some of my findings from analyzing thousands of graphical abstracts from different journals. (more…)

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