6 results for author: Jernej Zupanc

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 audience (target group) and adapt your presentation for them. This might ignore ...

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

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…)

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…)

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…)

How Scientists Read Research Papers

If you are a scientist, a large part of your career success depends on whether your research will be published, cited, and your project/grant proposals funded. As you’ve most probably already realized, even the most groundbreaking results will be neglected and often missed by the community if they are not effectively communicated. However, to effectively communicate, we should first understand the audience and how they consume information. The aim of this post is therefore to present a perspective on how most scientists read research papers when they first encounter them (which will most probably happen online). 1. When we first open papers, ...

5 Reasons Why Your Papers Should Have Graphical Abstracts

As you most probably know from your own experience, scientists are overwhelmed by their work. From the first day of the PhD studies, you have to constantly follow literature, do your research, and communicate through papers and conferences. Once your career advances, you will also have to apply for funding and patents, hire and manage people, teach and mentor students and so on. Therefore, when you are preparing any scientific communication, you should consider the readers: they are most probably busy, overworked and tired, just like you. The communication method you use has to help them understand the main message effortlessly. When people who are ...