10 results for author: Jernej Zupanc

The Secret to Better Titles on Slides and Posters: Semantic Line Breaks

When crafting titles for slides and scientific posters, we often face the challenge of fitting lengthy text into limited space. The natural instinct is to break the title into multiple lines wherever the space runs out or simply let PowerPoint handle the line breaks. While this approach seems convenient, it comes with an overlooked problem: arbitrary line breaks can disrupt the flow of ideas. When titles are broken mid-thought or between connected phrases, readers must pause and reprocess the information. This minor disruption might not seem significant at first glance, but it adds cognitive load, slows down comprehension, and creates an uneven ...

How to Get People to Sit in the Front Row

If you’ve ever given a presentation, you’re probably familiar with the (awkward) sight of an empty front row. You’ve worked hard to prepare your content, but when your audience arrives, they scatter to the back, and it can feel like you’re speaking to a distant room, which makes engaging with your audience much more challenging. So, how do you fix this? There is a simple tactic that can help fill those empty seats up front and create a more engaged audience: get to the auditorium early, and personally invite the 5-10 of the firstcomers to sit in the front. It’s a straightforward approach, but it works wonders. Why it works The ...

Streamline Your Scientific Presentations: Always Start on Paper

One common mistake that many scientists make when creating presentations, images, and posters is jumping straight into the software. When faced with the need for a scientific figure, the instinctive reaction is often to open Illustrator or Biorender. Similarly, when preparing a presentation or poster, PowerPoint becomes the immediate go-to tool. Though it might be tempting to start with digital tools, this approach can actually slow you down. The Problem with Going Digital First Softwares provide an abundance of options: 50 different line widths and types… 100 typefaces… 1 million colors… Gradients… Shadows… This excess of choice ...

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 be created by the authors themselves, prohibiting any online material, even from ...

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 ...