Animated graphical abstract

A graphical abstract is a concise visual summary of an article’s main findings and implications. It can help researchers to quickly assess the relevance and novelty of a paper, and to decide whether to read it further. A graphical abstract should be designed with care and creativity, to capture the essence of the research in an engaging and informative way. One way to enhance the impact of a graphical abstract is to use animation, which can illustrate dynamic processes, complex relationships, or temporal changes more effectively than static images. An animated graphical abstract can also attract more attention and interest from potential readers, especially on online platforms where multimedia content is prevalent.

What is an animated graphical abstract?

If a graphical abstract contains repetitive moving images in a part or the entire image is referred to as an animated graphical abstract. The format of these images is usually GIF or WebP, which can display simple movements on the web. Unlike animation, you do not need to start an animation by clicking the animation button. As soon as the page related to the abstract opens, it will start showing the GIF or WebP animation.

What are the advantages of animated graphical abstracts?

The simple and static graphical abstract cannot always show as well as the author intended. For example, sometimes, the movement between the molecular bond and molecular structural changes in a moving image is better understood.

It may also there are a lot of details and we cannot display all of the items in an image frame, it’s better to display a graphical abstract in a few steps in an animated form.

An example of displaying the molecular structure (article link)

An example of displaying the analysis process (article link)

In which journals are possible?

Unfortunately, in all sites offering scientific journals, it’s not possible to use the animated graphical abstract or they didn’t consider it. At the moment, animated graphical abstracts can be used only in journals covered by the RSC website or some Wiley Online Library journals.

An important matter in the animated design is that at the very beginning of the design, you should choose the standard size of the graphical abstracts, because changing the size of the moving images by the site’s editor during the upload may destroy the animation of the image. You should also let the journalists know that the images are animated, and they should be sent outside Word format.

An example of animated graphical abstracts (article link)

In case you are interested in the presentation of the graphical abstract in a special and animated way, you can order in the graphical abstract service section of inmywork.com.