Scientific Knowledge

By William Allen (University of Oxford) Visualisations aim to be straightforward, but they actually involve many processes and brokers that complicate how users engage with them. Researchers across several disciplines use data visualisations to communicate with public audiences. It may be tempting to think visualisation provides straightforward windows into scientific studies, helping people

by Jacopo Sacquegno Science has always benefitted from the use of visualization. We can almost say that since the very beginnings of enquiring into nature in the 17th Century, producing visuals and images to describe phenomena and explain theoretical models has been intrinsic to science. Today, the evolution of advanced software tools allows researchers to generate a huge amount of visual

By Jane Gregory and Guoyan Wang Images on journal covers raise the citation rates of academic papers. According Wang, Guoyan and two of her graduate students, Cheng, Xi and Yao, Yuting, from University of Science and Technology of China, and Jane Gregory from the UK, papers published in prestige journals enjoy 120% of the citations of comparable research papers. However, when a research paper is

Those communicating science for a living are likely familiar with the criticism of “dumbing down.” It’s an accusation that suggests simplification is inevitably a bad thing, and that it is possible to communicate a message without in some way shaping its meaning. More subtly, it also suggests that communication is a one-way street. It holds practitioners of science communication responsible for

About crowdfunding science and panda bears The study at hand shows that projects presented on science-only crowdfunding platforms have a higher success rate. At the same time, projects are more likely to be successful if their presentation includes visualizations and humor, the lower their targeted funding is, the less personal data potential donors have to relinquish and the more