Is a picture worth a thousand downloads? Results of an infographic pilot with Science Partner Journal’s Plant Phenomics

AAAS has run a pilot [July 2023 -January 2024] with Science Partner Journal Plant Phenomics in which editors selected papers to receive a professionally made infographic depicting their research in a visually appealing way. Infographics and graphical abstracts have been used in the medical field for several years, and their impact on social media distribution has been studied in detail. With this in mind, AAAS and Plant Phenomics wanted to see the impact of infographics in our field, and the degree of appeal to their specific authors and audience.

Working with Plant Phenomics and Compuscript, 21 infographics were created across the span of the pilot and distributed to the journal for publication and promotion. This poster will describe the framework of this pilot and report on the results, looking at the infographic’s impact on downloads/hits, social media performance, citations, and author survey data. Using this data, the poster will paint a holistic picture of the role infographics play in research communication, from both an author perspective and a distribution standpoint. These results will inform our publishing colleagues who may be considering implementing something similar, or spur interest from academics looking for another way to disseminate their research.