Want your Research Read Three Times as Often? Use a #VisualAbstract

Last year I took over at the Creative Director at the Annals of Surgery with the mission to improve dissemination of our research articles. Central to that effort was creation of the "Visual Abstract"-- a visual representation of the information typically found in the "abstract" (summary) portion of an article. It's easiest to just look at few...

Here is an example of a randomized controlled trial on timing of gallbladder removal:

Here is another one summarizing key strategies to reduce the overuse of opioids:

And finally this one demonstrates the impact of a novel feedback intervention to reduce opioid prescribing after surgery:

Over the last year we created more than 100 visual abstracts to help disseminate surgical science at the Annals of Surgery. Did it make a difference on how often articles were read? Yes...

We ran a prospective match-pair cross-over trial to evaluate how much impact a visual abstract had on article dissemination via social media. Here was our study design:

What was the result? When shared with a #VisualAbstract, research articles were read nearly three times as often. Moreover, they were shared amongst peers eight times more often.

When shared with a #VisualAbstract, research articles were read nearly three times as often.

To date, more than 40 journals and institutions have adopted the #VisualAbstract into their dissemination strategy on social media including the New England Journal of Medicine and JAMA.

Best part about the #VisualAbstract movement? It has been entirely open source. A free PDF Primer of Creating a Visual Abstract can be found here: www.SurgeryRedesign.com/resources