
Scientific Communication As Sequential Art - rileyt
http://worrydream.com/ScientificCommunicationAsSequentialArt/
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dasmoth
Looking at this, it makes me realize just how much harm the journals are doing
by limiting the number of figures per paper (and sometimes charging per-figure
as well). If it really meant smaller, simpler, papers it might be a reasonable
restriction, but in my field figures with 10 or more panels -- reproduced at a
tiny size which makes them pretty much useless when reading offline -- are
commonplace. They end up completely divorces from the flow of the manuscript.

Putting all the figures at the end (or separately) when the manuscripts are
sent out for review just makes matters worse.

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lorenzfx
I haven't yet seen any charging for figures, only charging for colour figures
(which probably really significantly increase cost). But since I don't know
anybody who reads papers on paper it doesn't really mater anymore. And you
might make the point that making sure that your figures loose as little
information as possible when viewed on greyscale also improves accessibility.

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seanmcdirmid
I really want to like (and buy) this "publication as a richer experience" as
we need to find a way of getting beyond are book-like mentality in building
documents that will essentially be read on a computer anyways. However, I
don't really understand how to apply this technique in a way that could be
successful and fairly generalized (i.e., it could become my new writing
style). For better and worse, static linear prose allows the author to control
the story that the reader is perceiving completely, it is quite efficient
especially if the author can actually write! Anything else, like figures with
verbose captions or lists, is often not very effective and a paper smell (like
a code smell).

We'll need many more experiments like what Bret Victor is doing here before we
can successfully evolve what is basically a 7000 year old format.

~~~
qznc
I use more verbose captions lately. It makes the figures be comprehensible on
their own. The running text is shorter; The passage is mostly copy-pasted into
the caption.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
The caption approach often doesn't work very well in prose. The reader doesn't
really want to divert their attention to a long caption, which interrupts
their reading of a paragraph, if they bother they might have a hard time going
back to where they left off after they've taken in the caption. This is why
captions should be fairly short, especially when your reader is a reviewer who
is not specifically interested in reading your paper. I actually prefer
inlining my figures into the paragraph text, especially if they are short or
math oriented. Reference becomes harder, but the reader's flow is better
preserved.

Now, we can avoid that problem by moving to an illustrated comic book style
(as done in Bret's example), where the figures become the story and panels are
read in lieu of prose. But its very difficult to do a whole paper like this.

~~~
qznc
Reader flow is not a problem, if the figure+caption is used to make a point,
which can be skipped for flow. Example from a recent publication [0], where
the actual figure is not necessary, so the reader's flow is not broken:

> The libFirm API provides serialization and deserialization support for the
> intermediate representation graphs. As can be seen in Figure 3, it is
> therefore possible to compile the C part of the standard library with
> cparser, stop before actual code generation and instead export the
> intermediate representation to a file.

I believe most readers (e.g. me) look the figures first, so I want the figures
to be comprehensible on their own.

[0] <http://digbib.ubka.uni-karlsruhe.de/volltexte/1000028112>

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apl
I'm willing to bet that any revolution in this field will involve Victor; one
of the most fascinating thinkers in all of HCI.

~~~
chj
I am really blown away by this man's innovation and productivity. A true
artist, low key, strike high.

~~~
pandeiro
<http://worrydream.com/ClickShirt/>

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qznc
This is how scientific publications should be at our technological level. Not
a multiple-pages-based pdf.

However, the details still need some iterations. The design breaks when the
browser windows gets narrow. Does it work on a phone or tablet?

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robotresearcher
This looks very similar to the popular conference/workshop poster presentation
format. Many disciplines have these sessions at meetings where authors display
an A0/A1 poster summary of the paper and discuss it with attendees who wander
around the room with a list of posters like art-gallery visitors. It can be
very effective, with crowds around interesting posters and some debate. Often
the visitors have a glass of wine in hand. In any case the posters look just
like the posted page, though this is a very elegant example.

The authors don't mention the existence poster format, but it is clearly very
closely related. Notice how politely I put that.

To see how common this is, Google for "conference poster" images. Many of the
results returned are ugly and overdone - the idea is often executed poorly.

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scott_s
Conference posters are not considered a "real" publication, and the ones that
I have seen are not as carefully designed as this example.

~~~
robotresearcher
Surely, indeed I made your second point in my comment. Some posters are
beautiful, most are not. My complaint about the OP is that it doesn't
acknowledge the existence of posters, which are in exactly the format
presented.

~~~
scott_s
Then I did not get my point across well: I have never seen a poster in any
approximation of the form the author presented. Hence, I find it reasonable
that he did not mention them, because he likely has also never seen them.

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isnotchicago
Unrelated to the content of the article, but the light grey text is almost
entirely illegible. The figure captions are particularly bad, and I am
surprised Bret Victor chose such an awful color scheme. This page is basically
a perfect case for <http://contrastrebellion.com/>

