B - Effectiveness of graphical abstracts

Pferschy-Wenzig EM, Pferschy U, Wang D, et al. Does a graphical abstract bring more visibility to your paper? Molecules 2016;21(9):pii: E1247
(doi: 10.3390/molecules21091247)

A graphical abstract (GA) represents a piece of artwork intended to summarize the main findings of an article for readers at a single glance. Many publishers currently encourage authors to supplement their articles with GAs, in the hope that it will result in improved overall visibility of the publication. To test this assumption, the authors statistically compared publications with or without GA published in Molecules between March 2014 and March 2015 with regard to several output parameters reflecting visibility. Contrary to their expectations, manuscripts published without GA performed significantly better in terms of PDF downloads, abstract views, and total citations than manuscripts with GA.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27649137

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