Traditionally, research findings were published in reputable scholarly journals that were only available to a limited audience or stored in the archives of libraries to be used when a topic was being studied. The Digital Era has changed this forever by bringing in innovative technology that lets research be disseminated to a global audience immediately, allowing knowledge to be spread to anyone interested in a subject area.

These changes have come through electronic mediums like online publishing, personal blogs, and social media platforms. Other tools, such as infographics, make it simple for researchers to get their key points to their audience. Infographics have become a favored way for readers to skim an article and focus on the relevant details. Academics have to learn how to implement the use of these tools to better enhance their research findings in a world where visual learning is becoming the predominant method of instruction.

What Are Infographics and Why Are They So Popular?

Infographics are the go-to tool for everything from marketing to explaining research results. The term itself refers to anything that creates a visual output that relates to the topic being discussed. Researchers turn this visual data into presentations, diagrams, research posters, charts, visual reports, visual abstracts, and illustrations, which are all considered ‘infographics.’

These ‘graph’ mediums take the key information in an article or passage and condense those findings into a different form of knowledge dissemination, using visuals to get the point across to the reader. Those who are more visual learners or who want to get directly to the main idea of the writing, or those who want more clarity on the subject, can use the infographic.

Benefits of Using Infographics in Your Research

Research is usually full of evidence that contains quantitative data that’s difficult to impart to the reader through word format. Infographics allow the scholar to turn this data into visuals like bar graphs, histograms, and other charts that depict numbers as something more easily understood.

Studies have shown the major benefits of using infographics to complement scientific research. These advantages include facts such as:

●      The ability of the brain to process things in visual form quicker and easier than its textual counterparts

●      The increased effect of visuals to establish the author’s credentials as an expert

●      An enhanced probability that users will share the article or link to it, thus creating a larger impact

●      Infographics pack a more powerful punch in terms of spreading important key findings to an audience and getting the word out quickly

●      Search engine optimization is important to get your research seen by more people, and infographics increase that optimization

Research without some form of infographic may quickly be relegated to the ignored or obsolete pile if it doesn’t have another way to draw readers to it.

Strategies to Better Include Infographics to Enhance Your Research Findings

As important as infographics are to research, it’s still a newer avenue of design. If you want to include this method to highlight your evidence better, use these tips:

●      Start with the content you want to include and build out from there. Keep your target audience at the center of your design. What do they already know and what are you intending to teach them?

●      Keep the content limited to less than 300 words for a full-sized poster, and less than that for anything smaller. Short sentences or phrases are the best. Succinct and to the point is the goal.

●      Remember you don’t have to tell the whole story in the infographic, just enough to engage the reader and interest them in reading more of your research.

●      The layout of your infographic is similar to your text. It should have titles, explanations, and sections that are clearly defined, without being crammed in tightly.

●      Use the same style of text, color, and font through all of your infographics in one article. Limit the use of your colors, too.

●      Choose a software program that makes it easy to design infographics or transfer them to your article, like Impactio.

When you get comfortable designing infographics, it adds another level of impact to your important work.

Use Impactio to Integrate Infographics into Your Research

Impactio is an all-in-one platform designed for and used by academic experts around the world. Its simple process lets you create your research, turning your work into professional accomplishments with headings, subheadings, and sections from premade templates. But it also is set up to help users easily turn data into infographics like charts, tables, and graphs, or take your outside visuals and place them into relevant parts of your work.

Using Impactio to turn your research into finished PDF documents and web pages ready for publication is the smart choice that researchers everywhere trust to get the job done right.