Tools to illustrate your scientific works! (open source web-based)
By Dr. Verónica Espinoza, 2024.
▪Twitter (X) @Verukita1 ▪LinkedIn: Dra. Verónica Espinoza ▪website: www.nethabitus.org
Scientific illustration is more than just artwork. It is a way to communicate complex concepts, details, and subjects in an engaging and easily comprehensible way [1].
Introduction
Scientific illustration is a method of communication that allows complex ideas, details, and theories to be presented in an interesting and informative approach [2].
It is possible to more clearly communicate scientific concepts through illustrations rather than the technical jargon often used to describe them. Drawing or rendering scientific images in an accurate manner is how these artists or illustrators communicate science and inform audiences [2].
What will we review in this story?
In this story we will review 6 open source web-based tools. These tools are useful for illustrating your scientific work, such as articles, power point presentations, posters, school assignments, among others.
For each tool you will find:
1.-A general description of the tool.
2.- The link to the tool.
3.- A screenshot of the website.
😉I hope they are useful for you!
🏁 Let’s start
1.-Chemix
Chemisc is an educational app that lets you easily draw lab diagram setups and explain your experiments. It has a large library of highly customisable apparatus and various features to help you draw diagrams with ease [3].
Chemix is intuitive to use and easy to pick up. You’ll be drawing complex diagrams in no time!
The Free tier lets you use most of the app for free and images you create with Chemix belong to you: You can include them in instructions, teaching material, presentations, YouTube videos etc [3].
2.-Smart
Since its launch in 2001, Servier Medical Art is a trusted and internationally recognized resource used in respected journals, textbooks, online resources, and more. [ In this website you will find 3000 Free medical images to illustrate your publications and Powerpoint presentations! [4].
Are you a medical student or researcher looking for high-quality medical illustrations and images to enhance your educational materials, research publications, and PowerPoint presentations? Servier Medical Art is your global source for over 3000 free, up-to-date medical images designed to meet your needs [4].
3.-Bioicons
Bioicons is a free library of open source icons for scientific illustrations using vector graphics software [5, 6]
The website supports two modes:
- Copy to clipboard (only in Webkit browser such as Google Chrome, Brave or Microsoft Edge), this will copy an image file and a text representation of the svg file in the clipboard.
- Download on click: Simply click on the icon and the vector in svg format will be downloaded. You can use this on the web, in graphics software and in Microsoft Office products. Note that vector images can be scaled infinitely.
Please always cite the individual icons and their respective license. Credit to the platform itself is appreciated but not necessary [6].
4.-Health Icons
Health Icons is a volunteer effort to create a ‘global good’ for health projects all over the world. These icons are available in the public domain for use in any type of project. The project is hosted by the public health not-for-profit Resolve to Save Lives as an expression of our committment to offer the icons for free forever [ 7, 8].
Accessing Icons
Icons are available in several formats:
- All icons are produced in “outline”, “filled”, and “negative” styles
- Each icon is available in SVG and in PNG (48px and 96px)
Icons can be downloaded in a few ways:
- Individually from our website
- Together as a ZIP file
Use for your next commercial or personal project. You don’t need to give credit and you can edit the icons however you want [8].
5.-SciDraw
SciDraw is a free repository of high quality drawings of animals, scientific setups, and anything that might be useful for scientific presentations and posters [9].
We want this repository to be as open as possible, so do not require signing up to post a drawing. The drawings on SciDraw are made by and for scientists. You are free to download, modify and use all drawings on the website [9].
5.-Draw.io
Draw.io is a free, online diagramming tool that allows you to create flowcharts, diagrams, mind maps, organisation charts, and much more. A web-based application, Draw.io is fully integrated with Google Drive. This means that you can automatically save the results of your work in your Google Workspace or Gmail account [10].
Draw.io Integrations
At draw.io, being open source means anyone can take the project, change it, deploy it and integrate it. In fact, draw.io and the free online editor tool has already been integrated into a wide variety of platforms, and is available to be deployed as a self-hosted docker application, or used as a stand-alone private diagramming application. Learn more here: draw.io Integrations (drawio.com) [11].
Draw.io Desktop
Draw.io desktop is a stand-alone, offline application available for Windows, macOS and Linux. This is ideal if you want the enhanced security of a desktop application with no reliance on an internet connection. Get the desktop app today [11].
Conclusion
In this story we have reviewed 6 web-based open source tools. Without a doubt, each one offers different visualizations and features. The choice of your tool will depend on the needs of your research.
😉Thanks for reading this story.
👉Find more stories I have written here
✔Follow me on Twitter (X) @Verukita1
✔LinkedIn: Dra. Verónica Espinoza
✔Website: www.nethabitus.org
References
[1] kperilli. Scientific Illustration: What Is It? | The Franklin Institute [Internet]. 2019 [cited 2024 Apr 29]. Available from: https://fi.edu/en/blog/scientific-illustration-what-it
[2] Pamplona F. Visual abstracts made easy with Mind the Graph [Internet]. Mind the Graph Blog. 2022 [cited 2024 Apr 29]. Available from: https://mindthegraph.com/blog/the-key-visual-science-scientific-illustration/
[3] What is Chemix? — Chemix Help Center [Internet]. [cited 2024 Apr 28]. Available from: https://help.chemix.org/article/5-about
[4] SMART [Internet]. Servier Medical Art. [cited 2024 Apr 28]. Available from: https://smart.servier.com/
[5]Bioicons — high quality science illustrations [Internet]. [cited 2024 Apr 28]. Available from: https://bioicons.com/
[6] Dürr S. BioIcons April 2024 Release [Internet]. 2024 [cited 2024 Apr 28]. Available from: https://github.com/duerrsimon/bioicons
[7] Health icons [Internet]. Health icons. [cited 2024 Apr 28]. Available from: http://healthicons.org/
[8] resolvetosavelives/healthicons [Internet]. Resolve to Save Lives; 2024 [cited 2024 Apr 28]. Available from: https://github.com/resolvetosavelives/healthicons
[9] SciDraw | About [Internet]. [cited 2024 Apr 28]. Available from: https://www.scidraw.io/about/
[10] draw.io [Internet]. [cited 2024 Apr 28]. Available from: https://www.drawio.com/
[11] draw.io Blog [Internet]. [cited 2024 Apr 28]. Available from: https://www.drawio.com/blog
