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https://doi.org/10.18485/esptoday.2023.11.2.3 Vol. 11(2)(2023): 237-260
e-ISSN:2334-9050
237
Cristiane Salete Florek*
Department of Vernacular Languages
Federal University of Santa Maria, Brazil
cristiane.florek@ufsm.br
Graciela Rabuske Hendges
Department of Modern Foreign Languages
Federal University of Santa Maria, Brazil
graciela.r.hendges@ufsm.br
A MULTIMODAL MOVE ANALYSIS OF GRAPHICAL
ABSTRACTS IN MEDICINE AND CHEMISTRY
Abstract
Graphical abstracts (GAs), as other new digital forms of communicating science, have
been promoted as tools to escalate the reach of journal articles and move science into
unconventional environments such as social media. Despite the rapid and widespread
adoption of the GA in various fields, its genre status is still controversial due to its unstable
structure and functions. Here, we examine the move structure of 100 GAs published in
2022 in 10 high impact journals in medicine and chemistry. We aim to verify adherence
to the Introduction-Methods-Results-Discussion pattern and the role of visual and
written resources in move realization. We also discuss selections of multimodal resources
that may result from the processes of recontextualization of scientific discourse to
audiences other than expert peers. Our findings reveal that move structure varies across
fields: in chemistry, only Results are obligatory, while in medicine the obligatory pattern
is Methods-Results-Conclusion. Move realization in predominantly multimodal, with
visual resources as the key element in the presentation of Methods and Results, while the
written mode is characteristic of Conclusion. Acknowledgment of readers other than the
peer scientist is evident in three medicine journals whose GAs are not produced by the
author of the respective articles, but by graphic designers.
Key words
genre analysis, multimodal move analysis, graphical abstract, digital genres, disciplinary
discourse, visual literacy.
* Corresponding address: Cristiane Salete Florek, Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, Avenida
Roraima, 1000, Cidade Universitária – Camobi, RS, 97110-970.
CRISTIANE SALETE FLOREK & GRACIELA RABUSKE HENDGES
Vol. 11(2)(2023): 237-260
1. INTRODUCTION
A glance at the table of contents of high impact journals, especially those published
in English, reveals some of the efforts scientific communities are addressing in the
sector of add-on summaries (Katsampoxaki-Hodgetts, 2022). Highlights, lay
summaries, plain language summaries, graphical abstracts, the bigger picture, and
video abstracts, to name just a few, have been emerging as additional to the verbal
abstract and have not gone unnoticed by the linguistic science, especially that with
a focus on the investigation-pedagogization axis.
Needs and purposes around science are in a cyclical feedback relation,
triggering endogenous and exogenous interdiscursive movements oriented to the
most diverse goals, from raising funds for research to deciding which scientific
product to support financially (Calsamiglia & Van Dijk, 2004; Myers, 2003). The
emergence of new digital part-genres can be a way to deal with the exponential
escalation in the number of scientific publications (Fire & Guestrin, 2019) and to
facilitate access to them, due to their predominantly electronic, interlinked and
increasingly open nature. In connection with the idea of continuous feedback, the
San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment – DORA (Cagan, 2013) strongly
claims that funding agencies, institutions, publishers, organizations that supply
metrics, and researchers should reevaluate assessment methods, focusing on the
validation of the content of research. Thus, in the current scenario of scientific
publication, where add-on summaries circulate more easily than research articles,
alternative metrics, known as altmetrics, have been employed to map numbers of
accesses, uses and shares of research publications and offer a more complex picture
of the reach and impact of research findings, beyond traditional citation-based
metrics (Fire & Guestrin, 2019; Nishikawa-Pacher, 2022).
Based on the current importance of add-on summaries, in this article we focus
on one of them, the Graphical Abstract (GA). A decade ago, analyzing the prototypes
of the Article of the Future, launched by Elsevier in 2009, Pérez-Llantada (2013)
found that readers recognized the verbal abstract as the most important component
of the research article, while GAs were considered much less relevant. Even so,
Pérez-Llantada (2013: 232) predicted that GAs would “become typified genre
elements in the near future”. Sancho Guinda (2015) also found that university
professors value verbal abstracts more than GAs, but are in favor of the permanence
of GAs as a non obligatory complement. The participants in her survey also
evaluated creativity and appeal as very important criteria in GAs. More recently,
Katsampoxaki-Hodgetts (2022) noted a preference for GAs among young
researchers compared to experts, pointing to differences in attitudes toward GAs
related to social roles, hierarchical positions, and age of the audience. In another
study involving audience feedback on GAs, Sancho Guinda (2022) focused on
criticism to GAs in blogs and found that adequate literacy is necessary so that the
canonical standard of scientific praxis is maintained.
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In light of these findings, we analyze the move organization of 100 GAs
published in 2022 in 10 high impact journals in chemistry and medicine. Our aim is
to examine the adherence to the Introduction-Method-Results-Discussion (IMRD)
pattern and the role that visual and verbal resources play in move realization.
Ultimately, we explore the presence and nature of visual recontextualization
strategies used in GAs to acknowledge the general public as the potential reader.
As language professionals, we believe that successful academic genre
pedagogy depends on significant textual, disciplinary and social research. Norris
and Phillips (2003: 225) present reading and writing as fundamental meanings of
what scientific literacy is and advocate that these meanings be improved and treated
seriously, beyond processes of “word recognition and location of information”. For
the authors, making science is significantly dependent on texts and the resources
they make available; thus, reading of science-related texts – including multimodal
texts, such as GAs – is acknowledged as primary access to scientific knowledge, both
about academic lexicogrammar and about the epistemology of science.
On the subject of reading and writing texts, we align with genre-based language
perspectives, specifically those that view texts as purpose-oriented, textualized by
rhetorical moves (Swales, 1990) and permeated by discourses. The notion of rhetorical
moves is efficient in tracking in the text what is said, how it is said, and why it is said,
which carries in itself a highly pedagogical component. However, as Buehl (2022: 297)
points out, “although graphical abstracts have appeared on digital platforms for more
than ten years, pedagogical concerns have not been much addressed”.
2. LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1. Move analysis and multimodality
Move analysis within ESP-EAP research has been a powerful tool to promote
academic literacy. The description of functional/formal regularities of genres has
rendered rich pedagogical material for ESP-EAP educators and learners, because it
simultaneously provides a macro-level view of the rhetorical blocks that form a
genre and how they are sequenced (based on the analysis of a representative sample)
and a micro-level specification of how each block is linguistically realized. These two
levels of information have been increasingly thickened by explanations of why the
function and form of a genre are the way they are, adding ethnographic (Guillén-
Galve & Bocanegra-Valle, 2021; Paltridge et al., 2016) and critical layers to genre
analysis (Bhatia, 2017; Motta-Roth & Heberle, 2015). These layers in ESP-EAP
research can help to drive educational practice to “an agenda for social and political
change” (Jewitt, 2014, as cited in Archer, 2022: 547).
One aspect of move analysis that seems to need further development is
multimodality (Guillén-Galve & Vela-Tafalla, 2020; Prior, 2013; Riazi et al., 2020; Xia,
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2020). The “multimodal move analysis” approach has been defined as “an enhanced
version of the move/stage analysis method” (Xia, 2020: 147) which acknowledges
that the individual moves in multimodal genres may be realized by multiple semiotic
resources. This approach is particularly necessary in the current territory of digital
academic communication, where non-verbal
1
semiotic modes have gained material
and discursive prominence. Guillén-Galve and Vela-Tafalla (2020: 2) advocate for
the use of Multimodal Discourse Analysis, as developed by Kress and van Leeuwen
(2001), as a “highly convenient” analytical tool in the analysis of multimodal digital
research genres. Reid et al. (2016) argue that a lack of studies engaging explicitly
with theories of multimodality can leave ESP-EAP practitioners and faculty in
Writing Across the Curriculum questioning the relevance of instruction in
multimodal literacy.
Multimodal move analysis may be a challenge to genre scholars as they need to
expand their analytical repertoire to be able to scrutinize non-verbal semiotic modes
with a similar level of detail as with verbal language. On a textual level, this implies
developing principles, concepts, and accessible technological apparatuses to 1)
describe the lexicogrammar of non-verbal modes, 2) understand intermodal
interaction and the role each mode plays in move realization, 3) recognize cues of
move boundaries in non-verbal modes, and 4) handle large corpora for quantitative
data generation. On a contextual level, it implies developing strategies to address the
highly specialized disciplinary symbolism of scientific images, informed by experts
who themselves may not be sufficiently aware why images in their fields are the way
they are. This unawareness has been attributed to the notion that visual scientific
literacy seems to be more the result of intuition than of explicit formal training, rarely
being part of higher education curricula (Archer, 2022; Reid et al., 2016).
It seems, thus, that the complexity of multimodal genres requires an equally
complex toolkit for a comprehensive move analysis. One of the studies cited by Xia
(2020: 147) as an example of multimodal move analysis was developed by Hafner
(2018) on video methods articles published by The Journal of Visualized Experiments.
According to Xia (2020: 147), “subsequent to the identification of the moves and
steps involved in the genre, the author elaborates on how the written, spoken, and
visual modes interplay” in the realization of moves. However, Hafner (2018: 29)
himself acknowledges a disadvantage in multimodal move analysis: “constraints of
space do not permit a full multimodal analysis of every move”, referring to a word
limit. Conversely, his paper displays a significant amount of data generated from
contextual analysis, drawing on multiple sources (for example, interviews with
community insiders, handbooks, and guidelines). This is one example of how
multimodal move analysis produces several layers of qualitative and quantitative
data that may not all fit into the space of a traditional 8,000- to 10,000-word
research article. The different layers of data may be 1) for each rhetorical move,
1
We define non-verbal semiotic modes as all those modes whose realization does not depend on the
letters of the alphabet, such as music, image, or gesture. Conversely, we use ‘verbal modes’ to
encompass two materializations: written language and spoken language.
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qualitative data about linguistic cues in verbal language, cues in visual language,
cues in another semiotic mode (sound, for example); 2) data resulting from crossing
intermodal cues to determine “division of labour” (Hafner, 2018: 28) between
modes in each move; and 3) quantitative data about obligatory and optional modes
that realize each move. In the present work, we follow a similar approach to Hafner
(2018) in the move analysis of GAs.
2.2. Move structure of GAs: previous studies
Current GAs differ substantially from their precedent paper versions. They are
publications native to the web, which have expanded in number and range of areas
since their inclusion in the Article of the Future project by Elsevier (for a systematic
review on the subject, see Buehl, 2022). Web-native GAs have little more than a
decade of life and, in terms of studies explicitly oriented to the analysis of the
rhetorical moves of this part-genre, there seems to be no conclusive evidence about
the predominant organization pattern. However, the works of Sancho Guinda
(2015), Yoon and Chung (2017), and the doctoral research of Florek (2018) have
provided insightful directions on the topic.
Sancho Guinda (2015: 73) claimed for the existence of a process of “formal
dilution of the moves construct”, based on the analysis of teaser-abstracts published
by a trans-national engineering association and of 16 models of GAs made available
by Elsevier. Her study considered the repercussion of these texts within a small
multidisciplinary community of engineering practitioners, in order to “determine
moves trends and informants’ reactions” (Sancho Guinda, 2015: 73). The expert
informants in her survey showed high dispersion in the identification of moves,
which the author explains as an indication that GAs weaken the boundaries of areas
of knowledge, making them more permeable for scientific communities from related
and remote areas.
Yoon and Chung (2017) analyzed 772 GAs from 68 journals distributed across
nine disciplines of Social Sciences in order to demonstrate how the part-genre has
been adopted in the field. The authors found that Results was the most recurrent
move in GAs across disciplines (48.3%), followed by a move that the authors (2017:
1377) called Overview (26.4%): a summary move that integrates “both the research
process and key results (sometimes with the addition of background information)”.
Introductions and Methods showed low occurrence (only 12% each). In relation to
multimodality, the Results move in 63% of these GAs is realized by visuals that
duplicate existing visuals in the manuscript, mainly in the form of quantitative
charts and of conceptual diagrams that present “frameworks of conclusions drawn
from the study results” (Yoon & Chung, 2017: 1376). As duplicates, these GAs seem
to be mainly addressed to specialized readers in the Social Sciences.
Finally, in a study of 30 GAs in the fields of chemistry, engineering, and related
interdisciplinary areas, Florek (2018) identified that Results and Methods were
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obligatory moves, present in all the GAs. The author considered 15 journals and also
conducted interviews with journal editors and GA authors, with the aim of
identifying perceptions about form, function, and multimodality. The editors and
authors in her work acknowledge the potential of GAs to attract more readers, but
mostly expert readers. The authors in particular perceive the task of visually
summarizing a paper for the general reader as a challenge to the future of GAs in
their fields. In relation to multimodality, Florek (2018) also found Methods and
Results are mainly realized by highly specialized visuals, such as chemical schemes,
as 30% of the GAs use duplicates and 43.3% show images that are only slightly
modified compared to those used in the article, for example, through the addition of
color. The use of color may be interpreted as a recontextualization strategy, as
discussed in the next section.
2.3. Science recontextualization strategies in GAs: previous studies
The salience of non-verbal semiotic modes in digital research genres and part-genres
reflects the way knowledge circulates nowadays (Buehl, 2022) in the sense that “the
Internet revolution has involved a shift from primarily print media to audiovisual
material adapted to mobile devices” (Rowley-Jolivet & Carter-Thomas, 2019: 82).
Static images, videos, sound, oral narration, and animations are constitutive in these
genres, particularly in “add-on summaries” (Katsampoxaki-Hodgetts, 2022: 2) that
orbit around the research article and are offered to readers free of charge across
multiple sharing platforms (such as YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter, Instagram, or science
blogs). Readers may become aware of a publication not because they searched for it
in a journal’s homepage, but because it ‘fell into their lap’ through notification services
and in formats that are tangible ‘at a glance’ to satisfy the reading behavior of users in
the digital medium, characterized by zapping from one small piece of information to
another (Rowley-Jolivet & Carter-Thomas, 2019).
The potentially maximized circulation of research findings (Pérez-Llantada,
2016) promoted by open access part-genres has also raised competition for
visibility. Adding differentiating products in the form of new part-genres can be
interpreted as a key strategy of journals to gain competitive advantage (Bhatia,
2005), increasing the “chances of being cited” (Coccetta, 2022: 27).
The literature on digital research genres (e.g. Buhuel, 2022; Coccetta, 2022;
Sancho Guinda, 2022) has consistently observed the presence of interdiscursivity in
these genres, in which the discourse of science interacts with the discourses of
media (advertising and journalism) as a means to be appealing to readers with
various degrees of expertise, who may be practitioners from the same field,
researchers from other fields, or non-researchers. This “mediatization of science”
(Rowley-Jolivet & Carter Thomas, 2019: 81) or colonization of science by
“promotionalism” (Sancho Guinda, 2015, 2016) recognizes that non-technical
readers play a role in increasing the visibility of a research paper, as has been argued
in studies of science popularization discourse, and that knowledge transfer is not
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linear from science to the public, but cyclical (Myers, 2003: 266). As explained by
Coccetta (2022: 28), if a scientist and/or a journal is able to engage, for example,
policy makers, journalists, and bloggers through a video abstract, because they
“understand it, find it interesting”, chances are that it will be shared and that the article
will be cited. These citation practices, despite unconventional from the standpoint of
the scientific tradition, have been measured by altmetrics, which have been
increasingly incorporated into journal homepages with the assumption they may
influence impact factor parameters (Fire & Guestrin, 2019; Nishikawa-Pacher, 2022).
Promotional strategies in digital research part-genres can be analyzed under
the concept of recontextualization by which textualizations of knowledge are
adapted as they move from context 1 (science/academia) to context 2 (mass media)
to meet the rhetorical expectations of context 2. This adaptation may involve
translating or re(con)textualizing meaning from one semiotic mode into another
2
.
According to Sancho Guinda (2016: 86), these movements demand “changes in the
modern researcher’s role”, not because scientists would not reach out to the public
before, but because “the Internet has immeasurably enlarged the variety of
repertoires, contexts, and genres, in which scientists can present and discuss their
work (Rowley-Jolivet & Carter-Thomas, 2019: 82).
The study of visual recontextualization strategies of scientific discourse has
received some attention in the literature (Hendges & Marques, 2018; Luzón, 2019;
Miller, 1998). In the context of science popularization news, Miller (1998) discussed
the role of visual elements in a comparison of articles from Science and Nature with
their popularizations in Time, Newsweek and The New York Times and
popularizations within the academic journals themselves. The author argues that
visuals in academic articles are designed to prove, while in popularization discourse
they are designed to attract. According to the author, both functions are a question
of persuasion, but the readers of research articles are seen as interested but
unbelieving, while the readers in the context of popularization are seen as
uninterested generalists. The author classifies the persuasive power of visuals in
research articles as dependent on their propositional content, while the persuasive
power of popular science images relies on the symbolic connections they establish
with readers. As observed by Miller (1998: 40), these connections may be achieved
through the use of cartoons (as readers can relate to them based on their knowledge
of popular culture), the presentation of simplified findings, the depiction of
implications of the findings, the use of bright colors with a modal function of
attracting, the use of individual creatures that the reader can identify with, and the
use of narrative layout that absorb the reader into a story instead of requiring the
establishment of comparisons (as with the layout of tables).
In another study about images in 60 science popularization news from BBC
News International, Scientific American, ABC Science and Nature, Hendges and
2
We would like to thank Luzón (2019) for calling our attention to this definition of
recontextualization that explicitly addresses the concept of semiotic mode, particularly relevant to
our work with GAs.
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Marques (2018) observed four visual recontextualization strategies: popularization
of the source (use of stock pictures instead of replicating original images of research
articles), modalization (use of photographs containing lifeworld scenes or
characters instead of abstract coded scientific images), grammatical simplification
(use of images with simple structures: one process and one participant) and
thematic generalization (use of images that summarize the topic of the research
article next to the title of the news report instead of images that address only a
specific part of the research article, such as quantitative data).
In the context of digital research genres, visual recontextualization strategies
have been discussed by Luzón (2019) and categorized into four groups: 1)
establishing authority and credibility (through images that show researchers’
affiliation, academic settings, and as experts “doing science” using scientific
equipment, explaining aspects of their research); 2) supporting arguments and
claims (through images that support the narrative, represent uses or applications,
provide evidence for what is being said); 3) tailoring information (through images
that represent/describe an object mentioned verbally, explain disciplinary
procedures through video footage, facilitate understanding of concepts explained
verbally by researchers’ through symbolic representation); and 4) engaging the
audience (through images that represent researchers in everyday situations to
create intimacy and involvement, that represent the content mentioned in speech
and that show expressions of feelings or emotional reactions).
In a previous work (Hendges & Florek, 2019), we explored GAs with an
emphasis on its ties with “old” genres, which then seemed to be more directly
related to the discourse of science, namely of research articles, particularly abstracts
and visuals used in articles. Our results showed that GAs in chemistry and
engineering were composed predominantly of exact or slightly modified
reproductions of the visuals used in the original articles, which require a high degree
of expert visual literacy to be produced, but, more importantly, to be interpreted,
making GAs less accessible to non-technical audiences. The use of coded scientific
images was also found to be most encouraged by editorial policies in the year 2016.
In the current study, in addition to move analysis, we examine to what extent and
how the general public is addressed in recently published GAs.
3. METHOD
In order to achieve the purpose of this study, our multimodal move analysis of the
IMRD
3
structure in GAs relied heavily on classical genre analysis (Swales, 1990, 2004),
which consists of identifying and labeling the functional units (i.e., rhetorical moves)
of a sample of texts of the same genre, as well as patterns of organization of these units
3
Swales (2004: 235) indicates that IMR[DC] and IMRC are also used in articles and suggests that due
to this proliferation of options, the D in IMRD is best read as the sections that come “After the Results”.
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into a more or less fixed sequence. Paltridge (1994: 295) argues that the identification
of moves and move boundaries is grounded on “a search for cognitive boundaries in
terms of convention, appropriacy, and content rather than as a search for linguistically
defined boundaries; that is, there are non-linguistic, rather than linguistic, reasons for
generic staging in texts”. The identification process is based on: i) rich cues (verbal
and/or non-verbal) and ii) paralinguistic information from the context (documents,
insiders’ discourses). We use the terms ‘rich cues’ or ‘rich features’ following Barton
(2004: 66), as particular linguistic configurations that appear repeatedly “in a text or
a set of texts” with the same meaning and function in context.
We examined 100 GAs (for a full list of sources see Appendix 1) 50 selected
from five high impact chemistry journals and 50 selected from five high impact
medicine journals (Table 1) (see Appendices 2 and 3 for high resolution examples
in chemistry and medicine, respectively). The selection criteria were the following:
i) relevance of academic publishers (cf. Larivière et al., 2015; Nishikawa-Pacher,
2022); ii) relevance of the journal within the publisher (cf. Thomson Reuters Impact
Factor, 2021); and iii) order of appearance of the GA, from the most recent to the
oldest, up to a total of 10 GAs per journal. The contextual counterparts were the GA
guidelines of the 10 journals (written directions, templates, and/or examples) and
of the publishers.
CHEMISTRY
MEDICINE
Publisher
Journal
Acronym
GA status
Publisher
Journal
Acronym
GA status
Elsevier
Joule
JOULE
Obligatory
Elsevier
Journal of
Infection
JI
Obligatory
Wiley
Advanced
Materials
AM
Optional
Wiley
European
Journal of
Heart Failure
EJHF
Optional
American Society
of Chemistry/ACS
Accounts of
Chemical
Research
ACR
Optional
American
Medical
Association/AMA
Journal of the
American
Medical
Association
JAMA
Optional
Royal Society of
Chemistry/RSC
Energy &
Environmental
Science
EES
Optional
British Medical
Association/BMA
British Medical
Journal
BMJ
Optional
Springer
Microchimica
Acta
MA
Optional
Massachusetts
Medical
Society/MMS
The New
England
Journal of
Medicine
NEJM
Optional
Table 1. Journals in the sample and the status of GAs
In order to develop a discipline-sensitive strategy for the identification of
rhetorical moves and move boundaries in the GAs, each author initially examined
one set of 10 GAs from a single journal: author 1 examined the 10 chemistry GAs of
Joule and author 2 the 10 medicine GAs of European Journal of Heart Failure. Based
on this pilot examination, we determined that the following minimum “input” units
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should guide our multimodal move analysis: headings, reading path (left-right, top-
bottom or other indicated by vectors), space gaps (implicit framing), explicit
framing, types of visual (tables, graphs, and charts typically associated with the
presentation of data). Next, we also established a coding scheme to quantify the
predominant semiotic mode(s) that realizes each move in the GAs: WI = words &
images, W = words, and I = images. Tables or figures that present, for example, single
words in table cells, labels for vertical and horizontal axes, numerical data, were
classified as I = images, because we consider these types of written bits as inherently
part of those types of visuals. To exemplify, the portion on the left in AM#2 and the
whole JI#7 (Figure 1) were both classified as Results being realized by image-only,
because the words that are present function exclusively as labels.
Figure 1. Examples of the Results move realized by the semiotic mode of image
AM#2
JI#7
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With these tools in hand, each author then individually analyzed the remaining
40 GAs in the respective field: first author – in chemistry, second author – in
medicine. This involved a manual and gradual route from skimming to scanning,
against the backdrop of the Instructions for Authors of each journal and of previous
literature on GAs. In the last stage, the results of the coding process were exchanged
between authors and dubious instances were debated and classified after
agreement of both authors.
The identification of moves in medicine GAs of BMJ and JAMA was
straightforward, guided by section headings.
4
These can thus be called “structured
GAs”, following the known label for verbal abstracts in medicine (Hartley, 2014;
Hartley & Sydes, 1997; Nakayama et al., 2005), which were introduced “to assist
clinicians in quickly finding articles that are both scientifically sound and applicable
to their practices” (Nakayama et al., 2005: 237). Move recognition was also
facilitated by the template design of the NEJM GAs, with each move placed in the
same position, with standard color scheme and font type. In the other 20 GAs (of JI
and EJHF), move identification was strongly guided by contextual awareness in
relation to the role and content expected of GAs, supported by previous studies and
journal guidelines.
For contextual analysis, AntConc 4.2.0 (Anthony, 2023) software was used to
map information about the discursive practice in Author guidelines, based on the
recurrent designations for the practice: graphical abstract, visual abstract, and TOC
graphic. We mapped general discursive information about GA such as definition,
status in the journal, place of appearance, purpose, target audience, genres with
which it is associated and explicit references to the IMRD pattern and to strategies
to address non-experts in the fields of chemistry and medicine.
4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
4.1. IMRD in GAs
We found that the GAs in our sample do not adhere to the IMRD pattern. If our
results were generalizable to the whole sample, we could say that the pattern that
predominates is R, as only Results is an obligatory move, occurring in all 100 GAs
(Table 2). Nonetheless, our findings show significant disciplinary variation,
justifying a separate treatment for each discipline. Thus, while the R (Results) move
pattern holds true for the GAs in chemistry, in the medicine GAs, Methods and
Conclusion were also typical (90% and 80% respectively), so their move pattern is
MRC (Methods – Results – Conclusion).
4
Headings used in BMJ GAs: Summary, Study Design, Population, Outcomes, Results; in JAMA GAs:
Question, Conclusion, Population, Locations, Intervention, Primary Outcome, Findings.
171
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INTRODUCTION
METHODS
RESULTS
DISCUSSION
CONCLUSION
n
%
n
%
n
%
n
%
n
%
Chemistry
6
12
3
6
50
100
2
4
8
16
Medicine
27
54
45
90
50
100
40
80
TOTAL
33
33
48
48
100
100
2
2
48
48
Table 2. Adherence to the IMRD move pattern in the sample of chemistry and medicine GAs
Across journals, there is more standardization within chemistry than within
medicine (Table 3). In chemistry journals, the occurrence of the Introduction,
Methods, Discussion, and Conclusion is very low; only in the journal AM is the
Conclusion used in 50% (n = 5) of the GAs, still considered low for genre analysis
purposes.
INTRODUCTION
METHODS
RESULTS
DISCUSSION
CONCLUSION
Chemistry
ACR
10
1
AM
4
3
10
1
5
EES
1
10
1
JOULE
1
10
2
MA
10
TOTAL
n
6
3
50
2
8
%
12
6
100
4
16
Medicine
BMJ
7
10
10
10
JAMA
10
10
10
9
NEJM
10
10
10
EJHF
6
7
10
6
JI
4
8
10
5
TOTAL
n
27
45
50
40
%
54
90
100
80
Table 3. Adherence to the IMRD move pattern in GAs across journals
Among the medicine journals, findings indicate that JAMA GAs have four obligatory
moves – Introduction, Methods, Results, and Conclusion, while in NEJM and BMJ,
Methods, Results, and Conclusion occur systematically, and that also Methods (70%)
in BMJ is highly frequent. In the samples of JI and EJHF, only Results are consistent
in all the GAs, although Methods also occur frequently (80% and 70% respectively).
Although the use of GAs in medicine journals may be a recent practice – in BMJ
they were introduced in 2018 (Stahl-Timmins et al., 2019) – they are highly
standardized at least in BMJ, JAMA and NEJM. This regularity may be explained by
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the number of contextual similarities these journals share in terms of long history,
clinical scope (instead of theoretical/conceptual), primary readership (medicine
doctors: general practitioners, primary care physicians) and representativeness, in
that all hold top positions in the 2021 Journal Citation Report (Clarivate, 2022). They
are thus direct competitors for visibility, which, from a marketing point of view, may
boost similarity (in terms of copying what works well), while simultaneously
pushing for ‘product differentiation’ (Bhatia, 2005). The similarity in their GAs is
evident in that all three journals use template graphics, i.e., predefined designs that
follow standardized structures and visual and verbal resources (layout, headings,
color schemes, framing, and types of illustrations) to present content (Figure 2). The
uniqueness is achieved by the different design aesthetics each journal adopts, for
example, color saturation and differentiation are bolder in BMJ and NEJM GAs
compared to the GAs of JAMA, whose color scheme is softer and closer to
monochromatic.
In the remainder of medicine journals – JI and EJHF – GAs are more similar to
those in the five chemistry journals in that they are author-submitted and each one
has an individual visual style. This result is consistent with previous findings about
diversity in GA designs and content (Hendges & Florek, 2019; Sancho-Guinda, 2015),
and has been interpreted as a challenge to the status of GAs as a genre, while raising
discussions about generic stability-flexibility (tensions between centripetal and
centrifugal forces), generic multi-functionality (attracting, reporting, persuading),
and generic symbiosis (evolution and inter-dependency ties within genre families)
(see discussions in Pérez-Llantada & Luzón, 2019).
BMJ#2
BMJ#4
BMJ#9
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JAMA #2
JAMA#4
JAMA#9
NEJM#1
NEJM#6
NEJM#9
Figure 2. GAs as template graphics in the three high impact medicine journals
Previous studies on GAs considered samples published until 2016, and variety was
interpreted as a symptom of the earlier stage of the genre when “most effective
practices” were still under construction (Hendges & Florek, 2019: 77). Our current
sample, however, is of GAs published in 2022, and except the “template” GAs of BMJ,
JAMA, and NEJM, diversity is still a dominant feature. Because they share a
communicative purpose with advertisements, GAs may never become as stable in
form as other research genres, because advertisements are “one of most dynamic
and versatile genres of public discourse today, in that it can boast of some of the
most varied and innovative uses of lexico-grammatical and discoursal forms and
rhetorical strategies” (Bhatia, 2005: 214). However, some stability or “controlled
flexibility” (Sancho Guinda, 2015: 85) is expected for the sake of genre recognition
and reproduction, as clarity in the representation of rhetorical moves in GAs has
been evaluated as crucial to interpretation (Sancho Guinda, 2015: 83).
It could be expected that the two sets of journal from the same publishers – in
chemistry and medicine respectively JOULE and JI from Elsevier; AM and EJHF from
Wiley – would show similarities in the IMRD pattern of GAs. Elsevier in particular
proposes a template of “how to produce a good visual abstract”, which presents
three horizontally parallel frames, with two possible types of move patterns: pattern
1 – I (“introduce the context of your research”) + M (“here is where you showcase
your methodology”) + R/D/C (“finally this panel is for explaining your main
outcome”) or pattern 2 – “make your first point” + “make your second point” +
“finally this panel is for […] hosting the third point”. In both JOULE and JI, GAs are
obligatory, but no regularity was observed across journals or within them. The same
is true for the GAs of the Wiley journals, AM and EJHF.
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Finally, in relation to the sequence of the moves, the most interesting finding
is that the Conclusion comes before the other moves in 25 of the 48 GAs (52.1%)
that show this move. This position for research conclusions has been observed in
popular science genres, following the conventions of newsworthiness-first of
journalism. This interdiscursivity of GAs with news discourse is explicitly
acknowledged by the graphic designers of the medicine BMJ GAs (Stahl-Timmins et
al., 2019), who explained that the two first GA prototypes launched by the journal in
2018 had the Conclusion at the bottom, but it was moved to the top after a survey
with 77 doctors revealed that they “were struggling to get an overview of the study
findings until they had finished reading the entire abstract” (Stahl-Timmins et al.,
2019: 106). It can be inferred from this struggle that the BMJ GA is not readable “at
a single glance”, as is often recommended for this part-genre, and one reason may
be that there is a significant amount of verbal language in GAs in the form of
paragraphs, which take more time than a single picture to be read (spatial vs.
temporal logic). In the following section, we explore move realization in relation to
multimodality.
4.2. Multimodality in the IMRD of GAs
The findings about multimodality reveal, expectedly, that images are central in move
realization. In other words, 71.9% of the moves include some degree of graphic
material. In the realization of Results, images (I) are obligatory, either as an
exclusive mode (52%) or in combination with words (WI) (48%). Table 4 shows
how multimodality works in GA move realization.
INTRODUCTION
METHODS
RESULTS
DISCUSSION
CONCLUSION
WI
W
I
WI
W
I
WI
W
I
WI
W
I
WI
W
I
Chemistry
1
3
2
3
19
31
1
1
0
7
1
Medicine
2
18
7
38
5
2
29
21
12
28
TOTAL
3
21
9
38
8
2
48
0
52
1
1
0
12
35
1
%
9.1
63.6
27.3
79.2
16.7
4.2
48
0
52
50
50
0
25.5
74.5
2.1
Table 4. Semiotic modes in the GA IMRD realization
The central role of images in the presentation of Results is consistent across
disciplines, but more salient in the chemistry GAs, because Results are the only
obligatory move and they are visual-only in 62% of cases (31 GAs). In the remaining
19 GAs that present multimodal Results, written language is realized mostly by long
noun-phrases as headings of a graph, table, or diagram.
The most frequent multimodal move in the GAs is Methods, realized by verbal
and visual language in 79.2% of the sample as a whole, but this is only generalizable
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to the medicine GAs, whose Methods are obligatory. Images are frequently used to
represent the population, part of the world, or specific part of the body, virus, or
bacteria under study; and the written language provides details about the
population (age, gender, health condition) and the methodological procedures,
typically in the form items on a list. Finally, written language has a central role in the
realization of Introductions and Conclusions in both disciplines. These moves are
predominantly realized by writing only, through whole sentences or short blocks of
text. This result is more significant in medicine GAs, in which these moves are more
present.
Figure 3 summarizes the generic structure of GAs giving emphasis to the
semiotic modes that primarily realize each move, inspired by Cheong (2004: 165).
Visual moves
Results (obligatory in chemistry and medicine)
Multimodal moves
Methods (obligatory only in medicine)
Results (obligatory in chemistry and medicine)
Written moves
Introduction (optional in chemistry and medicine)
Conclusion (obligatory only in medicine)
Figure 3. Generic structure of GAs with an emphasis on the realization modes
Figure 3 helps to highlight the key role of visual language in the realization of the
obligatory moves Methods and Results, that is to say, in those moves that
characterize this part-genre.
4.3. Visual recontextualization strategies in GAs
The analysis of visual recontextualization strategies in scientific discourse in GAs
was inspired by categories proposed in previous work (Hendges & Marques, 2018;
Luzón, 2019), but was also based on our first impressions about GAs, because both
of us (the authors) are part of the general public to whom these strategies may be
addressed. Simultaneously, we both have experience with general conventions of
academic discourse of research articles as to the use of color, the types of illustrations
used for data visualizations and word highlighting options. We believe these social
positionings helped in our interpretations, although we are aware that even within
the same level of expertise (be it expert or non-expert), interpretive abilities may vary
considerably among individuals and interpretation is not infallible.
With this in mind, we identified seven types of strategies that may contribute
either to attracting non-technical readers or to aid comprehension of the scientific
process-product summarized by the GAs (Table 5). These are two major functions
of the recontextualization of scientific discourse that respectively relate to
promotional discourse and to pedagogic discourse (Luzón, 2013: 437).
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Four strategies seem to be promotion-oriented: the use of color with
interpersonal value (93%), the use of images showing elements of everyday life that
readers can relate to (52%), salient typeface through size and/or color (40%), and
humor (1%). Three strategies seem to contribute mainly to identifying the type of
content that each visual cluster in the GA deals with and the proposed reading
trajectory: the use of explicit frames to delimit blocks of information (84%), the use
of vectors and/or parallel panels to indicate sequence of information (68%), and the
use of explicit headings to introduce visual clusters (28%).
INTERPERSONAL
COLOR
EXPLICIT
FRAMES
VECTORS/ PANELS
NARRATIVIZATION
EVERYDAY-LIFE
ELEMENTS
SALIENT
TYPEFACE
EXPLICIT
HEADING
HUMOR
BMJ
10
10
10
10
10
10
JAMA
10
10
10
10
10
10
NEJM
10
10
10
10
10
EJHF
8
10
4
3
4
6
1
JI
9
7
9
6
5
2
TOTAL
Medicine
n
47
47
43
39
39
28
1
%
94
94
86
78
78
56
2
ACR
10
2
4
3
AM
8
10
4
4
EES
10
10
5
1
1
JOULE
8
10
3
2
MA
10
5
9
3
TOTAL
Chemistry
n
46
37
25
13
1
%
92
74
50
26
2
TOTAL
n/%
93
84
68
52
40
28
1
Table 5. Visual recontextualization strategies across journals and disciplines
Across disciplines, two strategies – one for each purpose (attract and clarify) – are
consistently salient: the use of color and the use of frames for grouping content.
Nonetheless, in medicine GAs another three strategies are also highly frequent: the
use of vectors (86%), the use of images that show everyday activities, objects, and
situations (e.g., drawings of people, internal organs, syringes, IV bags, stethoscopes,
geographical maps, pills) (78%), and salient words and numbers (78%). These
almost overlapping cues for achieving clarity are consistent in the three journals –
BMJ, JAMA, and NEJM – intended for healthcare professionals and relate to the
clinical applied nature of the studies they disseminate.
In chemistry GAs, a more theoretical field, all the strategies are more subtle
than in the medicine GAs, and the degree to which they influence the attention of
non-technical readers is disputable. In previous work (Hendges & Florek, 2019) we
found that experts in chemistry rarely see GAs as intended to the general public.
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Vol. 11(2)(2023): 237-260
Sancho Guinda (2022: 11) observes that some types of “prettifications” in chemistry
GAs such as “cartooning and comic book techniques” may lead to misinterpretation
even among experts. In general terms we observed that GAs in chemistry have
evolved from the 2016 sample in one aspect: the images in the GAs are produced
exclusively for this purpose because they are no longer reproductions of the images
used in the body of the article. This can be attributed in part to journal policy, as
three journals either ban (JOULE and ACR) or discourage (EES) reusing article
visuals in GAs. Other than that, the author guidelines give little detail about
recontextualization strategies, but emphasize clarity by the indication of clear
reading paths from top to bottom or from left to right (as shown earlier in section
4.1., this is achieved by cues such as vectors and explicit framing).
These findings suggest that the different natures of each disciplinary culture
and the scope of each journal affect degrees of recontextualization in GAs. Hence, in
addition to the cues found in the textual materiality of GAs, it is also central to reflect
about contextual aspects in their production and consumption processes. For example,
a key feature in the production process of the medicine GAs of BMJ, JAMA and NEJM is
that they are elaborated in-house by the journals’ graphic designers, in interaction with
authors. Will Stahl-Timmins (2021), the lead GA graphic designer of BMJ, explains that
the journal chooses which article will have a GA and they ask authors “to extract data
from their paper” in a standard template which will then be transformed into a GA by
the graphic design team. Thus, the first non-expert audience of these papers seems to
be the graphic designers, who need a reasonable understanding of the study reported
in the article to make decisions about how to ‘transform’ it into a GA. A similar situation
takes place when science journalists write popular science news (Calsamiglia & Van
Dijk, 2004; Myers, 2003). This similarity with popular science journalism may be
observable in the distribution of the moves in the GAs of BMJ and JAMA, in the placing
of the Conclusion at the top portion, as pointed out earlier.
As the literature on the GA has indicated (Hendges & Florek, 2019; Sancho
Guinda, 2015, 2016), reception studies are needed to determine to what extent the
addition of color and drawings contribute to make the GAs in Figure 1 palatable to
the general reader, assuming that is the purpose of these GAs.
5. CLOSING REMARKS
In 2012, the Article of the Future user-centered design team (Aalbersberg et al.,
2012) stated that the project offered authors opportunities for increased exposure
and readers opportunities to optimize the relation with research themes. In this
study, we were able to verify, through a multimodality-based study, whether these
two main purposes have been achieved and how, with a focus on GAs.
We hope that our analysis of a relatively consistent sample of GAs from two
areas recognized for their strong adherence to the genre can bring useful insights
for ESP-EAP research and practice, mainly in relation to the multimodal
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performance of rhetorical moves and visual popularization strategies. For example,
because of the recontextualization strategies found in the GAs of BMJ, JAMA and
NEJM, these could be an interesting material for introductory levels of English for
Medical Purposes, in the teaching and learning of multimodal reading and/or
writing (García-Ostbye & Martínez-Sáez, 2023).
An interesting finding of our study is the perceptible cline in the
recontextualization process in GAs from chemistry to medicine, with chemistry GAs
closer to the end of specialist readers and medicine GAs closer to the end of non-
specialists. Signals of popularization are found in both areas, but notably in medicine,
whose audience crosses university boundaries and reaches health professionals in
the field, unlike chemistry, which, due to its nature as a basic science, contributes
more to other academic areas. Corroborating this perception, GAs in medicine
maintain a strong relationship with the structured written abstract, presenting
verbal and visual resources in a more balanced way. They present more moves,
introduced by section headings, demanding a longer reading time than GAs in
chemistry, which focus on research results and are strongly visual.
According to the results of the present study, it seems clear that the stability of
a specialized genre strongly depends on its reading against the contextual background.
GAs in particular perform more than the function of a part-genre, since they function
as add-on summaries (that is, texts to appear together with similar others with the
same encapsulating purpose), but differ significantly in register, regarding the
interpersonal relationships they establish with the intended readership.
Studies like this one can be refined by increasing their sampling volume, their
number of contrasted disciplines, and by incorporating a deeper ethnographic or
intermodal focus. Due to constraints of space, we were not able to include a closer
analysis of the nature of the images that realize each move, a topic that deserves
attention in future works. In any case, we believe our results provide interesting
insights to pedagogization for the purposes of scientific and multimodal literacy.
[Paper submitted 20 Jan 2023]
[Revised version received 5 Apr 2023]
[Revised version accepted for publication 17 Apr 2023]
Acknowledgement
We would like to thank the guest-editors and anonymous reviewers for their careful
reading of our manuscript and for the valuable comments and suggestions.
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A MULTIMODAL MOVE ANALYSIS OF GRAPHICAL ABSTRACTS IN MEDICINE AND CHEMISTRY
Vol. 11(2)(2023): 237-260
CRISTIANE SALETE FLOREK is Professor of Portuguese Applied Linguistics at the
Federal University of Santa Maria (Brazil). Her current research interests include
academic discourse from the perspective of Critical Genre Analysis, (multi)literacies,
multimodal discourse analysis, and appraisal theory. She has published on these
research interests in the Brazilian journal Documentação de Estudos em Lingüística
Teórica e Aplicada, the Portuguese journal RevSALUS – Revista Científica da Rede
Académica das Ciências da Saúde da Lusofonia, and in John Benjamins.
GRACIELA RABUSKE HENDGES is Professor of English Applied Linguistics at the
Federal University of Santa Maria (Brazil). Her current research interests include
academic discourse from the perspective of Critical Genre Analysis, academic
(multi)literacies, multimodality, English for Academic Purposes pedagogy and
English for Academic Purposes teacher education. She has published on these
research interests in Brazilian journals Ilha do Desterro, Letras, and in John Benjamins.
Appendix 1: Access to GA sources
Appendix 2: Examples of GAs in Chemistry
JOULE#8
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joule.2022.02.010
ACR#6
https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.accounts.2c00151
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