Inkscape – Brushing Up Science

Scientific software skills make up for minimal artistic talent

A computer is a better artist than I am. If I can tell it what to draw, it will produce attractive results. To make a nice schematic, the hardest part is to tell the computer what I want to draw. Fortunately for us so-called left-brain types prevalent throughout the sciences, a familiarity with scientific software can overcome a lack of artistic talent, allow rapid iteration of a design, and even provide creative inspiration.

Invoking my scientific software skills, I am able to produce elegant figures:

shear_rotation_schematic — From *Evolution of the velocity structure in the diurnal warm layer*

Now, compare that with my initial sketch…

shear_schematic_sketch

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This is the best decade to be a grad student

Catching up on the literature is a daunting aspect of graduate studies. As a physical oceanographer, I regularly cite work from 30 to 40 years ago. In that time, and all the way back to the turn of the 20th century, the scientists before me got to answer all the low-hanging-fruit problems and write the papers that will be cited thousands of time. They leave behind the messy, complex, and esoteric questions for the current grad students. Surely, then, I would think the 60s or 70s or even earlier would have been the best time to be a grad student?

To make a good schematic, copy, adapt, and refine

Scientific papers are built by taking existing ideas, applying them in new ways, adapting them to fit new situations, and improving them over time. Yet when it comes to drawing a schematic, many people start from scratch or never even start. Instead, start with an image search, let Inkscape do the hard work, and refine the best parts of other schematics.

I will use a figure of mine as a case study:

channel_schematic — This schematic encapsulates the oceanographic processes that I examine in my PhD. I use it in many presentations, my thesis, and my personal website.

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Using Inkscape for scientific figures, posters, and presentations

If I could offer only one piece of advice to any scientist on how to improve the figures and presentations they produce, it would be ‘Learn how to use Inkscape’. If you ended up here by searching for “Inkscape scientists” or some variant of that, then what follows is just confirmation that you’re looking for the right thing.

Inkscape is a cross-platform, open-source vector graphics editor. Let’s break down all those adjectives to see how they help:

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