BioIcons User Survey
In order to improve BioIcons there is a user survey embedded on the landing page that 755 researchers have filled in a time period between 10. September 2023 and 30. October 2024. We are happy to share here the results of the survey in this time period. Due to privacy reasons the comments won’t be shared as some contain identifying information.
We hope this information can inform policy makers and funders in order to make funding decision towards a future where scientific illustrations can be easily reused both from a technological point of view as well as from a financial point of view.
Questions about scientific illustrations
The slight majority of users says that the current catalog is still too limited. Only few don’t use BioIcons because their instituion already has a BioRender or MindTheGraph license.
Of the respondents many say they have or will submit icons in the future.
Surprisingly, Microsoft PowerPoint is the main tool people use closely followed by Inkscape to assemble illustrations. Other tools except Adobe Illustrator are only used by a small fraction of users. The draw.io integration is used only by few users.
Users deem an extension of the icon catalog most relevant. A web editor is nice to have for many users but not the highest priority. Templates and workshops are also deemed useful features.
User community
We also share here few insights on the user community of BioIcons.
Geographical distribution
The BioIcons user community is distributed around the globe. The majority of users are based in the western world (USA, UK, Germany) with significant user communities also in China and India. BioIcons is used at institutions like Harvard or Stanford as well as relatively unknown instituions in the global south (e.g in Nigeria or Bangladesh).
The users are distributed among all ranks of academic positions. Also industry researchers use BioIcons.
The user survey is still open and this page will be updated in the future. It can be filled here.
Data behind this post is deposited on GitHub.