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Most of my output is for commercial units, who have in-house graphics staff to re-photograph my duff pictures and turn Excel graphs into something of publication standard. Problems arise with graphics for conference papers not funded by units. When I was still part of an Archaeology Department, there was an in house illustrator. Now we've both been made redundant and gone freelance, I pay her for graphic work, if I can afford it. The crunch comes when a publication requires an illustration that I don't have as standard and I have no budget to commission the work. I have no graphics package and no expertise in using them. I belong to the tracing paper and Letraset generation and this sort of product is no longer deemed acceptable. ________________________________________ From: Analysis of animal remains from archaeological sites [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Deb Bennett [[log in to unmask]] Sent: 01 July 2015 07:10 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: [ZOOARCH] Scientific Illustration Dear Zooarchers....I tried posting this a couple of days ago, so my apologies if you've already seen it, but it seems it didn't go through to the whole list and there were no replies, so I'm posting it again because I think this must surely be a topic of general interest. The question is -- How do you get the illustrations for papers which you intend to publish? I ask because I was once the official "Scientific Illustrator" for the K.U. Museum of Nat. Hist., but also because in the years since, I've sometimes seen people struggle with this as a problem. This for several reasons: for example, graduate students as a category tend to be short on funds, either private funds or grant funding. But staff/faculty may also not have grant funds, or if they have a grant, no line item for that particular category. And even where grant funds are available, the illustrator may not be available, i.e. a person able to produce the sort of illustration desired or required may be hard to locate. Another point relates to Oyvind Hammer's wonderful PAST software. That program produces the BEST computer output I've ever seen, but when I use it to produce a graph or chart, I look at it and know that even so it does not quite meet journal standards for quality drafting. So what do you-all do with this? Do you run the PAST output through some other program that can "automatically" convert/upgrade it? Do you re-draft it by hand? Overall -- Are you doing your illustrations yourselves? Does your institution provide in-house services? Do you try to contract it out? Would you use illustration services from an outside contractor if you knew where to find them? As an idea, I'd like to see an clearinghouse for scientific illustration, so that we can better connect illustrators with scientists needing illustrations. I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts on this common topic! -- Deb Bennett