Visual Abstracts in Cardiovascular Journals: Adoption Trends and Design Insights

With the expansion of online scientific communication, academic articles have begun to exert influence beyond their traditional readership.Many journals have introduced visual abstracts to more effectively capture the attention of diverse audiences.However, because of limited editorial guidance and the often insufficient illustration skills of researchers without design training, producing high-quality visual abstracts remains a considerable challenge.This review examines the current status of visual abstract adoption among journals in the cardiovascular field and evaluates the existing infrastructure for visual abstract creation, including editorial guidelines and external design support systems.It also discusses key considerations for generating effective and visually coherent visual abstracts, aiming to provide practical insights for researchers seeking to improve the communicative quality of their figures.