Graphical Abstracts
During the late 2000s, due to the influence of computer storage and retrieval systems such as the Internet, many scientific publications started including graphical abstracts alongside the text abstracts. The graphic is intended to summarize or be an exemplar for the main thrust of the article. It is not intended to be as exhaustive a summary as the text abstract, rather it is supposed to indicate the type, scope, and technical coverage of the article at a glance.
Read more about this topic: Abstract (summary)