Research papers are written for people who already read research papers. In 2023, Jaidev and I asked what would happen if a paper came out as a zine instead: a few folded pages of short text and pictures, the format punk scenes and independent artists have always used to say things their own way.
The zine, page by page:
- Cover: ZINIFY! Research papers into zines. Issue 1, UIST ’23. Cut. Paste. Copy.
- Walled garden: academia is often seen as a walled garden; jargon and paywalls keep most people out.
- The reader: curious, but not an expert. Even with good tutorials, new research is a steep climb.
- The author: wants one paper to stand out in an exponential pile of AI papers on arXiv. Looks matter too.
- Why zines? Self-published, small print runs, passed hand to hand, with roots in punk and queercore. Not unlike preprints.
- How it works: PDF, then an LLM, then a summary and figures, then an LLM, then a zine plan, then a text-to-image model, then the zine. Figures skip ahead. Claude condenses and plans; you can steer the plan.
- Math into poem: the rendering equation, and an LLM’s verse about it (Figure 3 of the paper): “In realms of code where light does dance, the rendering equation takes its chance, radiance, the light a point emits, on surfaces, its radiant flux submits.”
- Back cover: More engaging. More accessible. Honorable Mention, People’s Choice, UIST ’23 Student Innovation Contest. Jaidev Shriram and Sanjayan Sreekala, UC San Diego, equal contribution. Copy me and pass it on.
How it works
ZINify starts from the PDF. A large language model (we used Claude) condenses the paper into short sections and picks the figures worth keeping. Then it plans the zine: what goes on each page, and which ideas to tell differently. A dense equation might come back as a short poem. The plan also writes prompts for a text-to-image model, and the pipeline puts the words and pictures together. Authors can steer the plan along the way.
Why zines
Zines are self-published, printed in small runs and passed from hand to hand, which isn’t so different from posting a preprint. We thought the format could help a paper reach people who would never open the PDF, and give its authors a more personal way to talk about their work.
ZINify received an Honorable Mention (People’s Choice) in the UIST 2023 Student Innovation Contest. Read the paper, and see Jaidev Shriram’s project page.