Alternatives to BioRender

BioRender is unbeatable when it comes to scientific visualization… or is it? Here are some open-sourse alternatives. In general open source icons are free to use but licensed under creative commons licencing, which may require acknowledgement. While BioRender employs professional artists to create their artwork, most open-source projects allow the community to submit icons. For this reason, the quality may not be as high, but the cost is much lower.

Bioicons

Bioicons is a library of free open-source icons in biology and chemistry and consists of over 2700 icons in around 30 different categories. Each icon has a license; many are CCO or BSD. For some licenses, the creator must be attributed in the figure caption or the acknowledgements. Many are in the public domain and for these, attribution or credit is not required, but is appreciated. This project seems to be created by Simon Duerr.

Open Science Art

Open Science Art offers a comprehensive, open-access library of icons, 3D models, and illustrations for many scientific disciplines including biology, chemistry, physics and space science.

SciDraw

From their website: SciDraw is the work of Federico Claudi and Alex Harston. “SciDraw is a free repository of high quality drawings of animals, scientific setups, and anything that might be useful for scientific presentations and posters.” Users are not required to sign up to post a drawing, so submissions undergo a review and approval process before being published. Users are free to download, modify and use all drawings on the website, acknowledgment of the drawings’ authors and of Scidraw.io are appreciated. Each drawing has a DOI, many in Zenodo.”

Simplified Science Publishing

Simplifed Science Publishing allows you to create your own professional scientific graphics with online courses and templates or you can buy banks of icons. They offer hundreds of vector graphics to create professional scientific designs using fully customizable templates. This service is not free but costs far less than BioRender.

Reactome

Reactome is an open-source, open access, manually curated and peer-reviewed pathway database that includes an icon bank with around 1600 icons.

ProductVector GraphicsNumber of icons (Jan 2025)Allows submissionsCost
Biorenderyes> 50,000no$79/month
Bioiconsyes2735 yesfree
Open Science Artyes138yesfree
SciDrawyes640yesfree
Simplified Science Publishingyeshundredsyes59$/year
Reactomeyes~2500yesfree
Comparision of different scientific icon collections

WE are shocked

2022

2022.11.24 500 Women Scientists Zurich organized the Really, What now? event https://www.500womenscientistszurich.org/really-what-now to help female Ph.D. candidates to deal with sexism, harassment, and microaggressions. They collected anonymous testimonies on a padlet https://padlet.com/500wszurich/a-collection-of-doctoral-student-stories-iy5fkd8ri226pl and organized a sereis of cartoons illustrating the problems encountered by women in science.

2023

2023.01.25 On the 25th of January, 2023, more than 50 female doctoral students met with Joël Mesot and members of the Executive Board to share testimonies about the challenges they face in their day-to-day activities, and to recommend measures for preventing, monitoring, and holding individuals accountable for inappropriate and disrespectful behavior at ETH. https://www.500womenscientistszurich.org/post/eth-president-meets-doctoral-students

2023.02 Open letter from WiNS and 500 Women Scientists Zurich to ETH Leadership asking for concrete action https://wins.ethz.ch/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Open-Letter-to-ETH-Board_WiNS.pdf and https://www.500womenscientistszurich.org/_files/ugd/c1ab5e_4275cda3955f4a9eabd96f612db8f39f.pdf

2024

2024.08.29 ETH responds to new reports of sexual harassment with “shock” https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/eth-hochschule-ist-schockiert-ueber-vorwuerfe-gegen-professor-849003779879

2024.08.30 Tages Anzeiger releases a podcast about sexual harassment at universities https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/vorwuerfe-an-eth-warum-hochschulen-sich-damit-schwertun-318538866073

2024.08.30 Julia Dannath, Vice President for Personnel Development and Leadership responds to the situation in the ETH Staffnet https://ethz.ch/staffnet/en/news-and-events/internal-news/archive/2024/08/external-clarifications-are-now-needed-to-provide-clarity.html

Several Reddit threads discuss the problem:

We are Shocked petition and assembly https://www.reddit.com/r/ethz/comments/1gipr70/comment/lvhc6lp/?context=3

ETH ist «schockiert» über Vorwürfe gegen ihren Professor https://www.reddit.com/r/ethz/comments/1f4qtnd/eth_ist_schockiert_%C3%BCber_vorw%C3%BCrfe_gegen_ihren/

#MeeToo https://www.reddit.com/r/ethz/comments/1f834ix/comment/llc6z03/

2024.11 WiNS, Speak Up! in Academia, and 500 Women Scientists react to their shock with the WE are Shocked petition https://www.change.org/p/weareshocked-it-is-our-collective-responsibility-to-hold-eth-z%C3%BCrich-accountable.

Nov 8, 2024

Representatives of the three groups (Speak Up! in Academia, WiNS, and 500WS Zurich) that had initiated the petition, which had over 1300 signatures, to the ETH Zurich Vice President for Finance and the General Secretary of the ETH Zurich Executive Board. There were over 150 people at the assembly on ETH Zurich’s Polyterrasse to hand over the petition signed by almost 1500 people to ETH Leadership.

At the same time, similar problems were reported at the University of Basel: Vom Professor sexuell belästigt – von der Uni im Stich gelassen https://www.srf.ch/sendungen/kassensturz-espresso/kassensturz/universitaet-basel-vom-professor-sexuell-belaestigt-von-der-uni-im-stich-gelassen

Reportage in the NZZ «Wir sind schockiert!»: Junge Wissenschafterinnen setzen die ETH Zürich wegen Mobbings und Übergriffen unter Druck https://www.nzz.ch/zuerich/fehlverhalten-an-hochschulen-eth-zuerich-in-der-kritik-ld.1855846

Tages Anzeiger: «Wir sind schockiert» – 1300 Leute fordern, dass die ETH sich bessert https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/eth-zuerich-frauen-fordern-bessere-massnahmen-bei-mobbing-und-belaestigung-391443534646

SRF News: Zürich: Demonstration gegen ETH-Leitung https://www.srf.ch/play/tv/schweiz-aktuell/video/schweiz-aktuell-vom-08-11-2024?urn=urn:srf:video:db121d09-c169-449c-ac12-7fe4e3a465c4

Nau.chMobbing? Junge Wissenschaftlerinnen setzen ETH unter Druck https://www.nau.ch/news/schweiz/mobbing-junge-wissenschaftlerinnen-setzen-eth-unter-druck-66858988

PS Zeitung Die ETH-Führung muss Verantwortung übernehmen https://www.pszeitung.ch/die-eth-fuehrung-muss-verantwortung-uebernehmen/

Limmattaler Zeitung Mobbing, Diskriminierung, sexuelle Belästigung: Wissenschaftlerinnen wollen ETH zur Verantwortung ziehen https://www.limmattalerzeitung.ch/limmattal/zuerich/zuerich-mobbing-diskriminierung-sexuelle-belaestigung-wissenschaftlerinnen-wollen-eth-zur-verantwortung-ziehen-ld.2691723

ZSZ «Wir sind schockiert» – 1300 Leute fordern, dass die ETH sich bessert https://www.zsz.ch/eth-zuerich-frauen-fordern-bessere-massnahmen-bei-mobbing-und-belaestigung-391443534646

RTS Des scientifiques pressent l’EPFZ à agir contre les agressions et le harcèlement sexuel https://www.rts.ch/info/regions/autres-cantons/2024/article/des-scientifiques-pressent-l-epfz-a-agir-contre-les-agressions-et-le-harcelement-sexuel-28689100.html

Watson Vorwürfe gegen ETH-Starprofessor – Gericht legt Journalisten Maulkorb an https://www.watson.ch/schweiz/zuerich/559284636-vorwuerfe-gegen-eth-stardozent-gericht-legt-journalisten-maulkorb-an#discussion_559284636

Dec 2024

ETH Professor Thomas Crowther must leave the ETH according to the Tages Anzeiger. https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/klimaforscher-muss-eth-nach-vorwuerfen-verlassen-228788455075

ETH stellt Top-Klimaforscher nach Vorwürfen frei https://www.20min.ch/story/zuerich-eth-stellt-top-klimaforscher-nach-vorwuerfen-frei-103243092

Nau.ch ETH Zürich will Klimaforscher nach Vorwürfen nicht behalten https://www.nau.ch/news/schweiz/eth-zurich-will-klimaforscher-nach-vorwurfen-nicht-behalten-66882170

Watson: «Steve Jobs der Umweltwissenschaft» verliert Job an der ETH https://www.watson.ch/schweiz/forschung/597337406-thomas-crowther-eth-klimaforscher-verliert-job-nach-vorwuerfen

20 Minuten: ETH stellt Top-Klimaforscher nach Vorwürfen frei https://www.msn.com/de-ch/nachrichten/other/eth-stellt-top-klimaforscher-nach-vorw%C3%BCrfen-frei/ar-AA1waeBp

Watson: «Steve Jobs der Umweltwissenschaft» verliert Job an der ETH https://www.msn.com/de-ch/wissenschaft/umweltwissenschaften/steve-jobs-der-umweltwissenschaft-verliert-job-an-der-eth/ar-AA1wdVJo

January 2025

Nature: Star ecologist accused of misconduct loses university post https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00230-z

BioRender

BioRender is a tool for creating professional-looking science figures in minutes using templates and over 20,000 stock icons from 30+ areas in the life sciences using a web-based, drag and drop interface. The following figure is one of many templates; each element in the template is a simple icon.

BioRender App

Icons

BioRender contains an immense library of science-themed, simple icons including: cell structures and types, anatomy, different biomolecules, lab equipment, membranes and many different species from the simple to the complex. Have your own data you want to include in the figure? You can drag and drop images from your computer’s file system onto the canvas, they’ll appear as icons. Need something that is not in the library? With a paid subscription, you can ask BioRender to create new icons.

The simple icons in the library can also be grouped into compound icons in the same way that objects can be grouped (and ungrouped) in most drawing programs. A third type of icon, the bio-brush is unique to BioRender.

One of my favorite features is the bio-brush. If an icon has a brush next to it, you can use the bio-brush feature to draw repeating sequences of the icon, complete with the ability to make curves. Imagine drawing a lipid bilayer, a layer of cells or a string of nucleosomes as easily as drawing a line. Drawings that would take hours in a normal drawing program can be done in seconds with BioRender. For an example, see this BioRender tutorial for a demonstration of the membrane brush and a vessel brush.

Schematic of membrane disruptive and non-membrane disruptive bacterial killing mechanisms of AMPs Illustration created with BIORENDER.COM.
Membranes can be drawn with a membrane brush and then ungrouped to form a break into which additional elements can be added. Figure taken from https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Schematic-of-membrane-disruptive-and-non-membrane-disruptive-bacterial-killing-mechanisms_fig3_336372513.

The Biorender Learning Hub has a lot of videos on topics such as design, learning, usage and customization. This in combination with the intuitive interface means that the user can make professional-looking figures in an afternoon. Another feature is the ability to make and present slides within the BioRender interface; shared work spaces are planned.

The free license gives you the right to use the figures you create for educational purposes and in grants. If you want to publish your figures in journals or use your figure for commercial purposes, you need to upgrade to the commercial license which is $35 per month for individuals or $99 per month for a group of up to 5 members (in October 2021). Institutional licenses are also available.

Are there any negatives? The interface is optimized for Chrome so if you’re not using Chrome, there may be some issues. The price is too steep to keep a permanent license if you don’t have a research budget. However, even a student can cough up 35 dollars to buy a month-long license to make their final figures right before submitting.

Resources for learning German

Preply online tutoring from native speakers at good prices

Deutsch Einstufungstest and C1 course

Exercises on different levels

Goethe institute

Herr Professor’s podcast juggles one verb per day, the right amount and very well done. His list of tools and treatise on articles are also helpful.

News in slow German has many resources in addition to news read slowly.