General Guidelines in Scientific Writing
- Academic Integrity
- Building an Argument
- Critical Reading
- Critical Writing
- Figures and Tables
- Paragraphs
- Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing
- Peer-review
- Response to Reviewers’ Critiques
- Plagiarism
- Writing Tips and Tools
- Types or Styles of Writing
- How to evaluate online information resources
- Miscellaneous
Preparing Scholarly Work
Preparing for a Publication
Figures and Tables
Figures and tables are an important part of scientific communication and provide a quick and clear understanding of your work to the reader. Various types of figures and tables are available to present your scientific data. However, choosing the right type of figures or tables depends on the type of scientific data (e.g., qualitative, quantitative) and how you would like to convey your message to your intended audience.
Figures: Graphical or pictorial representations of your scientific work, which describe relationships between your data variables or the study design.
Tables: A tabular representation of numbers or text of your scientific findings.
Please follow the resources below to get a better understanding of how to make use of figures and tables to communicate your scientific findings effectively.
Articles
- Annesley, T.M. (2010). Put Your Best Figure Forward: Line Graphs and Scattergrams, Clinical Chemistry, 56, 8, pp. 1229–1233.
- Annesley, T.M. (2010). Bars and Pies Make Better Desserts than Figures, Clinical Chemistry, 56, 9, pp. 1394–1400.
- Nanes, B. (n.d.). How to create publication-quality figure: A step-by-step guide (using free software!).
- Joshi, Y. (2013). 9 tips on presenting your table effectively. Editage Insights.
- Mack, C. (2013). How to write a good scientific paper: Figures, Part 1. Journal of Micro/Nanolithography, MEMS MOEMS, 12, 4, p. 040101.
- Mack, C. (2014). How to Write a Good Scientific Paper: Figures, Part 2. Journal of Micro/Nanolithography, MEMS, and MOEMS, 13, 1, p. 010102.
- Rodrigues, V. (2013). Tips on effective use of tables and figures in research papers. Editage insights.
- Rougier, N.P., Droettboom, M., and Bourne, P.E. (2014). Ten Simple Rules for Better Figures. PLoS Computational Biology, 10, 9, e1003833.
Videos
- Aird, S.D. (2017). Effective scientific figures and tables. TEDx Talks.
- A step-by-step guide to formatting tables and figures in your manuscript. Editage Insights.
- Ganesh, S. (2018). Lecture 15: How to prepare figures, in NPTEL course “Introduction to Professional Scientific Communication.”
Websites
- Bates College, Department of Biology (2012). Almost everything you wanted to know about making tables and figures.
- Springer Nature (2020). Figures and tables.
- Sciencemag.org (n.d.). Guide to preparing figures for science research journals.
- Hayward, A. (2019). Infographic: Choosing between tables, figures, and text for your research data. Editage Insights.