Journal Article

Creating clear and informative image-based figures for scientific publications

Ferling, Iuliia, Hoeppner, Luke H., Mohamed, Salem Yousef, Bhardwaj, Vivek, Walavalkar, Kaivalya, Alicea, Bradly, Jambor, Helena, Auer, Susann, Ilangovan, Vinodh, Antonietti, Alberto, Weissgerber, Tracey L., Olson, Mischa, Varma, Aalok, Burgess, Steven J., Gazda, Małgorzata Anna, Lo, Hung, Sarabipour, Sarvenaz, Wissink, Erin M., Audisio, Tracy L.

2021

Overview

Scientists routinely use images to display data. Readers often examine figures first; therefore, it is important that figures are accessible to a broad audience. Many resources discuss fraudulent image manipulation and technical specifications for image acquisition; however, data on the legibility and interpretability of images are scarce. We systematically examined these factors in non-blot images published in the top 15 journals in 3 fields; plant sciences, cell biology, and physiology ( n = 580 papers). Common problems included missing scale bars, misplaced or poorly marked insets, images or labels that were not accessible to colorblind readers, and insufficient explanations of colors, labels, annotations, or the species and tissue or object depicted in the image. Papers that met all good practice criteria examined for all image-based figures were uncommon (physiology 16%, cell biology 12%, plant sciences 2%). We present detailed descriptions and visual examples to help scientists avoid common pitfalls when publishing images. Our recommendations address image magnification, scale information, insets, annotation, and color and may encourage discussion about quality standards for bioimage publishing.

• Publisher: Public Library of Science,Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subject: Annotations / Audiences / Biological research / Biology / Biology and Life Sciences / Biology, Experimental / Biomedical Research / Communication / Humans / Magnetic resonance imaging / Medicine and Health Sciences / Meta / People and Places / Periodicals as Topic / Physiology / Pictorial Works as Topic - trends / Plant sciences / Publications - standards / Publishing - trends / Research and Analysis Methods / Scholarly Communication / Scholarly publishing / Science Policy / Scientific papers / Scientists / Ultrasonic imaging / Ultrasound / Writing - standards