1How to improve your figures
Your manuscript can be more attractive!
Ver. 2.5
Editorial Office, Ecological Society of Japan
28 Aug 2023

2IndexPage
1. Typographical rules.............

3

2. Formatting rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

6

3. Construction guide . . . . . . . . . . . . .

94. Guides for multiple panels . . . . . . . . .

11

5. Reducing unnecessary space . . . . 13
6. Notes for color illustrations . . . . . . 15
7. Guides for making files . . . . . . . . . .

16

8. Guides for tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
9. Legends / captions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Note: Items in red are required.
Revisions will be requested as necessary.

20

1. Typographical rules

3(i) Unit- Surround a unit in round parentheses, rather than square brackets.

(e.g.)

Nitrogen[%]%NitrogenNitrogen (%)- Use slash or indices to indicate per to separate unit of measurement.

(e.g.)g per cm3g/cm3g cm−3

- Slashes or indices in units will be used as per the author’s preference.

(e.g.)

nmol/hr/mg
ornmol hr −1 mg −1- Do not use the roman letter “u” as a substitute for “µ”.

(e.g.)

1 um

1 µm

Note: Items in red are required. Revisions will be requested as necessary.

1. Typographical rules

4(ii) Multiplication sign
- For the multiplication sign, use “×”, rather than an asterisk “*”, a centered dot“·” or the roman letter “x”.

(e.g.)

a*baxba×b(or “ab”)

How to inputWindows1) Input “00d7”
2) Select it3) press Alt + X
MacEnter “00d7” with pressing
Option key in “Unicode Hex
Input mode”.

(iii) Upper/lowercase- Use lowercase letters for character strings, except for the initial letter.

(e.g.)

leaf weight
LEAF WEIGHT
Leaf Weight

Leaf weight(iv) Period/comma- Use periods for decimal points. Do not use commas as substitutes.

(e.g.)

0,3
0,05

0.3
0.05

Note: Items in red are required. Revisions will be requested as necessary.

1. Typographical rules

5(v) Space- Space is needed between a value and a unit.

(e.g.)

400m
10g

400 m10 g- Spaces are needed before and after mathematical symbols: e.g. +, −, ±, >,=, ...etc.

(e.g.)

1.3±0.3a=b

1.3 ± 0.3
a=b(vi) Dash & minus sign
- Use an en-dash rather than a hyphen for a range of values.

(e.g.)

0-100
2009-2011

0–100
2009–2011 MacEnter“2013”
withpressing Option key in“Unicode Hex Input mode”.

- Use a minus sign “−” for negative values- Do not use a hyphen as a substitute.

(e.g.)-1

How to input
Windows
1) Input “2013”
2) Select it3) press Alt + X−1How to input
Windows1) Input “2212”
2) Select it3) press Alt + X
MacEnter “2212” with pressing
Option key in “Unicode Hex
Input mode”.

Note: Items in red are required. Revisions will be requested as necessary.

2. Formatting rules

6(i) Font type
- Use a sans-serif font. Helvetica or Arial is preferred.

- Use the same font type throughout the figures.

FIGURE 2

FIGURE 130 ºN

Japan

Variable 240 ºN

20 ºN

131211109876110 ºE 120 º E 130 º E 140 º E 150 º ER = .801020

Variable 140 ºN
30 ºNJapan20 ºN

Variable 2Unify the font type (Arial)
131211109876R = 0.80110 ºE 120 ºE 130 ºE 140 ºE 150 ºE

10Variable 1

Note: Items in red are required. Revisions will be requested as necessary.

202. Formatting rules(ii) Font style- Use normal font (e.g. not italic, not underlined).

(iii) Font size
- Minimum font size is 8 pt or more in printed size.

Note: Items in red are required. Revisions will be requested as necessary.

72. Formatting rules(iv) Line width & color- Line thickness should be 0.75 pt or more.

- Use black color for axes and frames.

Note: Items in red are required. Revisions will be requested as necessary.

83. Construction guides

9(i) Bar-plots, scatter-plots, line graphs…etc.
- Show tick-mark labels horizontally.
- Use the same number of display digits
after the decimal point within axes.

Bad example- Use the same direction
for axis labels.
Bad
example- Axis labels are needed for each axis.
- Show categorically defined tick-mark labels horizontally, if possible.

Note: Items in red are required. Revisions will be requested as necessary.

3. Construction guides

10(ii) Geographical maps
- Objects should be clearly distinguished from their background.

- Geographical coordinates and compass points arenecessary for large scale map.

- Scale-bar is necessary insmall scale map.

(iii) Photographs- When you insert texts or symbols on a photograph, use an easily distinguishable
design.

Note: Items in red are required. Revisions will be requested as necessary.

4. Guides for multiple panels

11- Provide panel labels for each panel.
-- lowercase roman letters with round parentheses are recommended.
-- use more than 10 pt in bold face.
-- place the top left corner (as much as possible), and should be aligned in vertical/horizontal.

- Align figure parts (e.g. panels, panel labels, axis labels, graphic legends, statisticalsignificance codes…etc.) among panels.

Note: Items in red are required. Revisions will be requested as necessary.

4. Guides for multiple panels- Make the size of the panels as uniform as possible.

- Consolidate the axis labels (and tick-mark labels) if possible.

Note: Items in red are required. Revisions will be requested as necessary.

125. Reducing unnecessary space- Adjusting layout of panels.

- Adjusting shapes and sizes of panels.

Note: Items in red are required. Revisions will be requested as necessary.

135. Reducing unnecessary space

14- Adjusting the position of the legend.
1010Variable 1

12

Variable 1

12864

B

64

20A

8212340512

Category

SpaceA

345

Category

SpaceB- Adjusting the range of the axis.
12A8B

Variable 1

10

Variable 18Space

64A6B

422001234512

Category

345

Category- Adjusting the size of objects.
Spaces8A

6B
Variable 1

Variable 18420A

6B

420

123

Category

45123

Category

Note: Items in red are required. Revisions will be requested as necessary.

45

6. Notes for color illustrations

15Color Universal Designs (friendliness to colorblind people)--Colorblind people can recognize a wide range of colors, but certain ranges of colors
are hard to distinguish. When preparing your figures, please consider to make thefigures distinguishable for colorblind people. For more details of color universal
design, please refer to the color universal design (CUD) website. (https://jfly.unikoeln.de/color/)
Using symbols, line types, patterns and shape and choosing colors that easily
distinguishable are recommended.

Example 1. Line drawings
Bad example

Good example

Example 2. Graphs
Bad example

Good example

Color Universal Design (CUD) Masataka Okabe
and Kei Ito. https://jfly.uni-koeln.de/color/
Note: Items in red are required. Revisions will be requested as necessary.

7. Guides for making files

16(i) Figure size
- Please make Figures in the range 80–180 mm wide.

180 mm
80 mm
23.4 cm- The maximum height is 23.4 cm.

Basic size

Note: Items in red are required. Revisions will be requested as necessary.

7. Guides for making files

17(ii) Saving figures- Save figures in separate files- The file name should include the figure number
FIGURE 1

FIGURE 2

FIGURE 3

Figure_1.tiff

Figure_2.eps

Figure_3.eps- Save figures composed of multiple panels as one file. Do not separate by panel.
- Make each file size less than 10 MB.
FIGURE 4 (a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

Figure_4.tiff(iii) Preferred File format- EPS or PDF (for line art) and TIFF (for image). For details, see the following instructions.
Guidelines for the Preparation of Figures (Wiley)
http://media.wiley.com/assets/7323/92/electronic_artwork_guidelines.pdf- EPS or PDF (vector illustration) is recommended for a figure constructed of dots,lines, polygons, and/texts.
VectorVector format (EPS or PDF file)illustration is not
pixelated
Raster format (TIFF file)

Zooming…
Rasterillustration ispixelated

Note: Items in red are required. Revisions will be requested as necessary.

7. Guides for making files(iv) Resolution- For TIFF files, figures should be created in good picture quality and sufficient
resolution (≥ 300 dpi)

Good

Example!

BadExample

BadExample

Note: Items in red are required. Revisions will be requested as necessary.

18

8. Guides for tables

19- Tables should be provided as editable format in the main text not pasted as images.
- Do not use vertical lines and color- Use the same font type as in the main text.
- Use normal font style, instead of bold/italic for the title and header of the table- Show numerical values with the same number of digits after the decimal point within acolumn.
- Align values within a column (see below).
- Basic typographical rules are the same as those for figures.
TABLE # Topography and forest structures in the three topographic positions
Topographic
position

Elevation [m]Mean Min.–Max.

Ridge

466

Slope450

Valley438

Total

Number ofcanopy gaps
482 12450–481

1793.0254

416–4781354.3641

589.4 15655.26358

381.8 61346.5975

652 33

413–461452

Stem density [stems ha-1]
Mean
S.D.

413–481TABLE # Topography and forest structures in the three topographic positions
Topographic
position
Ridge

Elevation (m)Stem density (stems/ha)

Mean
466

Min.–Max.
450–481

Mean
1793

SD
482.0

Number of
canopy gaps
12Slope450

416–478

1354

589.4

15

Valley438

413–461

655

381.8

6

Total

452

413–481

1347

652.0

33

- Align columns as follows
Characters

Integers

Numerical
valuesValue 1

Value 2

Value 3

ABC112.56

5.1 ± 7.3

DE51

3.00

7.8 ± 5.6

FGHI1112.60

10.5 ± 15.2

Align right

Align at thedecimal points

Align left

Values withmathematical signs

Value 4

Align at themathematical signs

Note: Items in red are required. Revisions will be requested as necessary.

9. Legends/captions

20- Figures and tables should be self-explanatory, i.e. their contents should beunderstandable without reference to the main text.

- Provide graph legends as necessary- Explain the parts of a figure in its caption.

Variable 1 (unit)

10050

FIGURE # Differences in Variable 1between the groups

acbbcc0ABCDEFIGURE # Differences in the mean valuesof Variable 1 between the groups. The errorbars indicate standard deviation.
Different lowercase letters represent
statistically significant differences (p < 0.05;
Tukey’s HSD)

Group

Note: Items in red are required. Revisions will be requested as necessary.

9. Legends/captions

21- Abbreviations/acronyms should be defined in each figure/table.
FIGURE # The relationship between
SLA and LN (r = 0.59, p < 0.001)

FIGURE # The relationship between
specific leaf area (SLA) and leaf nitrogencontent LN (r = 0.59, p < 0.001)- Abbreviations can be used without the definitions for common statisticalmeasures/methods as follows:
Statistical measures

Abbreviation/symbol

Sample size

nProbability value

pConfidence interval

CI

Student’s tt

F ratio

FChi-square

Χ2

Degree of freedom

dfCorrelation coefficientr

Coefficient of determination

R2

Standard deviation

SD

Standard error

SEAnalysis of variance

ANOVA

Analysis of covariance

ANCOVA

Note: Items in red are required. Revisions will be requested as necessary.

9. Legends/captions

22- Do not abbreviate genus names at the first mention in each figure/table.
TABLE # Species abundance of lianas in
the study plot (10 ha)
SpeciesM. umbellate
A. rufa
P. viburnoides
A. affineT. gracilipes
M. macrocarpa
F. thunbergii
M. parviflora

Number of stems
301
201
89
67
48
2524
17

TABLE # Species abundance of lianas in
the study plot (10 ha)
SpeciesMorinda umbellata
Actinidia rufa
Pileostegia viburnoides
Anodendron affine
Trachelospermum gracilipes
Mucuna macrocarpa
Ficus thunbergii
Mussaenda parviflora(a)Number of stems
301
201
8967
48
252417

FIGURE # Flower of R. scabrum (a)and R. tashiroi (b)FIGURE # Flower of Rhododendron
scabrum (a) and R. tashiroi (b)(b)

Note: Items in red are required. Revisions will be requested as necessary.