Package: plotsettings
The difference between publishing figures using justmatplotlib(A), and usingmatplotlibwithplotsettings(B):HighlightsTearing your hair out trying to make your figures conform to the author guidelines
for a particular journal? Got rejected from PNAS and can’t bring yourself to change
all the fonts for submission to PLOS ONE? Letplotsettingsmake it easy for you!plotsettingsis a convenient way of making sure your figures fit the requirements
for publication. One line is sufficient to choose a target journal, and just one
more line to automatically output figures that fit cleanly into 1, 2 or even 1.5
columns! You can even set the aspect ratio of your figure and be warned if your
figure gets taller than the height of one page. In fact,plotsettingsalready knows
the appropriate font, text size, and figure dimensions for all of these journals:Cell (use argument ‘Cell’)Copeia (use argument ‘Copeia’)Deep Sea Research II (use argument ‘DSRII’)Ecology Letters (use argument ‘EcolLett’)Global Change Biology (use argument ‘GlobChangeBio’)Global Environmental Change (use argument ‘GlobEnvChange’)Integrative and Comparative Biology (use argument ‘IntCompBiol’)Journal of Experimental Biology (use argument ‘JEB’)Limnology and Oceanography (use argument ‘LimnolOcean’)Marine Ecology Progress Series (use argument ‘MEPS’)Nature magazine (use argument ‘Nature’)Oecologia (use argument ‘Oecologia’)Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA (use argument ‘PNAS’)Proceedings of the Royal Society B (use argument ‘ProcRoySocB’)Public Library of Science One (use argument ‘PLOSOne’)Public Library of Science Biology (use argument ‘PLOSBio’)Science magazine (use argument ‘Science’)Presentation (okay, this is not a journal but it’s still useful for outputting
figures to presentation slides; access with the argument ‘Presentation’)Don’t see the journal you want on the list (say you want to publish in theProceedings
of the 6th ACM Workshop on Next Generation Mobile Computing for Dynamic Personalised
Travel Planning)? Compile your
own list of journals by creating a python file containing a single dictionary with
settings for every journalyouuse! You can specify any parameters that are accepted
bymatplotlib.rcParamsas well as the column width, gutter width, page height and the
way that multi-panel figures are labeled.Also, aBonus!:1-line labeling of all the subplots in a figure (e.g. with ‘(a)’, ‘(b)’, ‘(c)’
etc.) using the standalone functionpanel_labelsor the methodSet.panel_labels!Installationplotsettingshas only been tested in Python 2.7Install through pip:$ pip install plotsettingsRequires the following non-standard libraries:matplotlibBecause preferred installation of matplotlib can vary depending on the operating system,
matplotlib will not automatically be installed as a dependency. Instead, installation will
raise an exception if matplotlib cannot be found in the pythonpath. In this case, please
install matplotlib via your preferred method, most of which are explainedby matplotlibUsageFirst set the journal you want to submit to:publishable = plotsettings.Set('MEPS') # Lets publish in Marine Ecology Progress Series!Then set the dimensions of a particular figure with the line:publishable.set_figsize(n_columns = 1, n_rows = 1)This will cause the next figure that is drawn to be 1 column wide (81 mm for MEPS) x 1
row high (the concept of ‘rows’ is a little made up, but the default is that one row is
equal to one column width multiplied by the golden ratio, so in this case 50.1 mm). Once
the first figure is drawn, we can set the next figure to be 2 columns wide and 1 row
tall and this time set the row height to be equal to the column width like this:publishable.set_figsize(2, 1, aspect_ratio = 1)Importantly,plotsettingsdoesn’t just calculate the width of a 2-column figure as two
times the width of one column, but includes the width of the gutter (the space between
columns on a page) as well. Therefore, the figure that follows the above line will end
up being 169 mm wide (2 columns of 81 mm each plus a 7 mm gutter) and 81 mm tall (row
height = 1*column width).Once the figure has been created, conveniently add labels to each subplot (if you have a
multipart figure):publishable.panel_labels(fig = fig, position = 'outside', case = 'lower',
                                                 prefix = '', suffix = '.', fontweight = 'bold')to create the labels (‘a.’, ‘b.’, ‘c.’ …) in bold letters outside the top-left corner
of each subplot.Custom journal settings can be used by specifying a python file on the PYTHONPATH:publishable = plotsettings.Set('my_journal_name', 'module_name')The file ‘module_name’ should contain a single dictionary namedjournalswith the
following structure:journals = {'journal1':      {'rcParams':     {'param1': value1,
                                               'param2': value2 ...},
                              'figsize':      {'param1': value1,
                                               'param2': value2 ...},
                              'panel_labels': {'param1': value1,
                                               'param2': value2 ...},
            'journal2':      {'rcParams':     {'param1': value1,
                                               'param2': value2 ...},
                              'figsize':      {'param1': value1,
                                               'param2': value2 ...},
                              'panel_labels': {'param1': value1,
                                               'param2': value2 ...},
            'journal3'...
            }where ‘journalx’ are the identifying names of academic journals (e.g. ‘Nature’), with
the specifications for each journal being divided into 3 dictionaries:rcParams: All parameters are optional. Any valid input to pyplot.rcParams (for
example font name and sizes, default linewidths) is accepted. Definitions of valid
keys to rcParams can be foundhere.figsize: Set figure dimension calculations. Requires the parameters column_width,
gutter_width, and units. The parameter max_height is optional. See below for details.panel_labels: Set default panel labels (i.e. the text that identifies each subplot in
a figure as A, B, C, etc.). All parameters are optional. See below for details.The possible non-rcParams parameters are:figsize:column_width(required) - the maximum width a figure is allowed to be while still
fitting withing a single column.gutter_width(required) - the width of the gutter (space between columns). This can
usually be found by comparing the maximum width that a journal allows for a single-
column figure with the maximum width of a 2-column figure. For example, PLoS One
allows a 1-column figure to be 83 mm in width and a 2-column figure to be 173.5 mm,
meaning that the gutter width (173.5 - 83*2) must be 7.5 mm wide.max_height(optional) - the maximum height a figure is allowed to be while fitting
on a single page (i.e. the page height).units(required) - the units in which the above are reported. Can be one of ‘mm’,
‘cm’, ‘inch’, or ‘pts’panel_labels:fontweight(optional) - the font weight of panel annotations (e.g. A, B, C etc.).
Default is ‘bold’case(optional) - whether to capitalize (‘upper’) or not capitalize
(‘lower’) the panel labels.prefix(optional) - characters to prepend to panel label (e.g. if the desired
label style is (A), (B), etc., set label_prefix to ‘)’).suffix(optional) - characters to append to panel label (e.g. if the desired
label style is a., b., etc., set label_suffix = ‘.’)fontsize(optional) - font size in pts of the label. Defaults to rcParams[‘font.size’]Changelog1.0.4-2 (NOVEMBER/14/2014)Updated doctests1.0.4-1 (NOVEMBER/14/2014)Removed deprecated keywords from default journal parameters1.0.4 (OCTOBER/20/2014)Added ability forpanel_labelsmethod to automatically detect axes that contain only
colorbars and not label them (use detect_colorbars = True). This method relies on the
assumption that colorbar axes are not navigable (e.g. cannot be panned or zoomed in the
interactive figure). This property was chosen because it seems to work both for colorbars
created bypyplot.colorbar()as well as those created explicitly in a new axis such as
using the AxesGrid toolkit.1.0.3 (OCTOBER/15/2014)packagematplotlibis no longer explicitly required in setup.py. Installation will raise
an error if matplotlib is not present - please install in your preferred way.1.0.2 (OCTOBER/15/2014)Changed format of dictionary specifying journal settings. Settings for each journal are
now divided between the dictionaries ‘rcParams’, ‘figsize’ and ‘panel_labels’ instead of
being amalgamated into a single dictionary.Added journals Science, Integrative and Comparative Zoology, Copeia, Cell, Global Change
Biology, Global Environmental Change, Limnology and Oceanography, Nature, PLOS Biology
and Oecologia to the list of natively supported publications.Added methodpanel_labelsto classSetto allow panel labels (e.g. A, B, C etc.)
to automatically follow default settings for the journal (e.g. boldface, uppercase, etc.)1.0.1 (OCTOBER/14/2014)Fixed bug that madeplotsettings.Setunable to find the defaultjournalsmoduleAdded functionpanel_labelsfor convenient, 1-line addition of formatted panel
labels (e.g. A, B, C) to every subplot in a figure.Added ‘Presentation’ as a journal type for PowerPoint slides1.0.0 (OCTOBER/13/2014)First release