Paper writing

Making figures

What message does your figure aim to convey?

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Scientific Rigor

You Should Always Check: include the x/y axis limits, enlarge the labels (axis ticks&labels, legends; can you still read the figure at 100% on screen?), minimize unnecessary blank space.

Choose the right visualization: box, bar, swarm, or dots?

Save vectorized version of the plots whenever possible, i.e. PDF, SVG.

Visualize the local density for dense scatter plots.

Multi Panel Figures

Try to make every panel/figure as a square.

In R's ggplot, making the canvas 4x4 or 4.5x4.5 and font size 11 is usually a good balance between readability and density.

Use Adobe Illustrator to align all panels. Keep the same font size as above.

No panels should be squeezed or stretched!

Overview Figure

Use BioRender and FontAwesome for free icons.

Try making your own icons/cartoons. Never paste a low-resolution image into your figure.

You can add background color to enhance certain parts in the overview; choose low saturation colors.

Color Scheme

Avoid using the default seaborn/ggplot colors. Just don't.

The tip that always works: go to the journal you're submitting to, browse a few papers to get a taste.

For two-way contrasts: navyblue vs orange; red vs black; orange vs grey.

For three-way contrasts: green vs orange vs blue; blue vs purple vs green.

For heatmap: if center is zero and is meaningful, blue - white - red. otherwise consider blue-yellow.