Figures should be embedded in the manuscript and submitted together as one file for review. If the manuscript accepted, the original figures might be required. The Figures in PNG, TIFF, JPG, EPS, PDF or PSD formats are allowed. All figures must be over 300 dots-per-pixel (dpi) as per the requirements of PubMed Central (PMC). Color figures are encouraged to enhance the presentation of the data, without additional charge.
The parts of multi-part figures (i.e., figures with parts labeled a, b, c, d, etc.) should be assembled into a single figure that fits on one page and presented as a single file.
Figures should be properly sized and cropped so that no unnecessary white space is left bordering the figure. The maximum height should be 6 inches (15 cm). Choose letters and numbers with the appropriate proportion and size, with the smallest type size more than 2 mm. Times New Roman or Arial are recommended fonts in figures.
Figure legends
For each figure, the following information should be provided: Figure number (in sequence, using Arabic numerals, viz. Figure 1, 2, 3, etc); short title of figure (15 words or less); detailed legend (up to 300 words), a description of the figure to allow readers to understand the figure without referring to the text. The legend itself should be succinct; avoid lengthy descriptions of methods. Define all non-standard symbols and abbreviations. Legends should be organized consecutively in a separate section of the manuscript. Indicate the figure number on each figure. See example.
Preparing tables
- Tables should be numbered with Arabic numbers. Cite the tables in the text in consecutive numerical order. Tables should be grouped at the end of the manuscript on separate pages.
- Tables should have concise titles and sufficient experimental detail in a foot note immediately below the title to be understood without reference to the text.
- Each column in a table must have a heading.
- Abbreviations, when necessary, should be defined in the legend.
- Footnotes to tables should be indicated by superscript lower case letters (or asterisks for significance values and other statistical data) and included below the table body.
- Color and shading may be used; parts of the table can be highlighted using symbols or bold text, the meaning of which should be explained in the table legend.
- Larger datasets or tables too wide for a landscape page can be uploaded separately as additional files. Additional files will not be displayed in the final, laid-out PDF of the article, but a link will be provided to the files as supplied by the author.
- Tabular data provided as additional files can be uploaded as an Excel spreadsheet (.xls) or comma separated values (.csv). As with all files, please use the standard file extensions.
