Journal of Financial Economics
INSTRUCTIONS FOR TABLES AND FIGURES
I have noticed a pattern in many figures submitted to the JFE, so I want to
highlight the following instructions that are often applicable (in addition
to the general instructions outlined below):
- Elsevier charges a substantial fee (see the JFE web page for more details)
to print figures in color. There is no charge for color in the online PDF
version of the paper. Therefore, unless you plan to pay the incremental charge
for having your figures printed in color, YOU SHOULD MAKE SURE THAT ALL FIGURES
ARE LEGIBLE AND LOOK GOOD WHEN PRINTED IN BLACK & WHITE.
- In all figures, REMOVE ALL UNNECSSARY BOXES, LINES, MARKS, ETC. (there
is a wonderful book by Edward Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative
Information, that contains a fountain of valuable advice on how to construct
effective figures).
- All figures must be LEGIBLE, SELF-CONTAINED AND LOOK GOOD when photographed
and reproduced to fit on a JFE page.
The legends, axis labels, column and row labels and footnotes for all figures
and tables should be clear enough so they are self-contained; that is,
the content of the table or the figure must be understandable without reading
the text of the article.
In particular, the TITLE AND LEGEND of the table or figure must describe
the content of the numbers or symbols in the body of the table or the content
of the figure. For example, a table legend that says "Descriptive Statistics"
is unsatisfactory. The overall legend should describe the statistics, the
sample, and the sample period at a minimum.
In addition the following items must always appear somewhere in the legend,
column labels, row labels, or axis labels:
- The DIMENSION of all numbers must be CLEARLY DEFINED
- for example, daily, monthly, or annual returns or percentage returns
- SAMPLE DESCRIPTION including:
- sample SIZE
- sample PERIOD
- subsample DESCRIPTION or DEFINITION
- All SYMBOLS, EQUATIONS, CONCEPTS and TERMINOLOGY MUST BE DEFINED in English
in the table or figure (in footnotes if nowhere else).
Figures must be professionally drawn in black ink on white paper
or produced to equivalent standards on a high quality laser printer. The figure
axes (labeled in English), and any symbols or notations that are part
of the figure must also be labeled by the artist. This does not include
the figure legend that will be typeset by the printer. All figures must be
sufficiently high quality to be photographed by the printer.
It often seems to authors (who, by definition, are intimately familiar with
the content and notation of their paper) that these procedures are repetitive,
obvious and unnecessary. However, the vast majority of readers do not read
an article in great detail the first time; they usually skim the abstract,
and some parts of the introduction, tables, charts and conclusions. Such readers
become careful and serious consumers of an article when something catches
their interest. Tables or figures that require incomplete reading of the text
to understand do not communicate much to the skimming reader. It is a mistake
to write only for the top dozen or so people in a field. If the article is
written so that others can easily access the material, the top people also
will find it easier to digest. Therefore, the readership and impact of the
article will increase.
Some Examples:
A full-text version of these instructions is available in Acrobat's portable
data format (.pdf). The file is about 459K and can only be viewed (and printed)
using a copy of Acrobat Reader.
If you want the current version of the Adobe Acrobat Reader for other
platforms, visit Adobe's web page by clicking the image below.
Click here to download the
full text of the instructions for preparation of tables and figures for the
JFE.
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© Copyright 1996-2011, Journal of Financial
Economics
Last Updated on 10/21/2011
