Although text is the main means of expressing the theme of SCI papers, it is not the only way of expression. In order to express the content of the article concisely, intuitively and clearly, it is inevitable to use illustrations as an auxiliary way of expression. Due to ignorance, the illustrations produced and provided by many authors in SCI papers have unreasonable design, incomplete items, and repeated graphic content . Therefore, Xiaoke here explains the characteristics and standardization requirements of illustrations, hoping to be helpful to everyone.
According to the expression method and printing process of illustrations, illustrations can be divided into two types: graphics and images. Graphics are line drawings, which refer to illustrations drawn with lines, including function diagrams, flowcharts, equivalent circuit diagrams, schematic diagrams, block diagrams, etc. The images are well-structured, lifelike, and have a strong sense of three-dimensionality, including screenshots, metallographic maps, and photo maps. In SCI papers, whether graphics or images are used, they should have the following characteristics:
1. Realism
As long as there is meaningful information for readers, the illustrations of SCI papers must be strictly faithful to the description object, and the useful information should be expressed in detail and clearly, without fabrication and embellishment.
2. Normative
Whether it is graphics or images, it is required to have a fixed format and presentation method. It is necessary to clearly express the content of the illustration, and to convey the only information to readers quickly, conveniently and accurately, and readers should not be allowed to understand it by imagination.
3. Schematic
The illustrations in SCI papers are a form of expression used to assist words to describe content that is difficult to express in words, so it should be noted that the illustrations in SCI papers are not intended to describe every detail and give detailed explanations, but It is necessary to make necessary trade-offs for the content of the article . For example, several consecutive items in the block diagram have the same content and are in a parallel relationship. You can use "..." to replace the middle items.
4. Self-evident
Self-explanatory requires that readers do not read the content of the article, but only look at the title and figure of the figure to understand the information to be conveyed in the figure.
For SCI journals, the use of illustrations also needs to be standardized. First of all, the layout is reasonable , because the layout of journals is limited, so attention should be paid to the overall layout of the illustrations on the basis of complete presentation. For example, the coordinate origin of the function curve is not necessarily "0", and the coordinates that are beneficial to the layout can be moved according to the specific conditions of the curve to obtain a better layout and visual effect. If the abscissa or ordinate of several curves is the same, and it is required to compare the curves, several sub-graphs can be combined into one graph in the form of sharing the abscissa or ordinate.
Secondly, all figures should be given the figure sequence and figure title in the order of Arabic numerals directly below the figure, and there should be a space between figure sequence and figure title. If there are sub-pictures, the sub-picture sequence and sub-picture title should be marked directly below each sub-picture, and all sub-pictures and sub-picture titles should be directly above the picture title, and the picture cannot be separated from the picture title. There should be explanatory texts such as "see picture *" and "shown in picture *" in the preceding paragraph of the picture, the text description should be seen first, and the illustration should be seen later, and the picture and text should echo each other, and no text description should appear It is "see Figure 1", but the picture sequence following it is the situation of "Figure 3".
Third, in order to ensure the clarity and beauty of the drawings, the explanations and descriptions of some illustrations are marked between the figure and the figure title in the form of legends. The font size used in the legend is the same as that of the text in the picture; the quantity and unit in the legend should be standardized; separated by semicolons.
In addition, some SCI papers need to use function graphs. To clearly express the content of the function graphs, the headings and values should be marked on the coordinate axes. Headings are generally composed of physical quantities or their symbols and corresponding units. The symbols of physical quantities should be given in italics using the symbols used in the norms (except those that are specified in the standard), and the units should also be marked in regular fonts using internationally accepted characters. , the overall heading should be centered outside the marked value in the form of "quantity/unit".
The label value should use a simple and easy-to-label value, try not to exceed 3 digits, and not exceed 1 zero after the decimal point. If the numerical value is too large and there are too many 0s after the decimal point, the SI prefix should be used to change the size of the physical quantity unit to change the size of the marked value number. If the coordinate axis expresses a qualitative variable and no specific value is given, an arrow should be drawn on the top of the coordinate axis according to the increasing direction of the variable. ). It should be noted that arrows and scalar values cannot be used at the same time to indicate the direction of increment on the same coordinate axis.
Generally speaking, illustrations are widely used in SCI papers and are an important part of SCI papers. Reasonable use of illustrations can not only make some expressions more concise, accurate and clear, but also has the function of active beautification. Therefore, before submitting a manuscript, the author should understand the characteristics of illustrations and their role in the article, choose illustrations reasonably, and improve the standard selection of illustrations to make the expression in the paper clearer and more beautiful.