Manuscript figure font size and type

• Use standard sans serif fonts for text. Examples are Arial, Helvetica, and Calibri.
• All words and other symbols should be large enough to be legible. In general, this means you need a font size of at least 8 points.
• Ensure the font typeface, as well as its size, is consistent across figures.

Manuscript figure resolution

• The minimum resolution for line art should be 1000–1200 dpi.
• Figure resolution should be around 300 dpi for color images and 600 dpi for grayscale images.
• For manuscript figures that combine photos with line art, aim for around 600 dpi.

Figure size for scientific publications

• The canvas width for small figures (half page width) should be at least 8 cm.
• The canvas width for large figures (whole page width) should be 17–18 cm.
• The maximum height for the figure and its caption should be 22.5 cm.

Graphic files can become behemoths very fast. Working with huge files doesn’t just lead to your program crashing or becoming very slow. It can also make it impossible to upload the file to the journal’s system when you submit your manuscript. So, learn how to reduce manuscript figure size in your graphics software. As a rule of thumb, aim for up to 10 MB per figure.

Manuscript file format for images

• If you have vector figures, save them as PDF. It usually takes less space than an EPS file.
• Save TIFF files with LZW compression, because it doesn’t affect image quality.
• Save JPEG files with the maximum quality your software allows.
• single column width (21 picas, 8.9 cm, 3.5 inches),
• a 1.5-column width (30 picas, 12.7 cm, 5 inches)
• a full two-column width (43 picas, 18.2 cm, 7.2 inches)

matlab code

set(gcf,'units','centimeters','position',[0 0 width height])

export_fig(gcf,'test','-eps','-transparent')