Figure and Table Guidelines

Last updated: 2026-08-08 

Thank you for considering a submission to Sedimentologika. On this page you will find guidelines and requirements of figures and tables to help prepare your submission, and if your article is accepted for publication in Sedimentologika, ensure the copy editing and production process goes as smoothly and quickly as possible.

Figures

Figure Accessibility

When designing figures, authors must consider accessibility as part of their design process. This will not only make it easier for everyone to be able to interpret your figures, but will also help you more accurately and clearly convey your intended meaning. There are numerous, free, tools available to help you design figures in an accessible way, and to check your figures for accessibility issues.

There are several excellent papers which address accessible figure design, and a plethora of resources available on the internet. Ramsey & Schröder (2025): Beyond the Visual: Achieving Accessibility in Scientific Figures and Crameri & Perez Diaz (2024): The Evolving Role of Science Visuals in Geoscience: From Simple Illustrations to Storytelling Tools are excellent starting points to help you with accessible figure design and principles.

Things to consider include, but is not limited to:

  • using different symbol shapes in preference of colour where possible
  • use of colour-vision deficiency friendly colour schemes (mandatory, exceptions require extraordinary reasoning.)
    • Do not use rainbow and jet colour maps; you will be required to revise any figure using these colour schemes.
    • red and green colour combinations are the most likely to cause accessibility issues, avoid these combinations where possible.
    • pre-made schemes (e.g. Scientific Colour Maps) are available in many common programming languages, and in numerous open-source and commercial software packages.
    • tools like ColorBrewer, DaltonLens, Chroma.js Color Palette Helper, Coblis can assist you with designing colour-vision deficiency friendly figures
  • adhering to WCAG 2.2 minimum contrast between text and backgrounds
  • adhering to a font size where the minimum character height (usually x-height) is no less than 1.5 mm at the absolute minimum ( ≈ 8 pt Noto Sans).
  • using sans-serif fonts such as Atkinson Hyperlegible Next, Arial, Fira Sans, Noto Sans, Open Sans etc.

Further reading on why accessible colour schemes are important, and how they help improve your science:

Alternate Text (Alt-text)

Alternative text (alt text) is the written description of an image that is read aloud by screen-reader software to help a visually impaired reader comprehend an image’s content. We encourage you to provide alternative text for figures to help us improve their accessibility in final versions of the article.

Alt-text should communicate the scientific message of the figure rather than describe every visual element.

MIT Press has written a useful guide for writing alt-text which is available at https://dhjhkxawhe8q4.cloudfront.net/mit-press/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/20161930/The-MIT-Press-Alt-Text-Style-Guide_May-2026.pdf. Another good guide is available from the Accessible Publishing Learning Network.

Figure Dimensions

Please design your figures at their desired final reproduction size. This is particularly important for ensuring that text on figures does not fall below the minimum character height of ≈ 8 pt Noto Sans x-height ( ≈ 1.5  mm).

Intended Width Maximum Width Maximum Height
one column 86 mm 230 mm
two column 180 mm 230 mm
landscape (A4) 257 mm 160 mm
Note: Long figure captions may reduce maximum allowable height    

Raster image resolution

For raster formats you also need to consider the pixel density of the image (i.e. pixels per millimetre or inch). For colour images this should be a minimum of 11.8 ppmm (300 ppi). For black-and-white line art this should be at least 23.6 ppmm (600 ppi).

Pixel dimensions are more important than the DPI/PPI metadata value. Ensure the image contains sufficient pixels at the intended reproduction size.

As an example, if you want an 86 mm wide raster image at 11.8 ppmm the pixel width of the final image must be 11.8 (ppmm)×86 (mm)=1014 pixels

Map Figures

Map figures must have a scale, grid markers of some form, and state the coordinate reference system of their projection. An exemplar is available in our LaTeX guide build at https://github.com/Sedimentologika/LaTeX_templates/.

Due to the nature of geology being an international science, some maps may have areas of disputed borders or regions. In these cases, please use the internationally recognised border or region where possible.

Multi-panel Figures

Label multi-panel figures sequentially using alphabetic characters (A, B, C…). Should you need sub-panel references, use lowercase roman-numerals (i, ii, iii, iv…) in parentheses appended to the panel label. Consistently place, style, and format your panel labels. The preferred form is A, A(i) etc. placed in the top left of the panel.

Cite panels accordingly in captions and manuscript text.

File Formats

While it is a requirement that figures are embedded within the single submission file for review, we also ask authors to provide a high-resolution version of each individual figure at the time of submission.

For best quality reproduction please use an appropriate file format for the type of data in the figure.

Lines, polygons, graphs are examples of data that can be represented by mathematical formulas and can scale without loss and preserve sharpness at any resolution. Use vector graphic formats (PDF, SVG, EPS…) for these kinds of data. Note: Some particularly complex and detailed vector data (e.g. large heatmaps) are best represented as raster data.

Photographs and other images - these are data represented as a grid of pixels and will have an apparent loss of quality and sharpness if scaled higher than the resolution of the original image. Use raster graphic formats (PNG, TIF, JPEG…) to represent these kinds of data.

For figures that combine both raster and vector data (e.g., a photograph with overlaid labels and text annotations), please save the figure as a vector format with the raster data embedded within it.

Preferred file formats

Our preferred file formats are PDF or SVG for vector graphics, and PNG for raster graphics. We will also accept AI, EPS, TIFF, JPEG and other formats that can be reliably opened using open-source software such as Inkscape, Krita, or GIMP. Final production will convert all vector graphics to PDF and raster graphics to PNG.

SVG/AI/EPS files

Please ensure you have tidied up your figures to remove unnecessary complexity in their structure. Simplifying vector structure reduces the risk of rendering errors and substantially decreases production processing time. This is particularly important for files generated using Adobe Illustrator as they often render incorrectly when converted via Inkscape or other open-source image software.

PDF files

PDF files generated from many softwares often contain many hidden layers and/or clipping masks. Please ensure you have tidied up your figures to remove unnecessary complexity in their structure. Failure to do so may cause rendering issues when embedded into the final document.

A common pitfall of PDF exports from software is that it exports the page size, rather than the figure area. This results in significant white space around figures. Please check that your figures are bound to their actual figure area, and not a page size by using a PDF viewer, or simply a modern web-browser. If there is significant excess white space around your figure, re-export it to be constrained by the figure objects themselves.

3D Models and Virtual Outcrops

Use open, non-proprietary formats: OBJ, PLY, or glTF/GLB. Large meshes must be hosted in a data repository (e.g., Sketchfab, outcrop.io). Cite in the manuscript text and Data Availability Statement.

Videos

Ideally use the MP4 container and encode with H.264 (AVC) video and AAC audio. This combination plays natively in all modern web browsers without plugins or extensions. You may provide an AV1 or VP9 (WebM) copy as an additional open, royalty-free version alongside the H.264 master. Host in a data repository (e.g., Zenodo) with a DOI; cite as for 3D models.

Tables

Complex tables present a significant challenge in LaTeX for our volunteer production team. Please only use tables where needed, and keep them simple. Complex tables will incur production delays or you may be requested to revise its design.

Use a table only if there isn’t a simpler way to present your content, such as a paragraph of text or figure.

Large or highly detailed datasets should be deposited in an appropriate repository and cited in the data availability statement rather than included as oversized manuscript tables. Datasets provided in a form such as CSV, ODS, XLSX, RData, JLD2, HDF5 etc. are better for study reproducibility.

Each table must be independently understandable, with a clear title or caption, defined abbreviations, and sufficient explanatory notes where needed. Tables should be numbered sequentially in the order they are cited in the manuscript.

Design tables for readability and accessibility. The minimum font size should be Noto Sans 8 pt (or equivalent). Keep tables simple: - Use simple structure, clear column headings, consistent terminology, and SI units. - Avoid excessive decimal places, duplicated information, empty cells without explanation, and unnecessary formatting. - Don’t colour rows, columns, or cells unless absolutely necessary - If you find yourself using colour, maybe a table isn’t the right form to display this information.

Fonnes & Rosenberg (2025) (doi:10.1016/j.jss.2025.03.034) provide good guidance on how tables should be designed and prepared.