Research on tables and graphs in academic articles: Pitfalls and promises (original) (raw)

Effective use of tables and figures in abstracts, presentations, and papers

Respiratory care, 2004

In some situations, tables, graphs, and figures can present certain types of information (including complicated relationships and sequences of events) more clearly and in less space than the same information would require in sentence form. However, do not use tables, graphs, and figures for small amounts of data that could be conveyed clearly and succinctly in a sentence. Also, do not reiterate in sentences the data that are shown in a table, graph, or figure: the point of creating a table or graph or figure is to eliminate that type of sentence from your manuscript. In building a data table you must balance the necessity that the table be complete with the equally important necessity that it not be too complex. Sometimes it is helpful to break a large table into several smaller ones to allow the reader to identify important information easily, but, conversely, it is a common mistake of novice authors to split up into several tables data that belong in one table. In almost all cases...

Graphs Tables and Figures in Scientific Publications

Graphs, figures, and tables can save readers time and energy, aid their understanding of an article, and reduce the word count of the main text. However, many graphics submitted to and published in scientific journals fail to meet their potential and include mistakes that jeopardize their clarity. Many formats are available for presenting data, as well as a variety of techniques for enhancing interpretability. When the appropriate format is used to depict data, it conveys the greatest amount of information in the clearest fashion, complements the text, and deepens readers' understanding. The aims of this article are to draw attention to the necessity of well-constructed graphs, tables, and figures in scientific publications, and to show how to create them. (J Hand Surg 2012;37A:591-596.

Understanding Tables and Graphs to Interpret Professionally a Case Study a B S T R a C T

In this study, the main aim was to elaborate the importance of drawing a proper table and a graph that reflects and characterizes the inscriptional practices demonstrated by academics; particularly their use of data tables and graphs. Many tables and graphs, even from the professionals, do not effectively convey information. This paper was developed to check the academic knowledge depicted on tables and graphs, and to reveal the known flaws in the display by analyzing the information. Basic information on the anatomy of tables and graphs is poorly understood among academia, and violation of relevant rules reveal the source of potential difficulty in using the principles of drawing tables and graphs accurately.

Editorial: A Step-by-Step Guide for Creating Tables

A significant proportion of published articles contain one or more tables. For example, of the 264 articles that have been published in Research in the Schools since its inception in 1994 (Volume 1, Issue 1) through the previous issue in 2010 (Volume 17, Issue 1)—spanning 33 issues—200 (75.8%) articles have contained one or more tables. These 200 articles contained an average of 3.76 tables. As can be seen from Figure 1, with the exception of four issues (i.e., 5[2], 6[1], 9[2], and 13[1]), at least two thirds of the articles in each issue (n = 29) contained one or more tables. Even in the field of qualitative research, where tables often are underutilized (Onwuegbuzie & Dickinson, 2008), tables can still play an important role. For example, Onwuegbuzie (2011) documented that, of the 570 articles published in the excellent journal, The Qualitative Report, between its inception in 1990 (Volume 1, Issue 1) through its most current issue in 2011 at the time of writing (Volume 16, Issue...

Understanding Tables and Graphs to Interpret Professionally a Case Study

American Journal of Educational Research, 2017

Do men and women differ in their use of tables and graphs in academic publications?

Scientometrics, 2014

In psychological research there is huge literature on differences between the sexes. Typically it used to be thought that women were more verbally and men more spatially oriented. These differences now seem to be waning. In this article we present three studies on sex differences in the use of tables and graphs in academic articles. These studies are based on data mining from approximately 2,000 articles published in over 200 peer-reviewed journals in the sciences and social sciences. In Study 1 we found that, in the sciences, men used 26% more graphs and figures than women, but that there were no significant differences between them in their use of tables. In Study 2 we found no significant differences between men and women in their use of graphs and figures or tables in social science articles. In Study 3 we found no significant differences between men and women in their use of what we termed 'data' and 'text' tables in social science articles. It is possible that these findings indicate that academic writing is now becoming a genre that is equally undertaken by men and women.

Disentangling the Structure of Tables in Scientific Literature

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2016

Within the scientific literature, tables are commonly used to present factual and statistical information in a compact way, which is easy to digest by readers. The ability to "understand" the structure of tables is key for information extraction in many domains. However, the complexity and variety of presentation layouts and value formats makes it difficult to automatically extract roles and relationships of table cells. In this paper, we present a model that structures tables in a machine readable way and a methodology to automatically disentangle and transform tables into the modelled data structure. The method was tested in the domain of clinical trials: it achieved an F-score of 94.26% for cell function identification and 94.84% for identification of inter-cell relationships.

The reporting of study limitations and hedging in articles with and without causal diagrams

Causal directed acyclic graphs (DAG) are known to constitute a useful tool to improve the methodological and reporting quality of observational studies. At the same time, there are concerns that their (mis)use may lead to overconfident inferences. In this study, we investigate the reporting of study bias and limitations, and the use of hedging in articles with and without causal DAG. We performed a keyword search in two electronic databases (Medline and Web of Science) and one full-text repository (PubMed Central). The search strategy aimed to identify biomedical studies with an analytical observational design, that reported use of causal DAG. We selected a random sample of the articles that presented a graphic structure. We pair-matched individually 130 DAG with 130-Non-DAG papers on journal and issue. The number of research limitations acknowledged by the authors and of hedging terms per 100 words were analyzed using multiple linear regression models. From 2000 to 2020, we identif...

Research on tables and graphs in academic articles: Pitfalls and promises (original) (raw)

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