Construction Management and Economics - Graphics

Much of importance can be conveyed in a simple graphic. Modern software is capable of producing many fonts, shades, highlights and other devices, very few of which add to the clarity of a graph and most of which reproduce badly.

In Construction Management and Economics, papers are typeset from authors' original typescript or from disk. But graphics are photographed from authors' camera-ready copy. Therefore, it is important to produce graphs in a style which is consistent and acceptable. There is guidance inside the back cover of any issue of the journal, and on the Instructions for Authors page but this is not very detailed and does not address many increasingly frequent problems. Below, there is more detail, which should help to reduce the need for authors to re-draw graphs in papers submitted to this journal:

Please check the following points when producing your figures and especially check for consistency between figures.

• Text in figures should be kept to an absolute minimum. Use only one font, only one size, preferably 14 pt.
• Keys should not be included in the figure, but placed after the caption so that they will be typeset. Similarly, sources of data should follow the caption and kept out of the main area of the graphic.
• The caption should be at the bottom, after the figure number, clearly separate from the figure, followed by the key, then the source if relevant.
• Do not label the figures in capitals, but use lower case lettering with upper case only for the first letter of the first word and proper nouns.
• Lines should be not less than 0.25 mm (1.5 or 2 pt) thick and should all be the same thickness. Different line thicknesses are rarely needed in drawings and never needed in graphs.
• Figures should be provided one per page and not inserted within the text of the paper. Only supply laser printer quality, or original drawings. Typically, figures should be printed between the margins of a portrait A4 sheet. Only in exceptional circumstances should you fill a landscape A4 sheet.
• Background shading of any type should be omitted. Perimeter boxes outside the figure should also be omitted.
• Do not add shadows to boxes.
• Switch off any 3D effects in bar charts and histograms.
• In graphs and histograms, the Y axis caption is usually best at the top, horizontally, rather than rotated and added at the side.
• Axis ticks should not be too cramped.
• Different data sets in bar charts and histograms should be denoted by different orientations of cross-hatched lines, not by greyscales, tones, shading or patterns of dots. Beware of Microsoft software which typically produces perfect cross-hatching on the screen, only to convert it to shading on the printer! Check your graphics by printing them before you e-mail them.
• Photographs will be reproduced as half tones. Therefore, please ensure that photographs are monochrome, not colour. Colour reproduction can be arranged, but at the author's expense. It is not cheap!

For further clarification, please contact the editor.