How much time do you typically spend on figure formatting before submission?
Am I the only one who spends an unreasonable amount of time formatting figures?
I'm not talking about the analysis itself.
I mean adjusting fonts, marker sizes, legends, line thicknesses, error bars, exports, and making sure all figures look consistent across a paper.
I've had cases where generating the data took a few minutes, but making the figure look publication-ready took close to an hour.
How much time do you typically spend on figure formatting before submission?
Posted Jun 12, 2026, 12:57 PM UTC
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