I have previously been involved in a course, where we (the students) were supposed to use a specific style, when presenting our graphical data. By style I mean the size/color of legends, thickness of datapoints, layout of the figure, etc....
Does similar guidelines exist when publishing data in a peer-reviewed journal? Or is it entirely up to me to decide, how it should look?
Answer
The purpose of any style when presenting graphics should aim at making the information as easy to read and comprehend as possible. I do not think any journals would provide specific style recommendaions except provide information on, for example, the thinnest posible lines, smallest possible font sizes to be reproduced in printing, color models etc.
I think it is important to think about how you present data in any scientific or professional communication. It will be largely up to you to make decisions on the material you visualize. My recommendation is to look at the book The Visual Display Of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte and then to learn by example. This book, in my opinion, like no other, provides a good basis for understanding graphic display of data. Look at what others do and critically evaluate how successful those attempts are.
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