Friday 14 June 2019

publications - Are there good reasons to avoid using color in research papers?



I do scientific research, and I noticed for a lot of plots, the different curves are represented with different styles, but they are all black. For instance, one curve may be a solid line, one may be a dashed line, one may be a dotted line with triangular markers, etc.


However, this makes it hard for me to differentiate between the curves. Color is much more effective for helping people distinguish between data (and I’m taking a data visualization class that has research to prove it).


So... can I do this in my research article? I imagine most people are keeping their plots black and white because of printing restrictions on color, but at the same time they include colors in all kinds of other figures in their document. Also, how many people actually read printed articles anymore? For scientific work, I look all of it up online.


Are there good reasons for me to stick with this backwards black-and-white scheme?




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