Sea stack plots: replacing bar charts with histograms

Data accompanying Ilić, Stuart, Simmons and Sutherland. In prep. Sea stack plots: replacing bar charts with histograms.

To assess the transparency of data visualisation in scientific journal articles, we analysed the plot types and summary statistics shown in figures from the most recent complete issues of Animal Behaviour (Volume 168, October 2020; 22 papers) and Conservation Biology (Volume 34, Issue 5, October 2020; 16 papers).

We found that figure types differed significantly between the two journals (𝜒2 = 105.06, df = 16, p < 0.001) and the most commonly used graph overall was the bar graph. For plots showing one-dimensional data from multiple groups for the purpose of comparison, almost all plots showed a group average; most showed error bars; raw data was shown in 17.1% of plots in Animal Behaviour and 26.2% in Conservation Biology; and none showed the distribution of the data as a histogram or density curve.

This data shows that the majority of plots in these two journals are not transparent in their representation of the data, and that there is significant room for improvement in this respect.