Cochrane Style Manual
General guidelines for figures and tables

Use tables and figures to display results and other information about the review visually.

Each figure and table must have a caption providing a brief description (or explanation) of the table or figure and must be referred to in the review text (via a link in RevMan).

Automatic renumbering and positioning of tables and figures in the review

  • In the read-only views generated using the options 'View' [a version] and 'Submission preview' (focused review format only), and in the PDF article, tables and figures are renumbered to reflect the position in which they are linked in the review.
  • In the published review PDF, tables and figures are placed at the end of the paragraph in which the link appears. If a table or figure is linked more than once in the text, the second and subsequent links will point to it the first time it appears in the text. Readers need to use the browser's back button to return to the section they were navigating before being redirected.

The positioning of tables and figures cannot be previewed in RevMan.

To ensure the best presentation of published reviews (particularly in the PDF version), Cochrane reviews should not include too many figures, though no absolute limits have been set; around 10 or fewer may be sufficient for most intervention reviews, though more may be required for complex reviews, network meta-analyses (NMAs) and other review types. If there are multiple figures to import and the size of the review will be very big, please consider using an online repository instead of adding them to the review (see Author guidelines: External data and files).

Only the most important tables should remain as 'Additional tables'. Other tables should be moved to the Supplementary materials in focused-format reviews, or Appendices in long-format reviews, and referenced with a hyperlink.

Further guidelines about figures and tables are available via the RevMan Knowledge Base.

Section info
Contact
Denise Mitchell (production@cochrane.org)
Describe change
Updated for focused review format.
Change date
4 June 2024