Science Plots

Format Matplotlib for scientific plotting

This repo has Matplotlib styles to format your plots for scientific papers, presentations and theses.

Installation

Put all of the *.mplstyle files into your Matplotlib style directory. If you're not sure where this is, in an interactive python console type:

import matplotlib
print(matplotlib.get_configdir())

You should get back something like /home/garrett/.matplotlib. You would then put the *.mplstyle files in /home/garrett/.matplotlib/stylelib/ (you may need to create the stylelib directory). If you're on macOS, you can run:

mkdir -p ~/.matplotlib/stylelib/
cp styles/*.mplstyle ~/.matplotlib/stylelib/
cp styles/misc/*.mplstyle ~/.matplotlib/stylelib/
cp styles/color/*.mplstyle ~/.matplotlib/stylelib/
cp styles/journals/*.mplstyle ~/.matplotlib/stylelib/

Using the Styles

science.mplstyle is the main style from this repo. Whenever you want to use it, simply add the following to the top of your python script:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
 
plt.style.use('science')

You can also combine multiple styles together by:

plt.style.use(['science','ieee'])

In this case, the ieee style will override some of the parameters from the main science style in order to configure the plot for IEEE papers (column width, fontsizes, etc.).

To use any of the styles temporarily, you can use:

with plt.style.context(['science', 'ieee']):
    plt.figure()
    plt.plot(x, y)
    plt.show()

Contribution

Please feel free to add to this repo! For example, it would be good to add styles for different journals or perhaps new color cycles.

Examples

The science style:

The science + ieee styles:

IEEE requires figures to be readable when printed in black and white. The ieee style also sets the figure width to fit within one column of an IEEE paper.

The science + scatter styles:

You can also combine these styles with the other styles that come with Matplotlib. For example, the dark_background + science + high-vis styles: