Graphs and prestige in agricultural journals

In this article, we report on the status of graphs in 21 scientific agricultural journals indexed in Thomson Reutersʹ Web of Knowledge. We analyze the authorsʹ use of graphs in this context in relation to the quality of these journals as measured by their 2-year impact factors. We note a substantial variability in the use of graphs in this context: For one journal, 100% of the papers include graphs, whereas for others only about 50% of them include graphs. We also show that higher impact agricultural journals publish more papers with graphs and that there are more graphs in these papers than in those in journals with lower impact factors (r = +0.40).