Tables & Figures for a Review (amann-tables-figures)

Tables & Figures for a Review (amann-tables-figures)

When to trigger

• The synthesis is done and the reader needs to see the field at a glance
• The organizing framework would land far better as a diagram than as prose
• A fragmented literature would be clearer as a synthesis table than as paragraphs
• You are tempted to paste a regression table — but this is a review, not a primary paper

The exhibit types an Annals review actually uses

Annals exhibits summarize and reorganize across the literature; they never present the author's own estimation. The workhorses:

Building credible synthesis exhibits

• The framework figure must do conceptual work. It should be the contribution rendered visually — readers should be able to reconstruct the review's argument from it. A decorative diagram that merely lists topics fails.
• Compare like with like. In a synthesis table, group studies that theorize the same construct; never put incommensurable constructs in one column (the exhibit version of the pooling error from amann-literature-synthesis).
• Carry an appraisal column. A finding column without a credibility/method note invites "but how good is that study?" — answer it in the table (links to amann-evidence-standards).
• Self-contained captions. An Annals exhibit is read on its own; the caption states what it shows, the unit, how to read a row, and the source studies.
• Source every cell. Each entry traces to a paper in the coding matrix; an unsourced number in a review is indefensible.

Meta-analysis and bibliometric caution

If you assemble effect sizes into a quantitative synthesis (forest plot, meta-regression) or a co-citation map, you are doing meta-analysis or bibliometrics, with all their assumptions — comparable constructs, independence, publication-bias diagnostics, weighting. Do this only where the literature genuinely supports it; a spurious pooled magnitude or an over-interpreted co-citation cluster is less honest than a qualitative synthesis table. Annals readers include the methodologists who would catch invalid pooling.

Checklist

• Each exhibit synthesizes across studies (no original-estimate regression output of the author's own)
• A framework figure renders the spine and carries the "new way of seeing the field"; restate-able from memory
• Synthesis-table rows ordered by the framework's cells; only comparable constructs share a column
• Finding columns carry an appraisal/method note, not bare claims
• A search/coverage exhibit documents the systematic process (PRISMA-style or terms table)
• Any meta-analytic or bibliometric exhibit pools only commensurable work; diagnostics noted