Placement of the scale tick label in pgfplots

Question

My question on the placement of the scale tick label is related to Placement of scale tick labels in pgfplots. In contrast, I do not want to have the label placed behind the x-axis, but behind the last x-tick, as it is recommended for APS journals. Please see the examples given in https://journals.aps.org/authors/axis-labels-and-scales-on-graphs-h18.

Answer 1

Here is one option. The ticklabels are a series of individual nodes, and this relies on the last tick being the last one that is actually defined. First set every x tick label/.append style={alias=XTick,inner xsep=0pt}. alias gives a name to node, so it can used to refer to the node. All the ticklabels on the x axis is given that alias, but the last one defined will the active one. The second part, inner xsep=0pt means that there will be no horizontal whitespace in the ticklabel nodes, which makes the position of the scale label easier.

The scale label is placed with every x tick scale label/.style={at=(XTick.base east),anchor=base west}. The anchor base east is at the baseline of the node, on the right side. The base anchors are used because the exponent makes the scale label a little taller than the ticklabel, so using just east/west would make the alignment wrong.

\documentclass[border=4mm]{standalone}
\usepackage{pgfplots}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\begin{axis}[
scaled x ticks=true,
every x tick label/.append style={alias=XTick,inner xsep=0pt},
every x tick scale label/.style={at=(XTick.base east),anchor=base west}
]
\addplot coordinates {(0,0)(100000,1)};
\end{axis}
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}