Getting your research published in a top journal is often seen as an indicator of success. However, it is not always easy to deliver a well-structured paper that impresses journal editors and reviewers. The key is knowing that each of the elements of a research paper serves a distinct purpose …
Preparing your manuscript for journal submission is possibly one of the most nerve-wracking steps in a researcher’s publishing journey. This is also the stage where most researchers make errors that can define the fate of their manuscript. To paraphrase renowned German physicist Werner Heisenberg, an expert is someone who knows some …
No one likes to be rejected. However, the sad truth is that research authors have to deal with their fair share of rejection, some more than others. A discouraging study on submissions from 18 countries revealed that journal rejection rates can range from 22.6% to 73.4%, depending on the journal …
Have you ever stopped to consider your audience in academic writing? Do you write to impress the journal editor and peer reviewers? Or are you focused only on the “ultimate “consumers” of your paper, researchers from your field or related fields? Journal editors and peer reviewers play a crucial role …
You have finalized the draft of your new manuscript and are prepared to submit it to your coveted journal. You have provided proper citation, given due credit, and avoided plagiarism by following the editorial guidelines. However, there are still a few aspects of the journal’s duplicate publication regulations that can …
“As far as he can achieve it, readability is as important for the scientific writer as it is for the novelist.” – Donald O. Hebb Readability is communicating your research ideas with simple word choices and sentence structures. People are busy and have no time to slog through long sentences …
As with any other skill, academic writing can be improved through practice and experience. Writing publishable research manuscripts does not come naturally to most scientific researchers, even those with a great deal of experience. However, because publication is so important to the success of research studies, and thus researchers, writing …
You have reached the point where you are happy with your research, you’ve completed a manuscript and selected a target journal. Yet while doing the final checks, you find that one of those pesky requirements sets the maximum length of the research paper, which you have greatly exceeded. As an …
Not surprisingly, far too often researchers, especially those from countries where English is not the first language, face outright desk rejections when submitting to journals. Non-adherence to the technical standards of reporting and language is one of the most common reasons for journal rejections. While research in scientific, technical, engineering, …
One of the most important skills you can imbibe as an academician is to master the art of writing a research paper summary. During your academic journey, you may need to summarize research findings quite often and for varied reasons – be it to write an introduction for a peer-reviewed …
