Category: Writing a paper

Writing and publishing journal articles are essential aspects of a successful scientific career. Unfortunately, many scientists find the process of communicating about their work intimidating and confusing. Now in its eighth edition, How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper teaches how to apply clear focus, good organization, and simple, straightforward language to write papers as well as communicate effectively in many other scientifically related applications.

By providing practical, readable, and sometimes humorous guidance, this book enables researchers to gain the knowledge, skills, and confidence to succeed in communicating about their work. The authors not only guide readers in the craft of scientific writing—broken down into the separate tasks of writing the respective sections of a scientific paper and then publishing the paper—but also address important related psychological, ethical, logistical, and cultural considerations in communicating about science.

Chapter topics include composing (and requesting) recommendation letters, writing grant proposals, providing peer review, editing one’s own work, preparing oral presentations and poster presentations, and working with the popular media. This is an essential resource for researchers—both native and non-native users of English—with limited experience writing scientific papers, such as graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and early-career faculty members.

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Source: Gastel Barbara, Day Robert A. (2016), How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper, Greenwood; 8th edition.

1. THE SCOPE OF SCIENTIFIC WRITING

The term scientific writing commonly denotes the reporting of original research in journals, through scientific papers in standard format. In its broader sense, scientific writing also includes communication about science through other types of journal articles, such as review papers summarizing and integrating previously published research. And in a still broader sense, it includes other types of professional communication by scientists—for example, grant propos­als, oral presentations, and poster presentations. Related endeavors include writing about science for the public, sometimes called science writing.

2. THE NEED FOR CLARITY

The key characteristic of scientific writing is clarity. Successful scientific exper­imentation is the result of a clear mind attacking a clearly stated problem and producing clearly stated conclusions. Ideally, clarity should be a characteristic of any type of communication; however, when something is being said for the first time, clarity is essential. Most scientific papers, those published in our pri­mary research journals, are accepted for publication precisely because they do contribute new knowledge. Hence, we should demand absolute clarity in scien­tific writing.

3. RECEIVING THE SIGNALS

Most people have no doubt heard this question: If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one there to hear it fall, does it make a sound? The correct answer is no. Sound is more than pressure waves, and indeed there can be no sound without a hearer.

And similarly, scientific communication is a two-way process. Just as a sig­nal of any kind is useless unless it is perceived, a published scientific paper (signal) is useless unless it is both received and understood by its intended audience. Thus we can restate the axiom of science as follows: A scientific exper­iment is not complete until the results have been published and understood. Publication is no more than pressure waves unless the published paper is understood. Too many scientific papers fall silently in the woods.

4. UNDERSTANDING THE SIGNALS

Scientific writing is the transmission of a clear signal to a recipient. The words of the signal should be as clear, simple, and well-ordered as possible. In scientific writing, there is little need for ornamentation. Flowery literary embellishments—metaphors, similes, idiomatic expressions—are very likely to cause confusion and should seldom be used in research papers.

Science is simply too important to be communicated in anything other than words of certain meaning. And the meaning should be clear and certain not just to peers of the author, but also to students just embarking on their careers, to scientists reading outside their own narrow disciplines, and especially to those readers (most readers today) whose native language is other than English.

Many kinds of writing are designed for entertainment. Scientific writing has a different purpose: to communicate new scientific findings. Scientific writ­ing should be as clear and simple as possible.

5. UNDERSTANDING THE CONTEXT

What is clear to a recipient depends both on what is transmitted and how the recipient interprets it. Therefore, communicating clearly requires awareness of what the recipient brings. What is the recipient’s background? What is the recipient seeking? How does the recipient expect the writing to be organized?

Clarity in scientific writing requires attentiveness to such questions. As communication professionals advise, know your audience. Also know the conventions, and thus the expectations, for structuring the type of writing that you are doing.

6. ORGANIZATION AND LANGUAGE IN SCIENTIFIC WRITING

Effective organization is a key to communicating clearly and efficiently in sci­ence. Such organization includes following the standard format for a scientific paper. It also includes organizing ideas logically within that format.

In addition to organization, the second principal ingredient of a scientific paper should be appropriate language. This book keeps emphasizing proper use of English because many scientists have trouble in this area. All scien­tists must learn to use the English language with precision. A book (Day and Sakaduski 2011) wholly concerned with English for scientists is available.

If scientifically determined knowledge is at least as important as any other knowledge, it must be communicated effectively, clearly, in words of certain meaning. The scientist, to succeed in this endeavor, must therefore be literate. David B. Truman, when he was dean of Columbia University, said it well: “In the complexities of contemporary existence the specialist who is trained but uneducated, technically skilled but culturally incompetent, is a menace.”

Given that the ultimate result of scientific research is publication, it is sur­prising that many scientists neglect the responsibilities involved. A scientist will spend months or years of hard work to secure data, and then unconcern­edly let much of their value be lost because of a lack of interest in the commu­nication process. The same scientist who will overcome tremendous obstacles to carry out a measurement to the fourth decimal place will be in deep slum­ber while a typographical error changes micrograms per milliliter to milligrams per milliliter.

English need not be difficult. In scientific writing, we say, “The best English is that which gives the sense in the fewest short words” (a dictum printed for some years in the Journal of Bacteriology’s instructions to authors). Literary devices, metaphors and the like, divert attention from substance to style. They should be used rarely in scientific writing.

Source: Gastel Barbara, Day Robert A. (2016), How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper, Greenwood; 8th edition.

1. THE EARLY HISTORY

Human beings have been able to communicate for thousands of years. Yet scientific communication as we know it today is relatively new. The first journals were published about 350 years ago, and the IMRAD (introduction, methods, results, and discussion) organization of scientific papers has developed within about the past century.

Knowledge, scientific or otherwise, could not be effectively communicated until appropriate mechanisms of communication became available. Prehistoric people could communicate orally, of course, but each new generation started from essentially the same baseline because, without written records to refer to, knowledge was lost almost as rapidly as it was found.

Cave paintings and inscriptions carved onto rocks were among the first human attempts to leave records for succeeding generations. In a sense, today we are lucky that our early ancestors chose such media because some of these early “messages” have survived, whereas messages on less-durable materials would have been lost. (Perhaps many have been.) On the other hand, communi­cation via such media was incredibly difficult. Think, for example, of the dis­tributional problems the U.S. Postal Service would have today if the medium of correspondence were 100-lb (about 45-kg) rocks. It has enough troubles with 1-oz (about 28-g) letters.

The earliest book we know of is a Chaldean account of the Flood. This story was inscribed on a clay tablet in about 4000 BC, antedating Genesis by some 2000 years (Tuchman 1980).

A medium of communication that was lightweight and portable was needed. The first successful medium was papyrus (sheets made from the papyrus plant and glued together to form a roll sometimes 20 to 40 ft [6-12 m] long, fastened to a wooden roller), which came into use about 2000 BC. In 190 BC, parchment (made from animal skins) came into use. The Greeks assembled large libraries in Ephesus and Pergamum (in what is now Turkey) and in Alexandria. Accord­ing to Plutarch, the library in Pergamum contained 200,000 volumes in 40 BC (Tuchman 1980).

In AD 105, the Chinese invented paper, the dominant medium of written communication in modern times—at least until the Internet era. However, because there was no effective way of duplicating communications, scholarly knowledge could not be widely disseminated.

Perhaps the greatest single technical invention in the intellectual history of the human race was the printing press. Although movable type was invented in China in about AD 1100 (Tuchman 1980), the Western world gives credit to Johannes Gutenberg, who printed his 42-line-per-page Bible from movable type on a printing press in AD 1455. Gutenberg’s invention was immediately and effectively put to use throughout Europe. By the year 1500, thousands of copies of hundreds of books were printed.

The first scientific journals appeared in 1665, when two journals, the Journal des Sgavans in France and the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London in England, began publication. Since then, journals have served as the primary means of communication in the sciences. As of 2014, there were nearly 35,000 peer-reviewed journals in science, technology, and medicine, of which more than 28,000 were in English. Altogether, these journals were publishing about 2.5 million articles per year (Ware and Mabe 2015, p. 6). The number of scientific papers published per year has been increasing exponentially (Born- mann and Mutz 2015).

2. THE ELECTRONIC ERA

When many older scientists began their careers, they wrote their papers in pen or pencil and then typed them on a typewriter or had a secretary do so. They or a scientific illustrator drew graphs by hand. They or a scientific photographer took photographs on film. They then carefully packaged a number of copies of the manuscript and sent them via postal service to a journal. The journal then mailed copies to the referees (peer reviewers) for evaluation, and the referees mailed them back with comments. The editor then mailed a decision letter to the scientist. If the paper was accepted, the scientist made the needed revisions and mailed back a final version of the manuscript. A copy editor edited the paper by hand, and a compositor re-keyboarded the manuscript. Once the paper was typeset, a copy was mailed to the scientist, who checked for typographical errors and mailed back corrections. Before the paper was published, the scien­tist ordered reprints of the paper, largely for fellow scientists who lacked access to libraries containing the journal or who lacked access to a photocopier.

Today the process has changed greatly. Word processors, graphics programs, digital photography, and the Internet have facilitated preparation and dissemi­nation of scientific papers. Journals throughout the world have online systems for manuscript submission and peer review. Editors and authors communicate electronically. Manuscript editors typically edit papers online, and authors elec­tronically receive typeset proofs of their papers for inspection. Journals are available online as well as in print—and sometimes instead of in print; increas­ingly, accepted papers become available individually online before appearing in journal issues. At some journals, electronic extras, such as appendixes and video clips, supplement online papers. Many journals are openly accessible online, either starting at the time of publication or after a lag period. In addition, readers often can access papers through the authors’ websites or through resources at the authors’ institutions, or the readers can request electronic reprints. Some of the changes have increased the technical demands on authors, but overall, the changes have hastened and eased the publication process and improved service to readers.

Whereas much regarding the mechanics of publication has changed, much else has stayed the same. Items that persist include the basic structure of a sci­entific paper, the basic process by which scientific papers are accepted for pub­lication, the basic ethical norms in scientific publication, and the basic features of good scientific prose. In particular, in many fields of science, the IMRAD structure for scientific papers remains dominant.

3. THE IMRAD STORY

The early journals published papers that we call descriptive. Typically, a scientist would report, “First, I saw this, and then I saw that,” or “First, I did this, and then I did that.” Often the observations were in simple chronological order.

This descriptive style was appropriate for the kind of science then being reported. In fact, this straightforward style of reporting still is sometimes used in “letters” journals, case reports in medicine, geological surveys, and so forth.

By the second half of the nineteenth century, science was beginning to move fast and in increasingly sophisticated ways. Microbiology serves as an example.

Especially through the work of Louis Pasteur, who confirmed the germ theory of disease and developed pure-culture methods of studying micro-organisms, both science and the reporting of science made great advances.

At this time, methodology became all-important. To quiet his critics, many of whom were fanatic believers in the theory of spontaneous generation, Pas­teur found it necessary to describe his experiments in exquisite detail. Because reasonably competent peers could reproduce Pasteur’s experiments, the prin­ciple of reproducibility of experiments became a fundamental tenet of the phi­losophy of science, and a separate methods section led the way t oward the highly structured IMRAD format.

The work of Pasteur was followed, in the early 1900s, by the work of Paul Ehrlich and, in the 1930s, by the work of Gerhard Domagk (sulfa drugs). World War II prompted the development of penicillin (first described by Alexander Fleming in 1929). Streptomycin was reported in 1944, and soon after World War II the mad but wonderful search for “miracle drugs” produced the tetracy­clines and dozens of other effective antibiotics.

As these advances were pouring out of medical research laboratories after World War II, it was logical that investment in research would greatly increase. In the United States, this positive inducement to support science was soon (in 1957) joined by a negative factor when the Soviets flew Sputnik around our planet. In the following years, the U.S. government (and others) poured addi­tional billions of dollars into scientific research.

Money produced science, and science produced papers. Mountains of them. The result was powerful pressure on the existing (and the many new) journals. Journal editors, in self-defense if for no other reason, began to demand that manuscripts be concisely written and well organized. Journal space became too precious to be wasted on verbosity or redundancy. The IMRAD format, which had been slowly progressing since the latter part of the nineteenth century, now came into almost universal use in research journals. Some editors espoused IMRAD because they became convinced that it was the simplest and most log­ical way to communicate research results. Other editors, perhaps not convinced by the simple logic ofIMRAD, nonetheless hopped on the bandwagon because the rigidity of IMRAD did indeed save space (and expense) in the journals and because IMRAD made life easier for editors and referees by indexing the major parts of a manuscript.

The logic of IMRAD can be defined in question form: What question (prob­lem) was studied? The answer is the introduction. How was the problem studied? The answer is the methods. What were the findings? The answer is the results. What do these findings mean? The answer is the discussion.

It now seems clear that the simple logic of IMRAD does help the author organize and write the manuscript, and IMRAD provides an easy road map for editors, referees, and ultimately readers to follow in reading the paper.

Although the IMRAD format is widely used, it is not the only format for scientific papers. For example, in some journals the methods section appears at the end of papers. In some journals, there is a combined results and discus­sion section. In some, a conclusions section appears at the end. In papers about research in which results of one experiment determine the approach taken in the next, methods sections and results sections can alternate. In some papers, especially in the social sciences, a long literature review section may appear near the beginning of the paper. Thus, although the IMRAD format is often the norm, other possibilities include IRDAM, IMRADC, IMRMRMRD, ILMRAD, and more.

Later in this book, we discuss components of a scientific paper in the order in which they appear in the IMRAD format. However, most of our advice on each component is relevant regardless of the structure used by the journal to which you will submit your paper. Before writing your paper, be sure, of course, to determine which structure is appropriate for the journal to which you will submit it. To do so, read the journal’s instructions to authors and look at papers similar to yours that have appeared in the journal. These actions are parts of approaching a writing project—the subject of our next chapter.

Source: Gastel Barbara, Day Robert A. (2016), How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper, Greenwood; 8th edition.

1. ESTABLISHING THE MINDSET

The thought of preparing a piece of scientific writing can intimidate even the best writers. However, establishing a suitable mindset and taking an appropri­ate approach can make the task manageable. Perhaps most basic, remember that you are writing to communicate, not to impress. Readers of scientific papers want to know what you did, what you found, and what it means; they are not seeking great literary merit. If you do good research and present it clearly, you will please and satisfy readers. Indeed, in scientific writing, read­ers should notice mainly the content, not the style.

Realize that those reading your work want you to do well. They are not out to thwart you. Journal editors are delighted to receive good papers; ditto for the scientists they enlist as referees (peer reviewers) to help evaluate your work. Likewise, if you are a student, professors want you to do well. Yes, these people often make constructive criticisms. But they are not doing so because they dis­like you; rather, they do so because they want your work to succeed. Do not be paralyzed by the prospect of criticism. Rather, feel fortunate that you will receive feedback that can help your writing to be its best.

2. PREPARING TO WRITE

In the laboratory, careful preparation helps experiments proceed smoothly and efficiently. Much the same is true of scientific writing. By preparing carefully before you start to compose a manuscript, you can make writing relatively easy and painless. Of course, in our unbiased view, preparing to write should include reading this book and keeping it on hand to consult. (Our publisher suggests buying a copy for your office or lab, a copy to use at home, and maybe one to keep in your car or boat.) But using this book is only a start. The following also can help.

Good writing is largely a matter of effective imitation. Therefore, obtain cop­ies of highly regarded scientific papers in your research area, including papers in the journal to which you plan to submit your current work. Notice how these papers are written. For example: What sections do they include, and in what order? How long do the various sections tend to be? What types of sub­headings, if any, tend to be included? How many figures and tables, and what types thereof, are typical? Especially if you are a non-native speaker of English, what seem to be some standard phrases that you could use in presenting your own work? Using published papers as models can prepare you to craft a man­uscript that will be suitable to submit.

Successful writing also entails following instructions. Essentially every sci­entific journal issues instructions to authors. Following these instructions takes much of the guesswork out of writing and can save you from the unpleas­ant task of rewriting a paper because it did not meet the journal’s specifica­tions. If instructions are long (some journals’ instructions run several pages or more), underline or highlight the key points to remember. Alternatively, you may list, on colored paper so you can easily find them, those points most rel­evant to the paper you will write. Also consider bookmarking on your computer the journal’s instructions to authors, especially if the instructions encompass links for accessing different parts of their content.

For more detailed guidance—for instance, on nomenclature, reference for­mats, and grammar—instructions for authors often refer readers to standard style manuals. Among style manuals commonly used in the sciences are the following:

The ACS [American Chemical Society] Style Guide (Coghill and Garson 2006)

AMA [American Medical Association] Manual of Style (Iverson et al. 2007)

The Chicago Manual of Style (2010)

Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (2010)

Scientific Style and Format (Style Manual Subcommittee, Council of Science Editors 2014)

New editions of these manuals come out from time to time. Increasingly, such manuals are available in online versions as well as in print. Look for the most recent edition of the style manual you will use. Commonly, you can find such style manuals in the reference sections of academic and other libraries. Many libraries also offer online access to style manuals. If you lack easy access, con­sider investing in the style manual(s) most commonly used in your research field. In any case, be ready to consult such manuals.

If you do not have reference-management software—for example, EndNote, Reference Manager, or RefWorks—now may be a good time to obtain it. Many universities make such software readily available and provide instruction in its use. Further information about such software appears in Chapter 15.

While you are gathering scientific content, ideas for your paper may occur to you. For example, you may think of a point to include in the discussion. Or you may come up with a good way to structure a table. Write down these ideas; con­sider creating for each section of your paper a file—either paper or electronic— in which to place them. Not only will recording your ideas keep them from escaping your memory, but having such ideas readily available to draw on can get your writing off to a quick start.

Once you have gathered and analyzed your data, speaking can be a fine transition to writing. If possible, present your work at a departmental seminar or local research day. Perhaps give an oral or poster presentation at a confer­ence. Preparing to speak can help in formulating your article. Also, questions from listeners can help you to shape what you will write.

Research typically is a team endeavor. So is reporting on research. In the writing as in the research, different team members commonly take different roles. Sometimes one member drafts the whole paper and the others review and revise it. Other times, different members draft different parts of the paper and then circulate them for review. Whatever the case, clarify beforehand who will do what, and perhaps set a timetable. Maybe consider what software, if any, you will use to facilitate collaboration. Will you share drafts via Dropbox? Will you be using Google Docs? Will you use software designed specifically for aca­demic collaboration? Discuss such matters before starting to write.

To facilitate writing, do lots of pre-writing. For example, stack copies of pub­lished papers in the order in which you plan to cite them. Make outlines. List points you wish to make in a given section, and sort and re-sort them until you are pleased with the order. Perhaps make a formal outline. By doing much of the thinking and organization beforehand, you can lower the activation energy needed to write a paper. In fact, such pre-writing can catalyze the writing pro­cess so well that you find yourself eager to write.

In preparing to write, realize that sometimes ideas must percolate for a while. If, for example, you cannot come up with an effective way to begin your paper or to structure a section, take a break. Exercise for a while, take a nap, or maybe discuss your work with someone. A solution may then occur to you.

3. DOING THE WRITING

Doing the writing means making time to do it. Most of us in science are busy. If writing must wait until we have extra time, it might never get done. There­fore, block out times to write. Indicate on your calendar or in your personal organizer the times that you have reserved for specific writing projects. Except in emergencies, do not let other tasks impinge on those times. Also, set dead­lines. For example, promise yourself that you will draft a given section by Thurs­day. Or make clear to yourself that you will not leave for vacation until you have submitted a given item.

One highly published professor advocates the following approach (Zerubavel 1999): On a sheet of paper showing your weekly schedule hour by hour, cross out the times you are regularly unavailable—for example, times that you teach, have laboratory meetings, or have personal commitments. Then choose from the remaining times some to reserve for writing. In doing so, consider what times of day you tend to write most effectively. For example, if you are a night person, block out some evenings during which to write each week; perhaps save some morning time for more routine writing-related tasks, such as check­ing references. If you are a morning person, do the reverse.

When writing, you can start with whatever part of a manuscript you find easi­est; there is no rule that you must write the introduction first. Many researchers like to begin by drafting the methods section, which tends to be the most straight­forward to write. Many like to begin by drafting the figures and tables. Some like to start by drafting a preliminary reference list—or even the acknowledg­ments. And many authors leave until last the writing of the title and abstract. Once you have drafted one section, the momentum that you have established can facilitate writing the others. Feel free to draft the remaining sections in what­ever order works best for you. Although the structure of Part II of this book parallels that of a scientific paper—with the first chapter addressing “How to Prepare the Title” and the last “How to Cite the References”—you can draft the parts of a scientific paper (and read these chapters) in whatever order works best for you.

Once you have established momentum, beware of dissipating it by inter­rupting your writing to search for small details. Rather, make notes to find the missing information; to identify them easily, write them in boldface type in your manuscript or use the “new comment” feature in Word. Also, if a manu­script will take more than one session to draft, consider how you can best main­tain your momentum from session to session. Some authors like to stop in the middle of a section while still going strong. Before ending their writing session, they jot down the next few points they wish to make. Thus, at their next writing session they can start quickly. Consider taking this approach.

Much like doing a piece of scientific research, crafting a scientific paper typi­cally entails solving a series of problems in order to achieve the overall objective. In writing, as in research, often the problems have more than one reasonable solution, each with advantages and disadvantages. Yet writers sometimes worry that there is “one right way” (Becker 1986). Just how should a given item be worded? In just what format should a given illustration appear? How should a given part of the paper be organized? Often such questions have more than one good answer. Find one that seems reasonable and go with it. If it seems inadequate, or if a better solution occurs to you, you can make changes when you revise your manuscript.

4. REVISING YOUR WORK

Good writing tends to be largely a matter of good revising. No one will see your early drafts, and no one cares how rough they are (a comforting thought to those facing writer’s block). The important thing is to revise your writing until it works well. First revise your writing yourself. Then show it to others and, using their feedback, revise your writing some more.

Revision is not just for students or other beginners. Researchers with long success in publishing revise the papers they write. After a presentation to a scientific-writing class, a well-known scientist and journal editor was asked, “Do you revise your work?” He answered: “If I’m lucky, only about 10 times.”

In revising your work, ask yourself questions such as the following:

• Does the manuscript include all the information it should?
• Should any content be deleted?
• Is all the information accurate?
• Is all the reasoning sound?
• Is the content consistent throughout?
• Is everything logically organized?
• Is everything clearly worded?
• Have you stated your points briefly, simply, and directly? In other words, is everything concise?
• Are grammar, spelling, punctuation, and word use correct throughout?
• Are all figures and tables well designed?
• Does the manuscript comply with the instructions?

Information that can aid in answering some of these questions appears in later chapters of the book. For example, Chapters 10 through 13 describe the appro­priate content and organization of the main sections of a scientific paper, and Chapters 30 through 34 address word usage and related subjects. In addition to reading these chapters before you write, consider consulting them as you revise your manuscript. Also, for further guidance, please see Chapter 41, which focuses mainly on editing one’s own work.

Once your manuscript is nearly the best you can make it, show it to others and request their feedback. Years ago, scientists were advised, “Show your manu­script to a guy in your lab, a guy in a lab down the hall, and your wife.” These days, such advice would rightly be viewed as inaccurate and sexist. Yet the con­cept remains valid. So, consider following this advice: Show your manuscript to an expert in your research specialty, who can help identify technical prob­lems. Also show it to someone in your general field, who can note, for example, items that may be unclear to readers. And show it to an intelligent general reader—for instance, a friend in the humanities—who may identify problems that those interested mainly in the content tend to miss. In addition, consider also showing your manuscript to a professional scientific editor, as discussed in Chapter 41.

After receiving feedback from those reviewing your manuscript, consider how to apply it. Of course, follow those suggestions that you find useful. Even if a suggestion seems unsuitable, keep it in mind. Although you may disagree with it, it may alert you to a problem. For example, if a reader misinterpreted a point, you may try to state it more clearly. Comparing the various readers’ com­ments may aid in this regard. If only one reader had difficulty with an item, you might dismiss it as a fluke. If, however, multiple readers did so, improve­ment probably is needed.

Revise your writing thoroughly. But avoid the temptation to keep revising it forever. No manuscript is perfect. Be satisfied with mere excellence. Journal editors and others will be pleased to receive the fine manuscripts you prepare by following the advice in this chapter and the rest of this book.

Source: Gastel Barbara, Day Robert A. (2016), How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper, Greenwood; 8th edition.

1. DEFINITION OF A SCIENTIFIC PAPER

A scientific paper is a written and published report describing original research results. That short definition must be qualified, however, by noting that a sci­entific paper must be written in a certain way, as defined by tradition, editorial practice, scientific ethics, and the interplay of printing and publishing pro­cedures.

To properly define “scientific paper,” we must define the mechanism that creates a scientific paper, namely, valid (that is, primary) publication. Abstracts, theses, conference reports, and many other types of literature are published, but such publications do not normally meet the test of valid publication. Further, even if a scientific paper meets all the other tests, it is not validly published if it is published in the wrong place. That is, a relatively poor research report, but one that meets the tests, is validly published if accepted and published in the right place (a primary journal or other primary publication); a superbly pre­pared research report is not validly published if published in the wrong place. Most of the government literature and conference literature, as well as institu­tional bulletins and other ephemeral publications, do not qualify as primary literature.

Many people have struggled with the definition of primary publication (valid publication), from which is derived the definition of a scientific paper. The Council of Biology Editors (CBE), now the Council of Science Editors (CSE), arrived at the following definition (Council of Biology Editors 1968, p. 2):

An acceptable primary scientific publication must be the first disclosure containing sufficient information to enable peers (1) to assess observa­tions, (2) to repeat experiments, and (3) to evaluate intellectual processes; moreover, it must be susceptible to sensory perception, essentially per­manent, available to the scientific community without restriction, and available for regular screening by one or more of the major recog­nized secondary services (e.g., currently, Biological Abstracts, Chemical Abstracts, Index Medicus, Excerpta Medica, Bibliography of Agricul­ture, etc., in the United States and similar services in other countries).

At first reading, this definition may seem excessively complex, or at least verbose. But those who had a hand in drafting it weighed each word carefully and doubted that an acceptable definition could be provided in appreciably fewer words. Because it is important that students, authors, editors, and all others concerned understand what a scientific paper is and what it is not, it may be helpful to work through this definition to see what it really means.

“An acceptable primary scientific publication” must be “the first disclosure.” Certainly, first disclosure of new research data often takes place via oral pre­sentation at a scientific meeting. But the thrust of the CBE statement is that disclosure is more than disgorgement by the author; effective first disclosure is accomplished only when the disclosure takes a form that allows the peers of the author (either now or in the future) to fully comprehend and use that which is disclosed.

Thus, sufficient information must be presented so that potential users of the data can (1) assess observations, (2) repeat experiments, and (3) evaluate intel­lectual processes. (Are the author’s conclusions justified by the data?) Then, the disclosure must be “susceptible to sensory perception.” This may seem an awk­ward phrase, because in normal practice it simply means published; how­ever, this definition provides for disclosure not just in terms of printed visual materials (printed journals and the no longer widely used media called micro­film and microfiche) but also in nonprint, nonvisual forms. For example, “pub­lication” in the form of audio recordings, if that publication met the other tests provided in the definition, would constitute effective publication. And, certainly, electronic journals meet the definition of valid publication. What about mate­rial posted on a website? Views have varied and can depend on the nature of the material posted. For the most current information, consult materials from professional organizations and journals in your field.

Regardless of the form of publication, that form must be essentially perma­nent (often not the case for websites), must be made available to the scientific community without restriction (for example, in a journal that is openly accessi­ble online or to which subscriptions are available), and must be made available to information-retrieval services (Biological Abstracts, Chemical Abstracts, MEDLINE, etc.). Thus, publications such as newsletters, corporate publications, and controlled-circulation journals, many of which are of value for their news or other features, generally cannot serve as repositories for scientific knowledge.

To restate the CBE definition in simpler but not more accurate terms, primary publication is (1) the first publication of original research results, (2) in a form whereby peers of the author can repeat the experiments and test the conclu­sions, and (3) in a journal or other source document readily available within the scientific community. To understand this definition, however, we must add an important caveat. The part of the definition that refers to “peers of the author” is accepted as meaning prepublication peer review. Thus, by definition, scien­tific papers are published in peer-reviewed publications.

This question of definition has been belabored here for two reasons. First, the entire community of science has long labored with an inefficient, costly system of scientific communication precisely because it (authors, editors, and publishers) have been unable or unwilling to define primary publication. As a result, much of the literature has been buried in meeting abstracts, obscure conference reports, government documents, or books or journals of minuscule circulation. Other papers, in the same or slightly altered form, are published more than once; occasionally, this is due to the lack of definition as to which conference reports, books, and compilations are (or should be) primary publi­cations and which are not. Redundancy and confusion result. Second, a scien­tific paper is, by definition, a particular kind of document containing specific kinds of information, typically in a prescribed (IMRAD) order. If the graduate student or the budding scientist (and even some of those scientists who have already published many papers) can fully grasp the significance of this defini­tion, the writing task might be a great deal easier. Confusion results from an amorphous task. The easy task is the one in which you know exactly what must be done and in exactly what order it must be done.

2. ORGANIZATION OF A SCIENTIFIC PAPER

A scientific paper is organized to meet the needs of valid publication. It is, or should be, highly stylized, with distinctive and clearly evident component parts. The most common labeling of the component parts, in the basic sciences, is introduction, methods, results, and discussion (hence the acronym IMRAD). Actually, the heading “Materials and Methods” may be more common than the simpler “Methods,” but the latter form was used in the acronym.

Some of us have taught and recommended the IMRAD approach for many years. The tendency toward uniformity has increased since the IMRAD system was prescribed as a standard by the American National Standards Institute, first in 1972 and again in 1979 (American National Standards Institute, 1979a). Some journals use a variation of IMRAD in which methods appear last rather than second. Perhaps we should call this IRDAM. In some journals, details regarding methods commonly appear in figure captions.

The basic IMRAD order is so eminently logical that, increasingly, it is used for many other types of expository writing. Whether one is writing an article about chemistry, archaeology, economics, or crime in the street, the IMRAD format is often the best choice.

This point is generally true for papers reporting laboratory studies and other experiments. There are, of course, exceptions. As examples, reports of field studies in the earth sciences and many clinical case reports in the medical sci­ences do not readily lend themselves to this kind of organization. However, even in these descriptive papers, the same logical progression from problem to solu­tion is often appropriate.

Occasionally, the organization of laboratory papers must differ. If a number of methods were used to achieve directly related results, it might be desirable to combine the materials and methods and the results into an integrated exper­imental section. In some fields and for some types of results, a combined results and discussion section is usual or desirable. In addition, many primary journals publish notes or short communications, in which the IMRAD orga­nization is modified.

Various types of organization are used in descriptive areas of science. To determine how to organize such papers and which general headings to use, refer to the instructions to authors of your target journal and look at analo­gous papers the journal has published. Also, you can obtain general informa­tion from appropriate source books. For example, types of medical papers are described by Huth (1999), Peat and others (2002), Taylor (2011), and contribu­tors to a multiauthor guide (Hall 2013); types of engineering papers and reports are outlined by Michaelson (1990) and by Beer and McMurrey (2014). Indeed, even if a paper will appear in the IMRAD format, books on writing in one’s own discipline can be worth consulting. Examples of such books include those in biomedical science by Zeiger (2000); the health sciences by Lang (2010); in chemistry by Ebel, Bliefert, and Russey (2004); and in psychology by Sternberg and Sternberg (2010).

In short, the preparation of a scientific paper has less to do with literary skill than with organization. A scientific paper is not literature. The preparer of a scientific paper is not an author in the literary sense. As an international col­league noted, this fact can comfort those writing scientific papers other than in their native language.

Some old-fashioned colleagues think that scientific papers should be litera­ture, that the style and flair of an author should be clearly evident, and that varia­tions in style encourage the interest of the reader. Scientists should indeed be interested in reading literature, and perhaps even in writing literature, but the communication of research results is a more prosaic procedure. As Booth (1981) put it, “Grandiloquence has no place in scientific writing.”

Today, the average scientist, to keep up with a field, must examine the data reported in a very large number of papers. Also, English, the international language of science, is a second language for many scientists. Therefore, scien­tists (and of course editors) must demand a system of reporting data that is uniform, concise, and readily understandable.

3. SHAPE OF A SCIENTIFIC PAPER

Imagine that a friend visits your laboratory or office. The friend is unfamiliar with your research and wants to know about it. To orient your friend, first you identify your general research area and say why it is important. Then you state the specific focus of your research, summarize how you gathered your data, and say what you found. Finally you discuss the broader significance of your find­ings. The friend now has a new understanding—and, if you are lucky, he or she might buy you lunch.

Although intended for readers who are more knowledgeable, a scientific paper should take much the same approach: first providing broad orientation, then focusing narrowly on the specific research, and then considering the find­ings in wider context. Some have likened this shape for a scientific paper to an hourglass: broad, then narrow, then broad. Keeping this overall structure in mind can aid when writing individual parts of a paper and integrating them into a coherent whole.

4. OTHER DEFINITIONS

If scientific paper is the term for an original research report, how should this be distinguished from research reports that are not original, are not scientific, or somehow fail to qualify as scientific papers? Some specific terms are commonly used: review paper, conference report, and meeting abstract.

A review paper may review almost anything, most typically the recent work in a defined subject area or the work of a particular individual or group. Thus, the review paper is designed to summarize, analyze, evaluate, or synthe­size information that has already been published (research reports in primary journals). Although much or all of the material in a review paper has previously been published, the problem of dual publication (duplicate publication of orig­inal data) does not normally arise because the review nature of the work is usually obvious—often from the title of the periodical, such as Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews or Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics. Do not assume, however, that reviews contain nothing new. From the best review papers come new syntheses, new ideas and theories, and even new paradigms.

A conference report is a paper published in a book or journal as part of the proceedings of a symposium, national or international congress, workshop, roundtable, or the like. Such conferences commonly are not designed for the definitive presentation of original data, and the resultant proceedings (in a book or journal) do not qualify as primary publications. Conference presentations often are review papers, presenting reviews of the recent work of particular scientists or recent work in particular laboratories. Material at some conferences (especially the exciting ones) is in the form of preliminary reports, in which new, original data are presented, often accompanied by interesting speculation. But usually, these preliminary reports do not qualify, nor are they intended to qualify, as scientific papers. Later, often much later, such work may be validly published in a primary journal; by this time, the loose ends have been tied down, essential experimental details have been described (so that a competent worker could repeat the experiments), and previous speculation has matured into conclusions.

Therefore, the vast conference literature that appears normally is not primary. If original data are presented in such contributions, the data can and should be published (or republished) in an archival (primary) journal. Otherwise, the information may essentially be lost. If publication in a primary journal follows publication in a conference report, permission from the original publisher may be needed to reprint figures and other items (see Chapter 19, “Rights and Permissions”), but the more fundamental problem of dual publication normally does not and should not arise.

Meeting abstracts may be brief or relatively extensive. Although they can and generally do contain original information, they are not primary publications, and publication of an abstract should not preclude later publication of the full report.

Traditionally, there was little confusion regarding the typical one-paragraph abstracts published as part of the program or distributed along with the program at a national meeting or international congress. It was usually understood that many of the papers presented at these meetings would later be submitted for publication in primary journals. Sometimes conference organizers request extended abstracts (or synoptics). The extended abstract can supply almost as much information as a full paper; mainly it lacks the experimental detail. How­ever, precisely because it lacks experimental detail, it cannot qualify as a scientific paper.

Those involved with publishing these materials should see the importance of careful definition of the different types of papers. More and more publishers, conference organizers, and individual scientists are agreeing on these basic definitions, and their general acceptance will greatly clarify both primary and secondary communication of scientific information.

Source: Gastel Barbara, Day Robert A. (2016), How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper, Greenwood; 8th edition.

1. ETHICS AS A FOUNDATION

Before writing a scientific paper and submitting it to a journal—and indeed, before embarking on your research—you should know the basic ethical norms for scientific conduct and scientific publishing. Some of these norms may be obvious, others not. Therefore, a basic overview is provided below. Graduate students and others seeking further information on ethics in scientific publish­ing and more broadly in science may do well to consult On Being a Scientist: Responsible Conduct in Research (Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy 2009), which contains both guidance and case studies and is accompa­nied online by a video. Other resources include ethics chapters in style manuals in the sciences.

2. AUTHENTICITY AND ACCURACY

That research reported in a journal should actually have been done may seem too obvious to mention. Yet cases exist in which the author simply made up data in a paper, without ever doing the research. Clearly, such “dry-labbing,” or fabrication, is unethical. Fiction can be a grand pursuit, but it has no place in a scientific paper.

More subtle, and probably more common, are lesser or less definite devia­tions from accuracy: omitting outlying points from the data reported, preparing figures in ways that accentuate the findings misleadingly, or doing other tweak­ing. Where to draw the line between editing and distortion may not always be apparent. If in doubt, seek guidance from a more experienced scientist in your field—perhaps one who edits a journal.

The advent of digital imaging has given unethical researchers new ways to falsify findings. (Journal editors, though, have procedures to detect cases in which such falsification of images seems probable.) And ethical researchers may rightly wonder what manipulations of digital images are and are not valid. Sources of guidance in this regard include recent sets of guidelines for use and manipulation of scientific digital images (Cromey 2010, 2012).

For research that includes statistical analysis, reporting accurately includes using appropriate statistical procedures, not those that may distort the findings. If in doubt, obtain the collaboration of a statistician. Enlist the statistician early, while still planning the research, to help ensure that you collect appropriate data. Otherwise, ethical problems may include wasting resources and time. In the words of R.A. Fisher (1938), “To consult the statistician after an experiment is finished is often merely to ask him to conduct a post mortem examination.”

3. ORIGINALITY

As discussed in the previous chapter, the findings in a scientific paper must be new. Except in rare and highly specialized circumstances, they cannot have appeared elsewhere in the primary literature. In the few instances in which republication of data may be acceptable—for example, in a more extensive case series or if a paper is republished in another language—the original article must be clearly cited, lest readers erroneously conclude that the old observa­tions are new. To republish a paper (either in another language or for readers in another field) permission normally must be obtained from the journal that originally published the paper.

Beginning scientists sometimes wonder whether they may submit the same manuscript to two or more journals simultaneously. After all, a candidate can apply to several graduate programs at once and then choose among those offering acceptance. An analogous situation does not hold for scientific papers. Simultaneous submission wastes resources and is considered unethical. There­fore, begin by submitting your paper only to your first-choice journal. If that journal does not accept your paper, you can then proceed to the next journal on your list.

Originality also means avoiding “salami science” (or, for vegetarians, “cucum­ber science”)—that is, thinly slicing the findings of a research project, as one might slice a sausage or cuke, in order to publish several papers instead of one (or, in the case of a large research project, many papers instead of a few). Good scientists respect the integrity of their research and do not divide it excessively for publication. Likewise, good hiring committees and promotion committees look at the content of publications, rather than only the number, and so are not fooled by salami science.

4. CREDIT

Good scientists build on each other’s work. They do not, however, take credit for others’ work.

If your paper includes information or ideas that are not your own, be sure to cite the source. Likewise, if you use others’ wording, remember to place it in quotation marks (or to indent it, if the quoted material is long) and to provide a reference. Otherwise, you will be guilty of plagiarism, which the U.S. National Institutes of Health defines as “the appropriation of another person’s ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit” (National Insti­tutes of Health 2010). To avoid inadvertent plagiarism, be sure to include infor­mation about the source when you copy or download materials others have written. To avoid the temptation to use others’ wording excessively, consider drafting paragraphs without looking directly at the source materials; then look at the materials to check for accuracy.

In journal articles in most fields of science, it is unusual to include quota­tions from others’ work. Rather, authors paraphrase what others have said. Doing so entails truly presenting the ideas in one’s own way; changing a word or two does not constitute paraphrasing. On rare occasions—for example, when an author has phrased a concept extraordinarily well—quoting the author’s own phrasing may be justified. If you are unsure whether to place in quotation marks a series of words from a publication, do so. If the quotation marks are unnecessary, an editor at the journal can easily remove them. If, however, they are missing but should have been included, the editor might not discover that fact (until, perhaps, a reader later does), or the editor might suspect the fact and send you an inquiry that requires a time-consuming search. Be cautious, and thus save yourself from embarrassment or extra work.

Resources to educate oneself about plagiarism, and thus learn better how to avoid it, include a tutorial from Indiana University (Frick and others 2016), an online guide to ethical writing (Roig 2003), and a variety of materials posted on websites of university writing centers. Another resource to consider is plagiarism-checking software. Such software helps identify passages of writ­ing that seem suspiciously similar to text elsewhere; one can then see whether it does indeed appear to be plagiarized. Such software, such as Turnitin, is available at many academic institutions. Free plagiarism checkers, seemingly of varied quality, also exist. Many journal publishers screen submissions with plagiarism checking software, such as CrossCheck. Consider pre-screening your work yourself to detect and remove inadvertent plagiarism.

Also be sure to list as an author of your paper everyone who qualifies for authorship. (See Chapter 8 for more in this regard.) Remember as well to include in the acknowledgments those sources of help or other support that should be listed (see Chapter 14).

5. ETHICAL TREATMENT OF HUMANS AND ANIMALS

If your research involves human subjects or animals, the journal to which you submit your paper is likely to require documentation that they were treated ethically. Before beginning your study, obtain all needed permissions with regard to human or animal research. (In the United States, doing so entails having your research protocol reviewed by a designated committee at your institution.)

Then, in your paper, provide the needed statement(s) in this regard. For guid­ance, see the instructions to authors for the journal to which you are submit­ting your paper, and use as models papers similar to yours that have appeared in the journal. You may also find it useful to consult relevant sections of style manuals in the sciences. If in doubt, check with the publication office of the journal.

6. DISCLOSURE OF CONFLICTS OF INTEREST

Authors of scientific papers sometimes have conflicts of interest—that is, outside involvements that could, at least in theory, interfere with their objectivity in the research being reported. For example, they may own stock in the company mak­ing the product being studied, or they may be consultants to such a company.

Increasingly, it seems, journals are requiring authors to report such conflicts of interest. Some have checklists for doing so, and others ask more generally for disclosure. Journals vary in the degree to which they note conflicts of inter­est along with published papers (Clark 2005).

Ethics requires honest reporting of conflicts of interest. More importantly, ethics demands that such involvements not interfere with the objectivity of your research. Some scientists avoid all such involvements to prevent even the possibility of seeming biased.

Source: Gastel Barbara, Day Robert A. (2016), How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper, Greenwood; 8th edition.

1. WHY DECIDE EARLY, WHY DECIDE WELL

Too often, authors write scientific papers and then consider where to publish them. The decision, however, is best made early, before the writing begins. That way, the paper can be geared appropriately to the audience (for example, read­ers of a general scientific journal, a journal in your discipline as a whole, or a journal in your specialized research field). Also, thus you can initially prepare your manuscript in keeping with the journal’s requirements, rather than having to revise it accordingly. Of course, if your first-choice journal does not accept your paper, you might need to revise your manuscript to suit another journal. But at least you will have avoided a round of revision.

In addition to deciding early on your first-choice journal, decide well. Choos­ing a journal carefully helps you to reach the most suitable audience, gain appropriate recognition, and avoid needless difficulties with publication. The decision where to submit the manuscript is important. Because of poor choices, some papers are delayed in publication, fail to receive sound review and revi­sion, or lie buried in inappropriate journals. If you submit your manuscript to a poor choice of journal, one of three things can happen—all bad.

First, your manuscript may simply be returned to you, with the comment that your work “is not suitable for this journal.” Often, however, this judgment is not made until after review of the manuscript. A “not suitable” notice after weeks or months of delay is not likely to make you happy.

Second, if the journal is borderline in relation to your work, your manu­script may receive a poor or unfair review because the reviewers (and editors) of that journal may be only vaguely familiar with your specialty area. You may be subjected to the trauma of rejection even though the manuscript would be acceptable to the right journal. Or you could end up with a hassle over sug­gested revisions that you do not agree with and that do not improve your manu­script. And, if your manuscript really does have deficiencies, you would not be able to benefit from the sound criticism that would come from the editors of the right journal.

Third, even if your paper is accepted and published, your glee will be short­lived if you later find that your work is virtually unknown because it is buried in a publication that few in your intended audience read. Talking with colleagues can help prevent this situation.

Think about the appropriate readership. If, for example, you are report­ing a fundamental study in physics, of course you should try to get your paper published in a prestigious international journal. On the other hand, suppose that your study relates to management of a disease found only in Latin Amer­ica. In that situation, publication in Nature will not reach your audience—the audience that needs and can use your information. You should publish in an appropriate Latin American journal, probably in Spanish.

To start identifying journals to consider, recall what journals have published work similar to yours. The journals publishing the papers that you will cite are often journals to consider. Perhaps ask colleagues to suggest potential publica­tion sites. To help determine whether a journal indeed seems to be a possibility, look in the journal or at its website for statements describing its purpose and scope. Look at some recent issues of the journal to see whether the journal publishes research such as yours and whether the papers are of the type you envision writing.

2. PRESTIGE AND IMPACT

If several journals seem suitable, does it matter which one you choose? Perhaps it shouldn’t matter, but it does. There is the matter of prestige. It may be that progress in your career (job offers, promotions, grants, etc.) will be determined largely by the number of papers you publish. But not necessarily. It may well be that a wise old bird sitting on the faculty committee or the grant review panel will recognize and appreciate quality factors. A paper published in a “garbage” journal simply does not equal a paper published in a prestigious journal. In fact, the wise old bird (and there are quite a few of these in science) may be more impressed by the candidate with one or two solid publications in presti­gious journals than by the candidate with 10 or more publications in second- or third-rate journals.

How do you tell the difference? It isn’t easy, and of course there are many gradations. In general, however, you can form reasonable judgments by just a bit of bibliographic research. You will certainly know the important papers that have recently been published in your field. Make it your business to determine where they were published. If most of the real contributions in your field were published in Journal A, Journal B, and Journal C, you should probably limit your choices to those three journals. If Journals D, E, and F, upon inspection, contain only the lightweight papers, each could be eliminated as your first choice, even though the scope is right.

You may then choose among Journals A, B, and C. Suppose that Journal A is an attractive new journal published by a commercial publisher as a com­mercial venture, with no sponsorship by a society or other organization; Journal B is an old, well-known small journal published by a famous university, hospi­tal, or museum; and Journal C is a large journal published by the principal scientific society in your field. In general (although there are many exceptions), Journal C (the society journal) is probably the most prestigious. It will also have the largest circulation (partly because of quality factors, and partly because society journals are less expensive than others, at least to society members). By publication in such a journal, your paper may have its best chance to make an impact on the community of scholars at whom you are aiming. Journal B might have almost equal prestige, but it might have a very limited circulation, which would be a minus; it might also be very difficult to get into, if most of its space is reserved for in-house material. Journal A (the commercial journal) might well have the disadvantage of low circulation (because of its comparatively high price, which is the result of both the profit aspect of the publisher and the lack of backing by a society or institution with a built-in subscription list). Publi­cation in such a journal may result in a somewhat restricted distribution of your paper.

Be wary of new journals, especially those not sponsored by a society. (In par­ticular, avoid predatory journals, which are discussed later in this chapter.) The circulation may be minuscule, and the journal might fail before it, and your paper, become known to the scientific world. Be wary of publishing in journals that are solely electronic unless you know that those evaluating your work for purposes such as promotion consider those journals as prestigious as journals with printed versions. On the other hand, be wary of publishing in the increas­ingly few journals that appear only in print, as scientists today expect important scientific literature to be accessible online.

One tool for estimating the relative prestige of journals in a given field is the electronic resource Journal Citation Reports, commonly available through academic libraries. With this resource, you can determine which journals have recently been cited most frequently, both in total and in terms of average num­ber of citations per article published, or impact factor (Garfield 1999). Although not all good journals have impact factors computed, impact factor can be worth considering in judging the prominence of journals. If, in a given field, the aver­age paper in Journal A is cited twice as frequently as the average paper in Journal B, it is likely that researchers find Journal A the more important jour­nal. In some countries and institutions, impact factors of journals in which papers appear are among criteria considered when candidates are evaluated for promotion. However, limitations of the impact factor also should be noted. The impact factor indicates how much the papers in a journal are cited on average— not how much your paper will be cited if it appears in the journal. It does not indicate how much impact other than on citation the papers in a journal have— for example, how much they influence policy or clinical practice. And because different scientific fields have different citation practices, impact factors should not be used to compare importance of journals in different fields. For instance, in biochemistry and molecular biology, in which papers tend to cite many recent papers, the impact factor of the top-cited journal was 32.2 in the year 2014, but in geology it was 4.9. In short, although knowing a journal’s impact-factor rank­ing in its field can help you assess the scientific importance of a journal, the impact factor does not say everything about the journal’s quality and its suitabil­ity for your work. In journal selection as in much else in life, a multidimensional concept cannot validly be reduced to a single number.

Increasingly, experts have emphasized the need to include indicators other than impact factor when assessing the importance of a person’s research. For example, the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (2012), com­monly called DORA, calls for using more varied approaches in evaluating research output. These approaches include—in addition to, most importantly, evaluating the scientific content of the article—using multiple journal-based metrics (rather than only impact factor) and looking at article-level metrics. Examples of the latter include how many times an article has been viewed, downloaded, or bookmarked; how much attention it has received in social media and mass media; and how many times and where it has been cited (Tananbaum 2013). Noticing which journals’ articles in your field tend to receive such atten­tion can aid in identifying suitable journals for your papers.

3. ACCESS

Other items to consider when choosing journals can include open access—that is, the provision of articles online free of charge to all who may be interested. One consideration is whether to choose a journal (termed an open-access journal) that immediately provides open access to all its content. At such journals, which do not have subscriptions and so lack this source of income, the costs typically are defrayed at least in part by fees charged to authors. In some countries, these fees commonly are paid from grant funds; it can be wise to consider expected publication costs when preparing the budget for a grant. When authors, such as those in developing countries, cannot afford to pay the fees, the journal may waive or reduce them; if you cannot afford the normal publication fee for an open-access journal in which you hope to publish, contact the journal.

Access-related considerations for publishing in traditional journals can include whether to seek a journal for which the electronic version, initially avail­able only to subscribers, becomes openly accessible relatively fast, for example, in a few months. Also, some journals give authors the option of making their articles freely accessible upon publication in return for paying a fee. Another consideration when publishing in a traditional journal is whether the journal allows rapid posting of articles on authors’ or their institutions’ websites. The website SHERPA/RoMEO (www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/) provides information about journals’ policies in such regards.

4. AVOIDING PREDATORY JOURNALS

As noted, open-access journals typically charge authors fees as these journals lack income from subscriptions. Some dishonest people take advantage of this model by claiming to publish valid journals while instead just trying to get authors’ money. These publishers of predatory journals may, for example, post all the papers that they receive, without peer review or editing. Or they might take authors’ money and publish nothing. Submitting papers to such journals advances neither science nor one’s career.

Such journals often market themselves vigorously, filling researchers’ email with invitations to submit papers. How can you recognize, and thus avoid, pred­atory journals? Clues that a journal might be predatory include promises that seem too good to be true (for example, a guarantee to publish all submissions within a week), a website with many typographical and other errors, inclusion of what seem to be fake metrics (such as “impact index”), and lack of good articles (or any articles at all) on the journal’s website. On the other hand, indi­cations that a journal is likely to be valid include publication of good articles that you already have seen and inclusion of the journal in major bibliographic databases. If you think that a journal might be predatory, consider consulting Beall’s List (scholarlyoa.com/publishers/), compiled by academic librarian Jeffrey Beall. This list of “potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers” can aid in evaluating one’s suspicions.

Especially if you are inexperienced in publishing, perhaps consult a mentor or senior colleague if you think a journal that you are considering might be predatory. In fact, in any case, such consultation can be wise before finalizing one’s choice of a journal.

5. OTHER FACTORS TO CONSIDER

In choosing a journal, other factors also can merit consideration. One such factor is speed of publication. Increasingly, journals have been publishing papers online before they appear in print or are included in an online issue. You may find it worthwhile to check whether a journal publishes individual articles online first and, if so, how quickly it does so.

The time from acceptance to publication in a journal issue generally reflects the frequency of the journal. For example, the publication lag of a monthly jour­nal is almost always shorter than that ofa quarterly journal. Assuming equivalent review times, the additional delay of the quarterly will range up to 2 or 3 months. Since the publication lag, including the time of editorial review, of many (prob­ably most) monthlies ranges between 4 and 7 months, the lag of the quarterly is likely to run up to 10 months. Remember, also, that many journals, whether monthly, bimonthly, or quarterly, have backlogs. It sometimes helps to ask col­leagues what their experience has been with the journal(s) you are considering. If the journal publishes “received for publication” dates, you can figure out for yourself the average lag time.

Even in this electronic age, quality of printing can be a consideration. In biol­ogy, the journals published by the American Society for Microbiology and by the Rockefeller University Press traditionally have been especially noted for their high standards in this respect. Whatever your field, look at the reproduction quality of the journal if it will be important to you.

Finally, consider likelihood of acceptance. Clearly, not every paper is important enough and of broad enough interest to appear in Science or Nature. Rather, most papers belong in journals in their disciplines or subdisciplines.

Even within specific fields, some papers are of great enough importance for publication in first-line journals, whereas many others can better find homes elsewhere. In initially submitting your paper, aim high, generally for the broad­est and most prestigious journal in which your paper seems to have a realistic chance of publication. To decide on this journal, perhaps look again at candi­date journals and consult colleagues. Choosing a journal that is appropriate with regard to subject matter, audience, prestige, access, selectivity, and other factors can help ensure that your paper will be published without undue delay—and that it will be read and recognized by those it should reach.

6. USING INSTRUCTIONS TO AUTHORS

In considering where to submit your paper, you might have looked at some journals’ instructions to authors to learn more about the journals’ scopes, audiences, or requirements. If you have not yet obtained the instructions for the journal you chose, do so before starting to write. Typically, these instruc­tions appear on the website of the journal. In addition, instructions from more than 6,000 biomedical journals can be accessed through the website Instruc­tions to Authors in the Health Sciences, mulford.utoledo.edu/instr. This site also includes links to sets of guidelines that many medical journals follow.

If you do not find instructions to authors immediately, keep looking. Some­times their location on the journal website is not initially apparent. Also, instruc­tions to authors can have a variety of other names, such as information for authors, guide for authors, and submission instructions. If, after careful search­ing, you still do not find the instructions, consider asking a more experienced researcher or a librarian for help or contacting the office of the journal. Also, a lack of instructions can be a clue that a journal is predatory rather than legitimate.

Read the instructions for authors thoroughly before starting to prepare your paper. Among questions these instructions may answer are the following:

• Does the journal include more than one category of research article? If so, in what category would yours fit?
• What is the maximum length of articles? What is the maximum length of abstracts?
• Does the journal have a template for articles? If so, how can it be accessed?
• Does the journal post supplementary material online, if applicable? If so, how should this material be provided?
• What sections should the article include? What guidelines should be fol­lowed for each?
• What guidelines should be followed regarding writing style?
• How many figures and tables are allowed? What requirements does the journal have for figures and tables?
• In what format should references appear? Is there a maximum number of references?
• In what electronic format should the paper be prepared? Should figures and tables be inserted within the text, or should they appear at the end or be submitted as separate files? Is there an online submission system to use?

Underline, highlight, or otherwise note key points to remember. Then consult the instructions to authors as you prepare the paper. Following the instruc­tions from the outset will save time overall.

Also look carefully at some recent issues of the journal. Pay particular atten­tion to those aspects of editorial style that tend to vary widely from journal to journal. These aspects include the style of literature citation, the use of head­ings and subheadings, and the design of tables and figures.

Shortly before submitting your manuscript, check the instructions to authors again, and ensure they have been followed. If the instructions include a check­list, use it. By following the instructions carefully, you will facilitate publication of your manuscript from the time you begin to draft it.

Source: Gastel Barbara, Day Robert A. (2016), How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper, Greenwood; 8th edition.

1. IMPORTANCE OF THE TITLE

In preparing a title for a paper, you would do well to remember one salient fact: This title will be read by thousands of people. Perhaps few people, if any, will read the entire paper, but many people will read the title, either in the original journal, in one of the secondary (abstracting and indexing) databases, in a search engine’s output, or otherwise. Therefore, all words in the title should be chosen with great care, and their association with one another must be carefully managed. Perhaps the most common error in defective titles, and certainly the most damaging one in terms of comprehension, is faulty syntax (word order).

What is a good title? We define it as the fewest possible words that adequately describe the contents of the paper.

Remember that the indexing and abstracting services depend heavily on the accuracy of the title, as do individual computerized literature-retrieval systems. An improperly titled paper may be virtually lost and never reach its intended audience.

Some authors mistakenly sacrifice clarity in an attempt to be witty. The title of a paper need not, and generally should not, be clever. It must, however, be clear. An example (adapted from Halm and Landon 2007): “Association between

Diuretic Use and Cardiovascular Mortality” could be an adequate title. The authors should resist the temptation to use instead “Dying to Pee.”

2. LENGTH OF THE TITLE

Occasionally, titles are too short. A paper was submitted to the Journal of Bacte­riology with the title “Studies on Brucella.” Obviously, such a title was not very helpful to the potential reader. Was the study taxonomic, genetic, biochemical, or medical? We would certainly want to know at least that much.

Much more often, titles are too long. Ironically, long titles are often less meaningful than short ones. A century or so ago, when science was less spe­cialized, titles tended to be long and nonspecific, such as “On the addition to the method of microscopic research by a new way of producing colour-contrast between an object and its background or between definite parts of the object itself” (Rheinberg J. 1896. J. R. Microsc. Soc. 373). That certainly sounds like a poor title; perhaps it would make a good abstract.

Not only scientists have written rambling titles. Consider this one from the year 1705: A Wedding Ring Fit for the Finger, or the Salve of Divinity on the Sore of Humanity with directions to those men that want wives, how to choose them, and to those women that have husbands, how to use them. Ironically, this title appeared on a miniature book (Bernard A. 1995. Now all we need is a title: famous book titles and how they got that way. New York: Norton, p. 58).

Without question, most excessively long titles contain “waste” words. Often, these waste words appear right at the start of the title, words such as “Studies on,” “Investigations on,” and “Observations on.” An opening A, An, or The is also a waste word. Certainly, such words are useless for indexing purposes.

3. NEED FOR SPECIFIC TITLES

Let us analyze a sample title: “Action of Antibiotics on Bacteria.” Is it a good title? In form it is; it is short and carries no excess baggage (waste words). Cer­tainly, it would not be improved by changing it to “Preliminary Observations on the Effect of Certain Antibiotics on Various Species of Bacteria.” However (and this brings us to the next point), most titles that are too short are too short because they include general rather than specific terms.

We can safely assume that the study introduced by the above title did not test the effect of all antibiotics on all kinds of bacteria. Therefore, the title is essen­tially meaningless. If only one or a few antibiotics were studied, they should be individually listed in the title. If only one or a few organisms were tested, they should be individually listed in the title. If the number of antibiotics or organisms was awkwardly large for listing in the title, perhaps a group name could have been substituted. Examples of more acceptable titles are the following:

“Action of Streptomycin on Mycobacterium tuberculosis.”

“Action of Streptomycin, Neomycin, and Tetracycline on Gram-Positive Bacteria.”

“Action of Polyene Antibiotics on Plant-Pathogenic Bacteria.”

“Action of Various Antifungal Antibiotics on Candida albicans and Aspergil­lus fumigatus.”

Although these titles are more acceptable than the sample, they are not especially good because they are still too general. If the “Action of” can be defined easily, the meaning might be clearer. For example, the first title might have been phrased “Inhibition of Growth of Mycobacterium tuberculosis by Strepto­mycin.”

Long ago, Leeuwenhoek used the word “animalcules,” a descriptive but not very specific word. In the 1930s, Howard Raistrick published an impor­tant series ofpapers under the title “Studies on Bacteria.” A similar paper today would have a much more specific title. If the study featured an organism, the title would give the genus and species and possibly even the strain. If the study featured an enzyme in an organism, the title would not be anything like “Enzymes in Bacteria.” It would be something like “Dihydrofolate Reductase Produced by Bacillus subtilis.”

4. IMPORTANCE OF SYNTAX

In titles, be especially careful of syntax. Most of the grammatical errors in titles are due to faulty word order.

A paper was submitted to the Journal of Bacteriology with the title “Mecha­nism of Suppression of Nontransmissible Pneumonia in Mice Induced by Newcastle Disease Virus.” Unless this author had somehow managed to dem­onstrate spontaneous generation, it must have been the pneumonia that was induced and not the mice. (The title should have read: “Mechanism of Sup­pression of Nontransmissible Pneumonia Induced in Mice by Newcastle Dis­ease Virus.”)

If you no longer believe that babies result from a visit by the stork, we offer this title (Am. J. Clin. Pathol. 52:42, 1969): “Multiple Infections among Newborns Resulting from Implantation with Staphylococcus aureus 502A.” (Is this the “Staph of Life”?)

Another example (Clin. Res. 8:134, 1960): “Preliminary Canine and Clini­cal Evaluation of a New Antitumor Agent, Streptovitacin.” When that dog gets through evaluating streptovitacin, we’ve got some work we’d like that dog to look over. A grammatical aside: Please be careful when you use “using.” The word “using” might well be the most common dangling participle in scientific writing. Either there are some more smart dogs, or “using” is misused in this sentence from a manuscript: “Using a fiberoptic bronchoscope, dogs were immunized with sheep red blood cells.”

Dogs aren’t the only smart animals. A manuscript was submitted to the Journal of Bacteriology under the title “Isolation of Antigens from Monkeys Using Complement-Fixation Techniques.”

Even bacteria are smart. A manuscript was submitted to the Journal of Clin­ical Microbiology under the title “Characterization of Bacteria Causing Mastitis by Gas-Liquid Chromatography.” Isn’t it wonderful that bacteria can use GLC?

5. THE TITLE AS A LABEL

The title of a paper is a label. It normally is not a sentence. Because it is not a sentence, with the usual subject-verb-object arrangement, it is simpler than a sentence (or, at least, shorter), but the order of the words becomes even more important.

Actually, a few journals do permit a title to be a sentence. An example of such a title: “Fruit Flies Diversify Their Offspring in Response to Parasite Infection” (Science 349:747, 2015). One might object to such a title because presence of a verb (in this case, diversify) makes the title seem like a loud assertion. Such a title may sound dogmatic because we are not accustomed to seeing authors present their results in the present tense, for reasons that are discussed in Chapter 30. Rosner (1990, p. 108) gave the name “assertive sentence title” (AST) to this kind of title and presented a number of reasons why such titles should not be used. In particular, ASTs are “improper and imprudent” because “in some cases the AST boldly states a conclusion that is then stated more tentatively in the sum­mary or elsewhere” and “ASTs trivialize a scientific report by reducing it to a one-liner.”

The meaning and order of the words in the title are important to the poten­tial reader who sees the title in the journal table of contents. But these consid­erations are equally important to all potential users of the literature, including those (probably a majority) who become aware of the paper via secondary sources. Thus, the title should be useful as a label accompanying the paper itself, and it also should be in a form suitable for the machine-indexing systems used by Chemical Abstracts, MEDLINE, and others. In short, the terms in the title should be those that highlight the significant content of the paper.

As an aid to readers, journals commonly print running titles or running heads at the top of each page. Often the title of the journal or book is given at the top of left-facing pages and the article or chapter title is given at the top of right­facing ages (as in this book). Usually, a short version ofthe title is needed because of space limitations. (The maximum character count is likely to be stated in the journal’s instructions to authors.) It can be wise to suggest an appropriate run­ning title on the title page of the manuscript.

6. ABBREVIATIONS AND JARGON

Titles should almost never contain abbreviations, chemical formulas, propri­etary (rather than generic) names, jargon, and the like. In designing the title, the author should ask: “How would I look for this kind of information in an index?” If the paper concerns an effect of hydrochloric acid, should the title include the words “hydrochloric acid,” or should it contain the much shorter and readily recognizable “HCl”? The answer seems obvious. Most of us would look under “hy” in an index, not under “hc.” Furthermore, if some authors used (and journal editors permitted) HCl and others used hydrochloric acid, the user of the bibliographic services might locate only part of the published literature, not noting that additional references are listed under another, abbre­viated entry. Actually, the larger secondary services have computer programs that can bring together entries such as deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA, and even ADN (acide deoxyribonucleique). However, by far the best rule for authors (and editors) is to avoid abbreviations in titles. And the same rule should apply to proprietary names, jargon, and unusual or outdated terminology.

7. MORE ABOUT TITLE FORMAT

Many editors are opposed to main title-subtitle arrangements and to hanging titles. The main title-subtitle (series) arrangement was quite common some years ago. (Example: “Studies on Bacteria. IV. Cell Wall of Staphylococcus aureus.”) Today, many editors believe that it is important, especially for the reader, that each published paper “present the results of an independent, cohesive study; thus, numbered series titles are not allowed” (instructions to authors, Journal of Bacteriology). Series papers, in the past, have tended to relate to each other too closely, giving only bits and pieces with each contribution; thus, the reader was severely handicapped unless the whole series could be read consecutively. Furthermore, the series system is annoying to editors because of scheduling problems and delays. (What happens when IV is accepted but III is rejected or delayed in review?) Additional objections are that a series title almost always provides considerable redundancy; the first part (before the roman numeral) is usually so general as to be useless, and the results when the secondary services spin out an index are often unintelligible. (Article titles phrased as questions also can become unintelligible, and so they probably should not be used.)

The hanging title (similar to a series title but with a colon instead of a roman numeral) is considerably better, avoiding some of the problems mentioned. Some journals, especially in the social sciences (Hartley 2007), seem to favor hanging titles, presumably on the grounds that it is helpful to get the most important words of the title up to the front. (Example: “Environmental Science in the Media: Effects of Opposing Viewpoints on Risk and Uncertainty Percep­tions” Science Communication 37:287, 2015). Occasionally, hanging titles may aid the reader, but they may appear pedantic, emphasize the general term rather than a more significant term, necessitate punctuation, and scramble indexes.

Use of a straightforward title does not lessen the need for proper syntax, how­ever, or for the proper form of each word in the title. For example, a title reading “New Color Standard for Biology” would seem to indicate the development of color specifications for use in describing plant and animal specimens. However, in the title “New Color Standard for Biologists” (Bioscience 27:762, 1977), the new standard might be useful for study of the taxonomy of biologists, permit­ting us to separate the green biologists from the blue ones.

Source: Gastel Barbara, Day Robert A. (2016), How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper, Greenwood; 8th edition.

1. THE ORDER OF THE NAMES

“If you have co-authors, problems about authorship can range from the trivial to the catastrophic” (O’Connor 1991, p. 10).

The easiest part of preparing a scientific paper is simply entering the bylines: the authors and addresses. Sometimes.

We haven’t yet heard of a duel being fought over the order of listing of authors, but there have been instances in which otherwise reasonable, rational colleagues have become bitter enemies solely because they could not agree on whose names should be listed or in what order.

What is the right order? Unfortunately, there are no agreed-upon rules or generally accepted conventions. Some authors, perhaps to avoid arguments among themselves, agree to list their names alphabetically. In the field of mathe­matics, this practice appears to be standard. Some pairs of researchers who repeatedly collaborate take turns being listed first. If allowed by the journal, sometimes papers include a note indicating that the first two authors contrib­uted equally to the research.

In the past, there was a general tendency to list the head of the laboratory (or, more generally, the head of the research group) as an author whether or not he or she actively participated in the research. Often, the “head” was placed last (second oftwo authors, third ofthree, etc.). As a result, the terminal spot seemed
to acquire prestige. Thus, two authors, neither of whom was head of a laboratory or even necessarily a senior professor, would vie for the second spot. If there were three or more authors, the prestige-seeking author would want the first or last position, but not the one in between.

Commonly, the first author is the person who played the lead role in the research. Qualification to be listed first does not depend on rank. A graduate stu­dent, or even an undergraduate, may be listed first if he or she led the research project. And even Nobel laureates are not to be listed first unless their contri­butions predominate. Multiple authors may then be listed approximately in order of decreasing contribution to the work. In some fields, the head of the laboratory is still often listed last, in which case this position may continue to command particular respect. However, the head should be included only if he or she indeed at least provided guidance. In general, all those listed as authors should have been involved enough to defend the paper or a substantial aspect thereof. Some authors who did not participate substantially in the research have come to regret their inclusion when the reported research was found deficient or even fraudulent.

There is often a tendency to use the laundry-list approach, naming as an author practically everyone in the laboratory. In addition, the trend toward col-laborative research is steadily increasing. Thus, the average number of authors per paper is on the rise.

2. DEFINITION OF AUTHORSHIP

Perhaps we can now define authorship by saying that the listing of authors should include those, and only those, who actively contributed to the overall conceptualization, design, and execution of the research. Further, the authors should normally be listed in order of importance to the research. Colleagues or supervisors should neither ask to have their names on manuscripts nor allow their names to be put on manuscripts reporting research with which they themselves have not been intimately involved. An author of a paper should be defined as one who takes intellectual responsibility for the research results being reported. However, this definition must be tempered by realizing that modern science in many fields is collaborative and multidisciplinary. It may be unrealistic to assume that all authors can defend all aspects of a paper writ­ten by contributors from a variety of disciplines. Even so, each author should be held fully responsible for his or her choice of colleagues.

Admittedly, deciding on authorship is not always easy. It is often incredibly difficult to analyze the intellectual input to a paper. Certainly, those who have worked together intensively for months or years on a research problem might have difficulty in remembering who had the original research concept or whose brilliant idea was the key to the success of the experiments. And what do these colleagues do when everything suddenly falls into place as a result of a search­ing question by the traditional “guy in the next lab” who had nothing whatever to do with the research?

Each listed author should have made an important contribution to the study being reported, with the word important referring to those aspects of the study that produced new information, the concept that defines an original scientific paper.

The sequence of authors on a published paper should be decided, unani­mously, before the research is started. A change may be required later, depend­ing on which turn the research takes, but it is foolish to leave this important question of authorship to the very end of the research process.

In some fields, it is not rare to see 10 or more authors listed at the head of a paper. For example, a paper by F. Bulos and others (Phys. Rev. Letters 13:486, 1964) had 27 authors and only 12 paragraphs. Such papers frequently come from laboratories that are so small that 10 people couldn’t fit into the lab, let alone make a meaningful contribution to the experiment. What accounts for the tendency to list a host of authors? There may be several reasons, but one of them no doubt relates to the publish-or-perish syndrome. Some workers wheedle or cajole their colleagues so effectively that they become authors of most or all of the papers coming out of their laboratory. Their research produc­tivity might in fact be meager, yet at year’s end their publication lists might indeed be extensive. In some institutions, such padded lists might result in promotion. Nonetheless, the practice is not recommended. Perhaps a few admi­nistrators are fooled, and momentary advantages are sometimes gained by these easy riders. But we suspect that good scientists do not allow dilution of their own work by adding other people’s names for minuscule contributions, nor do good scientists want their own names sullied by addition of the names of a whole herd of lightweights.

To repeat, the scientific paper should list as authors only those who contrib­uted substantially to the work. Unjustified listing of multiple authors adversely affects the real investigators and can lead to bibliographic nightmares. For more on issues relating to the definition of authorship, see Davidoff (2000), Claxton (2005), Scott-Lichter and the Editorial Policy Committee, Council of Science Editors (2012), and International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (2014).

3. DEFINING THE ORDER: AN EXAMPLE

Perhaps the following example will help clarify the level of conceptual or tech­nical involvement that should define authorship.

Suppose that Scientist A designs a series of experiments that might result in important new knowledge, and then Scientist A tells Technician B exactly how to perform the experiments. If the experiments work out and a manuscript results, Scientist A should be the sole author, even though Technician B did all the physical work. (Of course, the assistance of Technician B should be recog­nized in the acknowledgments.)

Now let us suppose that the experiments just described do not work out. Technician B takes the negative results to Scientist A and says something like, “I think we might get this damned strain to grow if we change the incubation temperature from 24 to 37°C and if we add serum albumin to the medium.” Scientist A agrees to a trial, the experiments this time yield the desired outcome, and a paper results. Technician B also provides some insights that contribute to the interpretation of the results. In this case, Scientist A and Technician B, in that order, should both be listed as authors.

Let us take this example one step further. Suppose that the experiments at 37°C and with serum albumin work, but that Scientist A perceives that there is now an obvious loose end; that is, growth under these conditions suggests that the test organism is a pathogen, whereas the previously published literature had indicated that this organism was nonpathogenic. Scientist A now asks col­league Scientist C, an expert in pathogenic microbiology, to test this organism for pathogenicity. Scientist C runs a quick test by injecting the test substance into laboratory mice in a standard procedure that any medical microbiologist would use and confirms pathogenicity. A few important sentences are then added to the manuscript, and the paper is published. Scientist A and Technician B are listed as authors; the assistance of Scientist C is noted in the acknow­ledgments.

Suppose, however, that Scientist C gets interested in this peculiar strain and proceeds to conduct a series of well-planned experiments that lead to the con­clusion that this particular strain is not just mouse-pathogenic, but is the long- sought culprit in certain rare human infections. Thus, two new tables of data are added to the manuscript, and the results and discussion are rewritten. The paper is then published listing Scientist A, Technician B, and Scientist C as authors. (A case could be made for listing Scientist C as the second author.)

4. SPECIFYING CONTRIBUTIONS

Some journals require a list of which author or authors did what—for exam­ple, who designed the research, who gathered the data, who analyzed the data, and who wrote the paper. Some journals publish this list of contributors with the paper. Others just keep it for their own information. Sometimes, there are contributors who are not authors—for example, people who obtained some of the data but did not participate more broadly in the research or who provided technical or other guidance.

Requiring this list of contributions can have at least two advantages. First, it helps ensure that everyone listed as an author deserves to be listed—and that no one who ought to be listed has been left out. Second, if the list is pub­lished, it can help readers determine which author to contact for which type of information.

5. PROPER AND CONSISTENT FORM

As to names of authors, the preferred designation normally is given name, middle initial, surname. If an author uses only initials, which has been a regret­table tendency in science, the scientific literature may become confused.

If there are two people named Jonathan B. Jones, the literature services can probably keep them straight (by addresses). But if dozens of people published under the name J. B. Jones (especially if, on occasion, some ofthem use Jonathan B. Jones), the retrieval services have a hopeless task in keeping things neat and tidy. Many scientists resist the temptation to change their names (for example, after marriage) at least in part to avoid confusion in the literature.

Instead of given name, middle initial, and surname, wouldn’t it be better to spell out the middle name? No. Again, we must realize that literature retrieval is a computerized process and that computers can be easily confused. An author with a common name (for example, Robert Jones) might be tempted to spell out his or her middle name, thinking that Robert Smith Jones is more distinctive than Robert S. Jones. However, the resulting double name is a problem. Should the computer index the author as “Jones” or “Smith Jones”? Because double names, with or without hyphens, are common, especially in England and in Latin America, this problem is not an easy one for computers (or for their programmers).

Knowing how to list one’s name on an English-language scientific paper can be difficult for international authors as different languages have different formats for names, and more than one form of transliteration can exist. For authors with Chinese names, an article by Sun and Zhou (2002) offers recom­mendations. And for authors of a variety of national origins, style manuals can provide guidance, as can editors at journals. Whatever format a scientist chooses, he or she should use it consistently in English-language scientific papers—rather than, for example, using Shou-Chu Qian on some papers, Shouchu Qian on others, and S. Chien on still others.

In general, scientific journals do not print degrees after authors’ names and do not include titles such as Dr. (You know what “B.S.” means. “M.S.” is More of the Same. “Ph.D.” is Piled Higher and Deeper. “M.D.” is Much Deeper.) However, most medical journals do list degrees after the names. Even in med­ical journals, however, degrees are not given in the references. Contributors should consult the journal’s instructions to authors or a recent issue regarding preferred usage.

6. LISTING THE ADDRESSES

The principles for listing the addresses are simple but often violated. There­fore, authors cannot always be connected with addresses. Most often, however, it has been the style of the journal that creates confusion, rather than sins of commission or omission by the author.

With one author, one address is given (the name and address of the labora­tory in which the work was done). If, before publication, the author has moved to a different address, the new address should be indicated in a “present address” footnote.

When two or more authors are listed, each in a different institution, the addresses should be listed in the same order as the authors.

The main probl em arises when a paper is published by, let us say, three authors from two institutions. In such instances, each author’s name and address should include an appropriate designation such as a superior a, b, or c after the author’s name and before (or after) the appropriate address. (Some­times a journal may just request the affiliation of each author and then do the formatting itself. In this regard as in others, follow the instructions to authors.)

This convention has been useful to readers wanting to know whether an author is at Yale or at Harvard. Clear identification of authors and addresses has been important to several of the secondary services. For these services to function properly, they needed to know whether a paper published by an author with a common name was by the person with that name at Iowa State, Cornell, Cambridge University in England, or Peking University. Only when authors could be properly identified could their publications be grouped together in citation indexes.

7. A SOLUTION: ORCID

Even with addresses, authors can be difficult to distinguish from one another— for example, if two scientists with the same name work at the same institu­tion. Also, some scientists move from one institution to another or do not state their names the same way on all their papers over the years, and so their work is hard to track. Fortunately, a mechanism now exists to unambiguously iden­tify each author.

This mechanism is ORCID, which stands for “Open Researcher and Con­tributor ID.” An ORCID identifier is a persistent identification number that you can obtain and include with your research communications. When you apply at the ORCID website, you receive a unique identification number and establish an ORCID record online. You can then associate this number with your journal articles, grant proposals, and other writings, both in the future and retroactively. Many journals now ask authors to supply their ORCID iden­tifiers. Information about the ORCID initiative and a link through which to obtain an ORCID identifier appear at orcid.org.

8. PURPOSES OF THE ADDRESSES

Remember that the address serves two purposes. It helps to identify the author; it also indicates how to contact him or her. Because scientists now communi­cate largely by email, an email address generally should be included at least for the author to whom inquiries about the paper should be conveyed. Some jour­nals use asterisks, footnotes, or the acknowledgments to identify this person. Authors should be aware of journal policy in this regard, and they should decide in advance which author will serve in this role.

The author who should receive inquiries is called the corresponding author. Journals ask that a corresponding author be designated for each paper. The corresponding author typically submits the paper, receives the editor’s decision whether to publish it, submits revisions, works with the editorial office after acceptance (for example, by answering questions from the manuscript editor and checking page proofs), and responds to inquiries from readers. The corre­sponding author should be someone who expects to be readily reachable during and after the publication process. Opinions vary as to whether being a corre­sponding author is an honor or just a task.

Unless scientists wish to publish anonymously (or as close to it as possi­ble), full names and a full address should be considered obligatory.

Source: Gastel Barbara, Day Robert A. (2016), How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper, Greenwood; 8th edition.

1. DEFINITION

An abstract should be viewed as a miniature version of the paper. The abstract should provide a brief summary of each of the main sections of the paper: introduction, materials and methods, results, and discussion. As Houghton (1975) put it, “An abstract can be defined as a summary of the information in a document.”

“A well-prepared abstract enables readers to identify the basic content of a document quickly and accurately, to determine its relevance to their inter­ests, and thus to decide whether they need to read the document in its entirety” (American National Standards Institute 1979b). The abstract should not exceed the length specified by the journal (commonly, 250 words), and it should be designed to define clearly what is dealt with in the paper. Typically, the abstract should be typed as a single paragraph, as in Figure 9.1. Some journals, how­ever, run “structured” abstracts consisting of a few brief paragraphs, each pre­ceded by a standardized subheading, as in Figure 9.2. Many people will read the abstract, either in the original journal or as retrieved by computer search.

The abstract should (1) state the principal objectives and scope of the inves­tigation, (2) describe the methods employed, (3) summarize the results, and (4) state the principal conclusions. The importance of the conclusions is indi­cated by the fact that they are often given three times: once in the abstract, again in the introduction, and again (in more detail, probably) in the discussion.

Most or all of the abstract should be written in the past tense because it refers to work done.

The abstract should never give any information or conclusion that is not stated in the paper. Literature must not be cited in the abstract (except in rare instances, such as modification of a previously published method). Likewise, normally the abstract should not include or refer to tables and figures. (Some journals, however, allow or even require the abstract to include a graphic.)

2. TYPES OF ABSTRACTS

The preceding rules apply to the abstracts that are used in primary journals and often without change in the secondary services (Chemical Abstracts, etc.). This type of abstract is often called an informative abstract, and it is designed to condense the paper. It can and should briefly state the problem, the method used to study the problem, and the principal data and conclusions. Often, the abstract supplants the need for reading the full paper; without such abstracts, scientists would not be able to keep up in active areas of research. (However, before citing a paper, you should read it in its entirety because some abstracts— surely not yours, though!—do not convey an entirely accurate picture of the research.) This is the type of abstract that precedes the body of the paper (thus serving as a “heading”) in most journals.

Another type of abstract is the indicative abstract (sometimes called a descriptive abstract). This type of abstract (see Figure 9.3) is designed to indicate the subjects dealt with in a paper, much like a table of contents, making it easy for potential readers to decide whether to read the paper. However, because of the descriptive rather than substantive nature, it can seldom serve as a substitute for the full paper. Thus, indicative abstracts should not be used as “heading” abstracts in research papers, but they may be used in other types of publica­tions, such as review papers, conference reports, and government reports. Such indicative abstracts are often of great value to reference librarians.

An effective discussion of the various uses and types of abstracts was provided by McGirr (1973, p. 4), whose conclusions are well worth repeating: “When writing the abstract, remember that it will be published by itself, and should be self-contained. That is, it should contain no bibliographic, figure, or table references. . . . The language should be familiar to the potential reader. Omit obscure abbreviations and acronyms. Write the paper before you write the abstract, if at all possible.”

Unless a long term is used several times within an abstract, do not abbrevi­ate the term. Wait and introduce the appropriate abbreviation at first use in the text (probably in the introduction).

3. ECONOMY OF WORDS

Occasionally, a scientist omits something important from the abstract. By far the most common fault, however, is the inclusion of extraneous detail.

A scientist once had some terribly involved theory about the relation of matter to energy. He then wrote a terribly involved paper. However, the scien­tist, knowing the limitations of editors, realized that the abstract of his paper would have to be short and simple if the paper was to be judged acceptable. So, he spent hours and hours honing his abstract. He eliminated word after word until, finally, all of the verbiage had been removed. What he was left with was the shortest abstract ever written: “E = mc².”

Today, most scientific journals print an abstract before the main text of each paper. Because the abstract precedes the paper itself, and because the editors and reviewers like a bit of orientation, the abstract is almost always the first part of the manuscript read during the review process. Therefore, it is of fun­damental importance that the abstract be written clearly and simply. If you cannot make a good impression in your abstract, your cause may be lost. Very often, the reviewer may be perilously close to a final judgment of your manu­script after reading the abstract alone. This could be because the reviewer has a short attention span (often the case). However, if by definition the abstract is simply a very short version of the whole paper, it is only logical that the reviewer will often reach a preliminary conclusion, and that conclusion is likely to be the correct one. Usually, a good abstract is followed by a good paper; a poor abstract is a harbinger of woes to come.

Because an abstract is required by most journals and because a meeting abstract is a requirement for participation in a great many national and inter­national meetings (participation sometimes being determined on the basis of submitted abstracts), scientists should master the fundamentals of abstract preparation.

When writing the abstract, examine every word carefully. If you can tell your story in 100 words, do not use 200. Economically and scientifically, it doesn’t make sense to waste words. The total communication system can afford only so much verbal abuse. Of more importance to you, the use of clear, significant words will impress the editors and reviewers (not to mention readers), whereas the use of abstruse, verbose constructions might well contribute to a check in the “reject” box on the review form.

Here’s an example of an especially brief abstract, which accompanied a paper by M. V. Berry and colleagues (J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 44:492001, 2011). The title of the paper: “Can apparent superluminal neutrino speeds be explained as a quantum weak measurement?” The abstract: “Probably not.” Should you write abstracts this short? Well, probably not. Normally an abstract should be more informative than this one. But at least, unlike some meandering abstracts, this one answers the question that the research addressed.

4. AKIN TO ABSTRACTS

Some journals include, in addition to abstracts, other components briefly con­veying key points to readers, skimmers, or browsers. For example, some journals ask authors to provide a bulleted list of key messages of their articles, either for posting only online or for publication as part of the article as well. Others, for instance, request a nontechnical summary or a brief statement of impli­cations. Some journals require such items to accompany all papers submitted; others request them only for some or all of the papers accepted for publication. Be aware that you may be asked to provide, in essence, an abstract of your abstract.

Source: Gastel Barbara, Day Robert A. (2016), How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper, Greenwood; 8th edition.

1. GUIDELINES

Now that we have the preliminaries out of the way, we come to the paper itself. Some experienced writers prepare their title and abstract after the paper is written, even though by placement these elements come first. You should, however, have in mind (if not on paper or in the computer) a provisional title and an outline of the paper you propose to write. You should also consider the background of the audience you are writing for so that you will have a basis for determining which terms and procedures need definition or description and which do not. If you do not have a clear purpose in mind, you might go writing off in six directions at once.

It is wise to begin writing the paper while the work is still in progress. This makes the writing easier because everything is fresh in your mind. Furthermore, the writing process itself is likely to point to inconsistencies in the results or perhaps to suggest interesting sidelines that might be followed. Thus, start the writing while the experimental apparatus and materials are still available. If you have coauthors, it is wise to write up the work while they are still available to consult.

The first section of the text proper should, of course, be the introduction. The purpose of the introduction is to supply sufficient background information to allow the reader to understand and evaluate the results of the present study without needing to refer to previous publications on the topic. The introduction
should also provide the rationale for the present study. Above all, you should state briefly and clearly your purpose in writing the paper. Choose references carefully to provide the most important background information. Much of the introduction should be written in present tense because you are referring pri­marily to your problem and the established knowledge relating to it at the start of your work.

Guidelines for a good introduction are as follows: (1) The introduction should present first, with all possible clarity, the nature and scope of the prob­lem investigated. For example, it should indicate why the overall subject area of the research is important. (2) It should briefly review the pertinent literature to orient the reader. It also should identify the gap in the literature that the cur­rent research was intended to address. (3) It should then make clear the objec­tive of the research. In some disciplines or journals, it is customary to state here the hypotheses or research questions that the study addressed. In others, the objective may be signaled by wording such as “in order to determine.” (4) It should state the method of the investigation. If deemed necessary, the reasons for the choice of a particular method should be briefly stated. (5) Finally, in some disci­plines and journals, the standard practice is to end the introduction by stating the principal results of the investigation and the principal conclusions suggested by the results.

An introduction that is structured in this way (see, for example, Figure 10.1) has a “funnel” shape, moving from broad and general to narrow and specific. Such an introduction can comfortably funnel readers into reading about the details of your research.

2. REASONS FOR THE GUIDELINES

The first four guidelines for a good introduction need little discussion, being reasonably well accepted by most scientist-writers, even beginning ones. It is important to keep in mind, however, that the purpose of the introduction is to introduce the paper. Thus, the first rule (definition of the problem) is the car­dinal one. If the problem is not stated in a reasonable, understandable way, readers will have no interest in your solution. Even if the reader labors through your paper, which is unlikely if you haven’t presented the problem in a meaning­ful way, he or she will be unimpressed with the brilliance of your solution. In a sense, a scientific paper is like other types of journalism. In the introduction, you should have a “hook” to gain the reader’s attention. Why did you choose that subject, and why is it important?

The second, third, and fourth guidelines relate to the first. The literature review, specification of objective(s), and identification of method should be presented in such a way that the reader will understand what the problem was and how you tried to resolve it.

Although the conventions of the discipline and the journal should be fol­lowed, persuasive arguments can be made for following the fifth guideline and thus ending the abstract by stating the main results and conclusions. Do not keep the reader in suspense; let the reader follow the development of the evi­dence. An O. Henry surprise ending might make good literature, but it hardly fits the mold of the scientific method.

To expand on that last point: Many authors, especially beginning authors, make the mistake of holding back their more important findings until late in the paper. In extreme cases, authors have sometimes omitted important find­ings from the abstract, presumably in the hope of building suspense while proceeding to a well-concealed, dramatic climax. However, this is a silly gambit that, among knowledgeable scientists, goes over like a double negative at a grammarians’ picnic. Basically, the problem with the surprise ending is that the readers become bored and stop reading long before they get to the punch line. “Reading a scientific article isn’t the same as reading a detective story. We want to know from the start that the butler did it.” (Ratnoff 1981, p. 96).

In short, the introduction provides a road map from problem to solution. This map is so important that a bit of redundancy with the abstract is often desirable.

3. EXCEPTIONS

Introductions to scientific papers generally should follow the guidelines that we have noted. However, exceptions exist. For example, whereas the literature review in the introduction typically should be brief and selective, journals in some disciplines favor an extensive literature review, almost resembling a review article within the paper. Some journals even make this literature review a separate section after the introduction—yielding what might be considered an ILMRAD structure.

A colleague of ours tells of reviewing an introduction drafted by a friend in another field. The introduction contained a lengthy literature review, and our colleague advised the friend to condense it. The friend followed the advice— but after she submitted the paper to a journal, the peer reviewers and editor asked her to expand the literature review. It turned out that, unknown to our colleague, her field and her friend’s had different conventions in this regard. I hope that the friend kept earlier drafts (as is a good habit to follow), so she could easily restore some of what had been deleted.

In short, the conventions in your field and the requirements of your target journal take precedence. See what, if anything, the journal’s instructions to authors say about the content and structure of the introduction. Also look at some papers in the journal that report research analogous to yours, and see what the introductions are like.

4. CITATIONS AND ABBREVIATIONS

If you have previously published a preliminary note or abstract of the work, you should mention this (with the citation) in the introduction. If closely related papers have been or are about to be published elsewhere, you should say so in the introduction, customarily at or near the end. Such references help to keep the literature neat and tidy for those who must search it.

In addition to the preceding rules, keep in mind that your paper may well be read by people outside your narrow specialty. Therefore, in general you should define in the introduction any specialized terms or abbreviations that you will use. By doing so, you can prevent confusion such as one of us experienced in the following situation: An acquaintance who was a law judge kept referring to someone as a GC. Calling a lawyer a gonococcus (gonorrhea-causing bacte­rium) seemed highly unprofessional. It turned out, however, that in law, unlike in medicine, GC stands for “general counsel.”

Source: Gastel Barbara, Day Robert A. (2016), How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper, Greenwood; 8th edition.

1. PURPOSE OF THE SECTION

In the first section of the paper, the introduction, you should have stated the methodology employed in the study. If necessary, you also defended the reasons for your choice of a particular method over competing methods.

Now, in “Materials and Methods” (also designated in some cases by other names, such as “Experimental Procedures”), you must give the full details. Most of this section should be written in the past tense. The main purpose of the mate­rials and methods section is to describe (and if necessary, defend) the experi­mental design and then provide enough detail so that a competent worker can repeat the experiments. Other purposes include providing information that will let readers judge the appropriateness of the experimental methods (and thus the probable validity of the findings) and that will permit assessment of the extent to which the results can be generalized. Many (probably most) readers of your paper will skip this section, because they already know from the introduc­tion the general methods you used, and they probably have no interest in the experimental detail. However, careful writing of this section is critically impor­tant because the cornerstone of the scientific method requires that your results, to be of scientific merit, must be reproducible; and, for the results to be adjudged reproducible, you must provide the basis for repetition of the experiments by others. That experiments are unlikely to be reproduced is beside the point; the potential for reproducing the same or similar results must exist, or your paper does not represent good science.

When your paper is subjected to peer review, a good reviewer will read the materials and methods section carefully. If there is serious doubt that your experiments could be repeated, the reviewer will recommend rejection of your manuscript no matter how awe-inspiring your results.

2. MATERIALS

For materials, include the exact technical specifications, quantities, and source or method of preparation. Sometimes it is even necessary to list pertinent chemical and physical properties of the reagents used. In general, avoid the use of trade names; use of generic or chemical names is usually preferred. This approach avoids the advertising inherent in the trade name. Besides, the non­proprietary name is likely to be known throughout the world, whereas the pro­prietary name may be known only in the country of origin. However, if there are known differences among proprietary products, and if these differences might be critical, then use of the trade name, plus the name of the manufacturer, is essential. When using trade names, which are usually registered trademarks, capitalize them (Teflon, for example) to distinguish them from generic names. Normally, the generic description should immediately follow the trademark; for example, one would refer to Kleenex facial tissues. In general, it is not neces­sary to include trademark symbols (such as ® and ™). However, some journals ask authors to do so.

Experimental animals, plants, and micro-organisms should be identified accurately, usually by genus, species, and strain designations. Sources should be listed and special characteristics (age, sex, and genetic and physiological status) described. If human subjects were used, the criteria for selection should be described, and an “informed consent” statement should be included in the man­uscript. Likewise, ifhuman or animal subjects were used, approval by the appro­priate committee should be noted.

Because the value of your paper (and your reputation) can be damaged if your results are not reproducible, you must describe research materials with great care. Examine the instructions to authors of the journal to which you plan to submit the manuscript, because important specifics are often detailed there. Below is a carefully worded statement applying to cell lines and reagents. It is taken from the information for authors of In Vitro Cellular & Developmen­tal Biology—Animal (known for short as In Vitro Animal), a journal of the Soci­ety for In Vitro Biology.

The source of cells utilized, species, sex, strain, race, age of donor, and whether primary or established should be clearly indicated. The name, city, and state or country of the source of reagents should be stated within parentheses when first cited. Specific tests used for verification of cell lines and novel reagents should be identified. Specific tests for the pres­ence of mycoplasmal contamination of cell lines are recommended. If these tests were not performed, this fact should be clearly stated. Other data relating to unique biological, biochemical, and/or immunological markers should also be included if available. Publication of results in In Vitro Animal is based on the principle that results must be verifiable. Authors are expected to make unique reagents available to qualified inves­tigators. Authors deriving or using cell lines are encouraged to follow the UKCCCR [United Kingdom Coordinating Committee on Cancer Research] Guidelines for the Use of Cell Lines in Cancer Research in respect to validation of identity and infection-free cultures.

3. METHODS

For methods the usual order of presentation is chronological. Obviously, how­ever, related methods should be described together, and straight chronological order cannot always be followed. For example, even if a particular assay was not done until late in the research, the assay method should be described along with the other assay methods, not by itself in a later part of the materials and methods section.

4. HEADINGS

The materials and methods section often has subheadings. To see whether subheadings would indeed be suitable—and, if so, what types are likely to be appropriate—look at analogous papers in your target journal. When possible, construct subheadings that “match” those to be used in the results section. The writing of both sections will be easier if you strive for internal consistency, and the reader will be able to grasp quickly the relationship of a particular method to the related results.

5. MEASUREMENTS AND ANALYSIS

Be precise. Methods are similar to cookbook recipes. If a reaction mixture was heated, give the temperature. Questions such as “how” and “how much” should be precisely answered by the author and not left for the reviewer or the reader to puzzle over.

Statistical analyses are often necessary, but your paper should emphasize the data, not the statistics. Generally, a lengthy description of statistical methods indicates that the writer has recently acquired this information and believes that the readers need similar enlightenment. Ordinary statistical methods gene­rally should be used without comment; advanced or unusual methods may require a literature citation. In some fields, statistical methods or statistical software customarily is identified at the end of the materials and methods section.

And again, be careful of your syntax. A recent manuscript described what could be called a disappearing method. The author stated, “The radioactivity in the tRNA region was determined by the trichloroacetic acid-soluble method of Britten et al.” And then there is the painful method: “After standing in boil­ing water for an hour, examine the flask.”

6. NEED FOR REFERENCES

In describing the methods of the investigations, you should give (or direct read­ers to) sufficient details so that a competent worker could repeat the experi­ments. If your method is new (unpublished), you must provide all of the needed detail. If, however, the method has been published in a journal, the literature reference should be given. For a method well known to readers, only the liter­ature reference is needed. For a method with which readers might not be fami­liar, a few words of description tend to be worth adding, especially if the journal in which the method was described might not be readily accessible.

If several alternative methods are commonly employed, it is useful to iden­tify your method briefly as well as to cite the reference. For example, it is better to state “cells were broken by ultrasonic treatment as previously described (9)” than to state “cells were broken as previously described (9).”

7. TABLES AND FIGURES

When many microbial strains or mutants are used in a study, prepare strain tables identifying the source and properties of mutants, bacteriophages, plas­mids, etc. The properties of multiple chemical compounds can also be presented in tabular form, often to the benefit of both the author and the reader. Tables can be used for other such types of information.

A method, strain, or the like used in only one ofseveral experiments reported in the paper can sometimes be described in the results section. If the description is brief enough, it may be included in a table footnote or figure legend if the journal allows.

Figures also can aid in presenting methods. Examples include flow charts of experimental protocols and diagrams of experimental apparatus.

8. CORRECT FORM AND GRAMMAR

Do not make the common error of including some of the results in this section. There is only one rule for a properly written materials and methods section: Enough information must be given so that the experiments could be reproduced by a competent colleague.

A good test, by the way (and a good way to avoid rejection of your manuscript), is to give a copy of your finished manuscript to a colleague and ask if he or she can follow the methodology. It is quite possible that in reading about your mate­rials and methods, your colleague will pick up a glaring error that you missed simply because you were too close to the work. For example, you might have described your distillation apparatus, procedure, and products with infinite care—but then neglected to define the starting material or to state the distilla­tion temperature.

Mistakes in grammar and punctuation are not always serious; the meaning of general concepts, as expressed in the introduction and discussion, can often survive a bit of linguistic mayhem. In materials and methods, however, exact and specific items are being dealt with and precise use ofEnglish is a must. Even a missing comma can cause havoc, as in this sentence: “Employing a straight platinum wire rabbit, sheep and human blood agar plates were inoculated. . . .” That sentence was in trouble right from the start because the first word is a dangling participle. Comprehension was not totally lost, however, until the author neglected to put a comma after “wire.”

Authors often are advised, quite rightly, to minimize use of passive voice. However, in the materials and methods section—as in the current paragraph— passive voice often can validly be used, for although what was done must be specified, who did it is often irrelevant. Thus, you may write, for example, “Mice were injected with . . .” rather than “I injected the mice with . . .”; “A technician injected the mice with . . .”; or “A student injected the mice with. . . .” Alterna­tively, you may say, for example, “We injected . . . ,” even if a single member of the team did that part of the work. (Although belief persists that journals pro­hibit use of first person, many journals permit use of “I” and “we.”)

Because the materials and methods section usually gives short, discrete bits of information, the writing sometimes becomes telescopic; details essential to the meaning may then be omitted. The most common error is to state the action without, when necessary, stating the agent of the action. In the sentence “To determine its respiratory quotient, the organism was, . . the only stated agent of the action is “the organism,” and we doubt that the organism was capable of making such a determination. Here is a similar sentence: “Having completed the study, the bacteria were of no further interest.” Again, we doubt that the bacteria “completed the study”; if they did, their lack of “further interest” was certainly an act of ingratitude.

“Blood samples were taken from 48 informed and consenting patients . . . the subjects ranged in age from 6 months to 22 years” (Pediatr. Res. 6:26, 1972). There is no grammatical problem with that sentence, but the telescopic writ­ing leaves the reader wondering just how the 6-month-old infants gave their informed consent.

And, of course, always watch for spelling errors, both in the manuscript and in the proofs. We are not astronomers, but we suspect that a word is misspelled in the following sentence: “We rely on theatrical calculations to give the lifetime of a star on the main sequence” (Annu. Rev. Astron. Astrophys. 1:100, 1963). Although they might have been done with a flourish, presumably the calcula­tions were theoretical, not theatrical.

Be aware that a spell-checker can introduce such errors and therefore can­not substitute for careful proofreading. One recent example: a spell-checker’s conversion of“pacemakers in dogs” to “peacemakers in dogs.” We have known some dogs that could benefit from peacemakers, but we rightly suspected that this wording was not intended in writing about canine cardiology.

Source: Gastel Barbara, Day Robert A. (2016), How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper, Greenwood; 8th edition.

1. CONTENT OF THE RESULTS

So now we come to the core of the paper, the data. This part of the paper is called the results section.

Contrary to popular belief, you shouldn’t start the results section by describ­ing methods that you inadvertently omitted from the materials and methods section.

There are usually two ingredients of the results section. First, you should give some kind of overall description of the experiments, providing the big pic­ture without repeating the experimental details previously provided in materi­als and methods. Second, you should present the data. Your results should be presented in the past tense. (See “Tense in Scientific Writing” in Chapter 30.)

Of course, it isn’t quite that easy. How do you present the data? A simple transfer of data from laboratory notebook to manuscript will hardly do.

Most importantly, in the manuscript you should present representative data rather than endlessly repetitive data. The fact that you could perform the same experiment 100 times without significant divergence in results might be of con­siderable interest to your major professor, but editors, not to mention readers, prefer a little bit of predigestion. Aaronson (1977, p. 10) said it another way: “The compulsion to include everything, leaving nothing out, does not prove that one has unlimited information; it proves that one lacks discrimination.” Exactly the same concept, and it is an important one, was stated almost a century earlier by John Wesley Powell, a geologist who served as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1888. In Powell’s words: “The fool collects facts; the wise man selects them.”

2. HOW TO HANDLE NUMBERS

If one or only a few determinations are to be presented, they should be treated descriptively in the text. Repetitive determinations should be given in tables or graphs.

Any determinations, repetitive or otherwise, should be meaningful. Suppose that, in a particular group of experiments, a number of variables were tested (one at a time, of course). Those variables that affect the reaction become deter­minations or data and, if extensive, are tabulated or graphed. Those variables that do not seem to affect the reaction need not be tabulated or presented; how­ever, it is often important to define even the negative aspects of your experi­ments. It is often good insurance to state what you did not find under the conditions of your experiments. Someone else very likely may find different results under different conditions.

If statistics are used to describe the results, they should be meaningful statistics. Erwin Neter, who was editor in chief of Infection and Immunity, told a classic story to emphasize this point. He referred to a paper that reputedly read: “33 1/3% of the mice used in this experiment were cured by the test drug; 33 1/3% of the test population were unaffected by the drug and remained in a moribund condition; the third mouse got away.”

3. STRIVE FOR CLARITY

The results should be short and sweet, without verbiage. Mitchell (1968) quoted Einstein as having said, “If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.” Although the results section is the most important part, it is often the shortest, particularly if it is preceded by a well-written materials and methods section and followed by a well-written discussion.

The results need to be clearly and simply stated because it is the results that constitute the new knowledge that you are contributing to the world. The earlier parts of the paper (introduction, materials and methods) are designed to tell why and how you got the results; the later part of the paper (discussion) is designed to tell what they mean. Obviously, therefore, the whole paper must stand or fall on the basis of the results. Thus, the results must be presented with crys­tal clarity.

4. AVOID REDUNDANCY

Do not be guilty of redundancy in the results. The most common fault is the repetition in words of what is already apparent to the reader from examining the figures and tables. Even worse is the actual presentation, in the text, of all or many of the data shown in the tables or figures. This grave sin is committed so frequently that it is commented on at length, with examples, in the chapters on how to prepare tables and illustrations (Chapters 16 and 17).

Do not be verbose in citing figures and tables. Do not say, “It is clearly shown in Table 1 that nocillin inhibited the growth of N. gonorrhoeae.” Say, “Nocillin inhibited the growth of N. gonorrhoeae (Table 1).” The latter format has multiple benefits. Because it is briefer, it helps authors comply with journals’ word limits. It also is more readable. It also directs attention to what is most important: the findings, not the table or figure.

Some writers go too far in avoiding verbiage, however. Such writers often fail to provide clear antecedents for pronouns, especially “it.” Here is an item from a medical manuscript: “The left leg became numb at times and she walked it off. . . . On her second day, the knee was better, and on the third day it had completely disappeared.” The antecedent for both “its” is presumably “the numbness,” but the wording in both instances seems a result of dumbness.

5. A SUPPLEMENT ON SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL ONLINE

Increasingly, journals are electronically posting material supplementary to papers being published. Although sometimes this material regards methods, most commonly it provides information about the results. For example, addi­tional data may be posted, or additional tables and figures may be provided online. Whether authors may submit such supplementary material, and if so how, varies among journals. Also, norms regarding what supplementary mate­rials to provide online vary among research fields. If you think that providing supplementary material for online posting would be desirable, consult the instructions to authors of your target journal. If possible, also see what papers analogous to yours have done in this regard. Keep in mind, too, that the journal editor may ask you to place some of your material in an online supplement.

Source: Gastel Barbara, Day Robert A. (2016), How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper, Greenwood; 8th edition.

1. DISCUSSION AND VERBIAGE

The discussion (which some journals term a comment, especially for short papers) is harder to define than the other sections. Thus, it is usually the hard­est section to write. And, whether you know it or not, many papers are rejected by journal editors because of a faulty discussion, even though the data of the paper might be both valid and interesting. Even more likely, the true meaning of the data may be completely obscured by the interpretation presented in the discussion, again resulting in rejection.

Many, if not most, discussion sections are too long and verbose. As Doug Savile said, “Occasionally, I recognize what I call the squid technique: the author is doubtful about his facts or his reasoning and retreats behind a protective cloud of ink” (Tableau, September 1972). Another reason some discussions are long and hard to follow is that many authors think they must avoid first per­son. If you mean “I found that . . .” or “We conclude that, . . .” say so. Try to avoid wordier, and sometimes more ambiguous, constructions such as “It was found in the present investigation that . . .” and “It is concluded that.”

Some discussion sections remind one of the diplomat, described by Allen Drury in Advise and Consent (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1959, p. 47), who characteristically gave “answers which go winding and winding off through the interstices of the English language until they finally go shimmering away alto­gether and there is nothing left but utter confusion and a polite smile.”

2. COMPONENTS OF THE DISCUSSION

What are the essential features of a good discussion? The main components will be provided if the following injunctions are heeded.

1. Try to present the principles, relationships, and generalizations shown by the results. And bear in mind, in a good discussion, you discuss—you do not recapitulate—the results.
2. Point out any exceptions or any lack of correlation and define unsettled points. Never take the high-risk alternative of trying to cover up or fudge data that do not quite fit.
3. Show how your results and interpretations agree (or contrast) with pre­viously published work.
4. Don’t be shy; discuss the theoretical implications of your work, as well as any possible practical applications.
5. State your conclusions as clearly as possible.
6. Summarize your evidence for each conclusion. Or, as the wise old scien­tist will tell you, “Never assume anything except a 4-percent mortgage.”

Much as the methods and the results should correspond to each other, the introduction and the discussion should function as a pair. At least implicitly, the introduction should have posed one or more questions. The discussion should indicate what the findings say about the answers. Failure to address the initial questions commonly afflicts discussions. Be sure the discussion answers what the introduction asked.

Whereas the content of the introduction commonly moves from the general topic to your specific research, in sort of a funnel format, the discussion tends to do largely the reverse, much like an inverted funnel. For example, a well- structured discussion may first restate the main findings, then discuss how they relate to findings of previous research, then note implications and applications, and perhaps then identify unanswered questions well suited for future research. In the introduction, you invited readers into your research venue; in the dis­cussion, you usher them out, now well informed about your research and its meaning.

3. FACTUAL RELATIONSHIPS

In simple terms, the primary purpose of the discussion is to show the relation­ships among observed facts. To emphasize this point, the story may be told about the biologist who trained a flea.

After training the flea for many months, the biologist was able to get a response to certain commands. The most gratifying of the experiments was the one in which the professor would shout the command “Jump,” and the flea would leap into the air each time the command was given.

The professor was about to submit this remarkable feat to posterity via a scientific journal, but he—in the manner of the true scientist—decided to take his experiments one step further. He sought to determine the location of the receptor organ involved. In one experiment, he removed the legs of the flea, one at a time. The flea obligingly continued to jump upon command, but as each successive leg was removed, its jumps became less spectacular. Finally, with the removal of its last leg, the flea remained motionless. Time after time the command failed to get the usual response.

The professor decided that at last he could publish his findings. He set pen to paper and described in meticulous detail the experiments executed over the preceding months. His conclusion was one intended to startle the scientific world: When the legs of a flea are removed, the flea can no longer hear.

Claude Bishop, the dean of Canadian science editors, told a similar story. A science teacher set up a simple experiment to show her class the danger of alcohol. She set up two glasses, one containing water, the other containing gin. Into each she dropped a worm. The worm in the water swam merrily around. The worm in the gin quickly died. “What does this experiment prove?” she asked. A student from the back row piped up: “It proves that if you drink gin you won’t have worms.”

4. NOTING STRENGTHS AND LIMITATIONS

The discussion is a place to note substantial strengths and limitations ofresearch being reported. Some authors feel awkward about including such content. However, doing so can aid readers, and it can help show editors and referees (peer reviewers) that your work is publishable.

Some authors consider it immodest to note strengths of their work—for example, superior experimental techniques, large sample size, or long follow­up. However, such information can aid readers in determining how definitive the findings are. It also can help persuade peer reviewers and editors that your work deserves publication.

What if research had significant limitations—such as difficulties with a technique, a relatively small sample size, or relatively short follow-up? Some authors might try to hide such limitations. However, doing so runs counter to the openness that should characterize science. And astute reviewers, editors, or readers might well notice the limitations—and assume, either to themselves or in writing, that you were too naive to notice them. It is better, therefore, to identify substantial limitations yourself. In doing so, you may be able to discuss what impact, if any, the limitations are likely to have on the conclusions that can be drawn.

Not every discussion needs to discuss strengths or limitations of the research. However, if research has strengths or limitations major enough to be worthy of note, consider addressing them in the discussion.

5. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PAPER

Too often, the significance of the results is not discussed or not discussed ade­quately. If the reader of the paper finds himself or herself asking “So what?” after reading the discussion, the chances are that the author became so engrossed with the trees (the data) that he or she didn’t really notice how much sunshine had appeared in the forest.

The discussion should end with a short summary or conclusion regarding the significance of the work. (In some journals, papers include a separate con­clusion section.) We like the way Anderson and Thistle (1947) said it: “Finally, good writing, like good music, has a fitting climax. Many a paper loses much of its effect because the clear stream of the discussion ends in a swampy delta.” Or, in the words of T.S. Eliot, many scientific papers end “Not with a bang but a whimper.”

6. DEFINING SCIENTIFIC TRUTH

In showing the relationships among observed facts, you do not need to reach cosmic conclusions. Seldom will you be able to illuminate the whole truth; more often, the best you can do is shine a spotlight on one area of the truth. Your one area of truth can be illuminated by your data; if you extrapolate to a bigger picture than that shown by your data, you may appear foolish to the point that even your data-supported conclusions are cast into doubt.

One of the more meaningful thoughts in poetry was expressed by Sir Rich­ard Burton in The Kasidah:

All Faith is false, all Faith is true;

Truth is the shattered mirror strown

In myriad bits; while each believes

His little bit the whole to own.

So exhibit your little piece of the mirror, or shine a spotlight on one area of the truth. The “whole truth” is a subject best left to the ignoramuses, who loudly proclaim its discovery every day.

When you describe the meaning of your little bit of truth, do it simply. The simplest statements evoke the most wisdom; verbose language and fancy tech­nical words are used to convey shallow thought.

Source: Gastel Barbara, Day Robert A. (2016), How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper, Greenwood; 8th edition.

1. INGREDIENTS OF THE ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The main text of a scientific paper is usually followed by two additional sections, namely, the acknowledgments and the references.

As to the acknowledgments, two possible ingredients require consideration. First, you should acknowledge any significant technical help that you received from any individual, whether in your laboratory or elsewhere. You should also acknowledge the source of special equipment, cultures, or other materials. You might, for example, say something like, “Thanks are due to J. Jones for assistance with the experiments and to R. Smith for valuable dis­cussion.” (Of course, most of us who have been around for a while recognize that this is simply a thinly veiled way of admitting that Jones did the work and Smith explained what it meant.)

Second, it is usually the acknowledgments wherein you should acknowledge any outside financial assistance, such as grants, contracts, or fellowships. (In this time of scarce funding, we can be especially appreciative of such support.)

2. BEING COURTEOUS

The important element in acknowledgments is simple courtesy. There isn’t anything really scientific about this section of a scientific paper. The same rules that would apply in any other area of civilized life should apply here. If you borrowed a neighbor’s lawn mower, you would (we hope) remember to say thanks for it. If your neighbor gave you a really good idea for landscaping your property and you then put that idea into effect, you would (we hope) remember to say thank you. It is the same in science; if your neighbor (your colleague) provided important ideas, important supplies, or important equipment, you should thank him or her. And you must say thanks in print, because that is the way that scientific landscaping is presented to its public.

A word of caution is in order. Before mentioning someone in an acknow­ledgment, you should obtain permission from him or her. Often, it is wise to show the proposed wording of the acknowledgment to the person whose help you are acknowledging. He or she might well believe that your acknowledg­ment is insufficient or (worse) that it is too effusive. If you have been working so closely with an individual that you have borrowed either equipment or ideas, that person is most likely a friend or valued colleague. It would be silly to risk either your friendship or the opportunities for future collaboration by placing in print a thoughtless word that might be offensive. An inappropriate thank- you can be worse than none at all, and if you value the advice and help of friends and colleagues, you should be careful to thank them in a way that pleases rather than displeases them.

Furthermore, if your acknowledgment relates to an idea, suggestion, or interpretation, be very specific about it. If your colleague’s input is too broadly stated, he or she could well be placed in the sensitive and embarrassing position of having to defend the entire paper. Certainly, if your colleague is not a coau­thor, you must not make him or her a responsible party to the basic consider­ations treated in your paper. Indeed, your colleague may not agree with some of your central points, and it is not good science and not good ethics for you to phrase the acknowledgments in a way that seemingly denotes endorsement.

We wish that the word “wish” would disappear from acknowledgments. Wish is a perfectly good word when you mean wish, as in “I wish you success.” However, if you say “I wish to thank John Jones,” you are wasting words. You may also be introducing the implication that “I wish that I could thank John Jones for his help but it wasn’t all that great.” “I thank John Jones” is sufficient.

Source: Gastel Barbara, Day Robert A. (2016), How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper, Greenwood; 8th edition.

1. RULES TO FOLLOW

There are two rules to follow in the references section, just as in the acknow­ledgments section.

First, list only significant published references. References to unpublished data, abstracts, theses, and other secondary materials should not clutter up the references or literature-cited section. If such a reference seems essential, you may add it parenthetically or, in some journals, as a footnote in the text. A paper that has been accepted for publication can be listed in the literature cited, citing the name of the journal followed by “in press” or “forthcoming.”

Second, ensure that all parts of every reference are accurate. Doing so may entail checking every reference against the original publication before the manuscript is submitted and perhaps again at the proof stage. Take it from an erstwhile librarian: There are far more mistakes in the references section of a paper than anywhere else.

Don’t forget, as a final check, to ensure that all references cited in the text are indeed listed in the literature cited and that all references listed in the liter­ature cited are indeed cited somewhere in the text.

2. ELECTRONIC AIDS TO CITATION

Checking that every reference is accurate, and that all cited items appear in the reference list, has become much easier in the electronic era. Common word­processing programs include features for tasks such as creating, numbering, and formatting footnotes and endnotes. These features can aid in citing refer­ences and developing reference lists. Some journals, however, say not to use these features, which can interfere with their publishing process. Check the journal’s instructions to authors in this regard.

Perhaps more notably, citation-management software—such as EndNote, Reference Manager, and RefWorks—lets a researcher develop a database of references and use it to create reference lists in the formats of many journals. Rather than keying in the information on each reference, you may be able to import it from bibliographic databases. Once the information is accurately entered, it should remain correct whenever it appears in a reference. Do, how­ever, still check references. Electronic gremlins sometimes lurk. So does human error; if somehow you indicated the wrong reference, the wrong reference will appear.

If you are not using reference-management software, consider looking into doing so. Using such software can especially save you time ifyou will cite some of the same references in multiple publications or if journals in your field have a variety of reference styles. Ifyou study or work at a university or other research institution, you might easily be able to obtain such software through it. Also, some universities provide instruction in using such software, for example, through their libraries. Consider checking.

3. CITATIONS IN THE TEXT

Many authors use slipshod methods in citing literature. A common offender is the “handwaving reference,” in which the reader is glibly referred to “Smith’s elegant contribution” without any hint of what Smith reported or how Smith’s results relate to the present author’s results. If a reference is worth citing, the reader should be told why.

Even worse is the nasty habit some authors have of insulting the authors of previous studies. It is probably all right to say “Smith (2015) did not study. . . .” But it is not all right to say “Smith (2015) totally overlooked, . . .” “Smith (2015) ignored, . . .” or “Smith (2015) failed to. . . .”

Some authors get into the habit of putting all citations at the end of sentences. This is wrong. The reference should be placed at that point in the sentence to which it applies. Michaelson (1990) gave this example:

We have examined a digital method of spread-spectrum modulation for multiple-access satellite communication and for digital mobile radiote­lephony.^1,2

Note how much clearer the citations become when the sentence is recast as follows:

We have examined a digital method of spread-spectrum modulation for use with Smith’s development of multiple-access communication¹ and with Brown’s technique of digital mobile radiotelephony.²

4. REFERENCE STYLES

Journals vary considerably in their style of handling references. O’Connor (1978) looked at 52 scientific journals and found 33 different styles for listing references. Some journals include article titles within references, and some do not. Some insist on inclusive pagination, whereas others print the numbers of first pages only.

If you use an electronic reference management system, and if that system includes the styles of all the journals in which you might like to publish, you might not need to concern yourself in detail with differences among refer­ence styles. In that case, perhaps just skim—or even skip—the sections of this chapter that discuss formats for citing and listing references. If, however, you might at least occasionally be preparing and citing references by traditional means, we advise you to read these sections.

Whether electronically or otherwise, the smart author retains full informa­tion about every item that might be cited. Then, in preparing a manuscript, he or she has all the needed information. It is easy to edit out information; it is indeed laborious to track down 20 or so references to add article titles or end­ing pages when a journal editor requires you to do so. Even if you know that the journal to which you plan to submit your manuscript uses a short form (no article titles, for example), you would still be wise to establish your reference list in the complete form. This is good practice because (1) the journal you selected may reject your manuscript, and you may then decide to submit the manuscript to another journal, perhaps one with more demanding requirements, and (2) it is more than likely that you will use some of the same references again, in later research papers, review papers (and most review journals demand full references), or books. When you submit a manuscript for publication, make sure that the references are presented according to the instructions for authors. If the references are radically different, the editor and referees may assume that this is a sign of previous rejection or, at best, obvious evidence of lack of care.

Although there is an almost infinite variety of reference styles, most jour­nals cite references in one of three general ways that may be referred to as name and year, alphabet-number, and citation order.

4.1. Name and Year System

The name and year system (often called the Harvard system) has been very popu­lar for many years and is used by many journals and books, including this one. Disciplines in which it is popular include the social sciences. Its big advantage is convenience to the author. Because the references are unnumbered, refer­ences can be added or deleted easily. No matter how many times the reference list is modified, “Smith and Jones (2015)” remains exactly that. If there are two or more “Smith and Jones (2015)” references, the problem is easily handled by listing the first as “Smith and Jones (2015a),” the second as “Smith and Jones (2015b),” and so on. The disadvantages of name and year relate to readers and publishers. The disadvantage to the reader occurs when (often in the introduc­tion) many references must be cited within one sentence or paragraph. Some­times the reader must jump over several lines of parenthetical references before he or she can again pick up the text. Even two or three references, cited together, can distract the reader. The disadvantage to the publisher is obvious: increased cost. When “Higginbotham, Hernandez, and Chowdhary (2015)” can be con­verted to “(7),” printing costs can be reduced.

Because some papers are written by an unwieldy number of authors, most journals that use name and year have an “et al.” (meaning “and others”) rule. Commonly, it works as follows. Names are always used in citing papers with either one or two authors; for example, “Smith (2015),” “Smith and Jones (2015).” If the paper has three authors, list all three the first time the paper is cited, for example, “Smith, Jones, and Nguyen (2015).” If the same paper is cited again, it can be shorted to “Smith et al. (2015).” When a cited paper has four or more authors, it should be cited as “Smith et al. (2015)” even in the first citation. In the references section, some journals prefer that all authors be listed (no matter how many); other journals cite only the first three authors and follow with “et al.”

4.2. Alphabet-Number System

This system, citation by number from an alphabetized list of references, is a modification of the name and year system. Citation by numbers keeps print­ing expenses within bounds; the alphabetized list, particularly if it is long, is relatively easy for authors to prepare and readers (especially librarians) to use.

Some authors who have habitually used name and year tend to dislike the alphabet-number system, claiming the citation of numbers cheats the reader. The reader should be told, the argument goes, the name of the person associated with the phenomenon; sometimes, the reader should also be told the date, on the grounds that a 1914 reference might be viewed differently than a 2014 reference.

Fortunately, these arguments can be overcome. As you cite references in the text, decide whether names or dates are important. If they are not (as is usually the case), use only the reference number: “Pretyrosine is quantitatively converted to phenylalanine under these conditions (13).” Ifyou want to feature the name of the author, do it within the context of the sentence: “The role of the carotid sinus in the regulation of respiration was discovered by Heymans (13).” If you want to feature the date, you can also do that within the sentence: “Strep­tomycin was first used in the treatment of tuberculosis in 1945 (13).”

4.3. Citation Order System

The citation order system is simply a system of citing the references (by num­ber) in the order in which they appear in the paper. This system avoids the substantial printing expense of the name and year system, and readers often like it because they can quickly refer to the references, if they so desire, in one-two-three order as they come to them in the text. It is a useful system for a journal that is basically a “note” journal, each paper containing only a few references. For long papers, with many references, citation order might not be a good system. It might not be good for the author because of the substantial renumbering chore that can result from adding or deleting references. It might not be ideal for the reader, because the non-alphabetical presentation of the reference list may result in separation of various references to works by the same author.

The first edition of this book (Day 1979, p. 40) stated that the alphabet- number system “seems to be slowly gaining ascendancy.” Soon thereafter, however, the first version of the “Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Sub­mitted to Biomedical Journals” appeared, advocating the citation order system for the cooperating journals. Several hundred biomedical journals have adopted the “Uniform Requirements,” which have evolved over the years and have now been retitled “Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals” (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors 2014). Thus, it is not now clear which citation sys­tem, if any, will gain ascendancy. The “Uniform Requirements” document, as it still is often known, is impressive in so many ways that it has long had a powerful impact. It is in substantial agreement with a standard prepared by the American National Standards Institute (1977). With regard to literature cita­tion, however, other usage also remains strong.

5. TITLES AND INCLUSIVE PAGES

Should article titles be given in references? Normally, you must follow the style of the journal; if the journal allows a choice (and some do), we recommend that you give complete references. By denoting the overall subjects, the article titles make it simple for interested readers (and librarians) to decide whether they need to consult none, some, or all of the cited references.

The use of inclusive pagination (first and last page numbers) makes it easy for potential users to distinguish between one-page notes and 50-page review articles. Users may wish to proceed differently depending on the number of pages involved.

6. JOURNAL ABBREVIATIONS

Although journal styles vary widely, one aspect of reference citation has been standardized: abbreviations of journal names. As the result of widespread adoption of a standard (American National Standards Institute 1969), almost all of the major journals and secondary services now use the same system of abbreviation. Previously, most journals abbreviated journal names (significant printing expense can be avoided by abbreviation), but there was no unifor­mity. The Journal of the American Chemical Society was variously abbreviated to “J. Amer. Chem. Soc.,” “Jour. Am. Chem. Soc.,” “J.A.C.S.,” and so forth. These differing systems posed problems for authors and publishers alike. Now there is essentially only one system, and it is uniform. The word “Journal” is now always abbreviated “J.” (Some journals omit the periods after the abbreviations.) By noting a few of the rules, authors can abbreviate many journal titles, even unfa­miliar ones, without referring to a source list. It is helpful to know, for example, that all “ology” words are abbreviated at the “l.” (“Bacteriology” is abbreviated “Bacteriol.”; “Physiology” is abbreviated “Physiol.,” etc.) Thus, if one memo­rizes the abbreviations of words commonly used in titles, most journal titles can be abbreviated with ease. An exception to remember is that one-word titles (Science, Biochemistry) are never abbreviated.

Appendix 1 lists the abbreviations for commonly used words in periodical titles. If you are unsure how to abbreviate a journal title, you can often discern the correct abbreviation from a listing in a bibliographic database, from infor­mation in the journal, or from a previous citation of the journal. Abbreviations for the titles of many journals in the biomedical sciences and related fields can be obtained from the PubMed journals database (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nlm catalog/journals).

7. SOME TRENDS IN REFERENCE FORMAT

Not all journals abbreviate journal titles in references. For example, APA style (Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association 2010, p. 185) calls for stating periodical titles in full. More generally, journals may increasingly be including full journal titles in references. Earlier, when journals appeared only in print, publishers favored abbreviating journal titles because it saved valu­able space, thus saving paper costs or allowing more papers to be published. Today, with many journals appearing mainly or solely online, the space saved may be less of a consideration than are convenience to authors and clarity to readers. Writing out journal titles in full may serve especially well in journals that publish interdisciplinary papers and thus have readers who might not understand the abbreviations of some words in the titles of cited journals.

If a journal article has been published online, either exclusively or as well as in print, the publisher may have assigned it a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), which specifies a persistent link to its location on the Internet. If an article has a DOI, commonly it appears on the first page. Some reference formats include providing the DOI, if one exists, at the end of the reference. Additional infor­mation about DOIs is available at www.doi.org.

8. EXAMPLES OF DIFFERENT REFERENCE STYLES

So that you can see at a glance the differences among the three main systems of referencing, here are three sample references as they might appear in the references section of a journal. (In some journals, references in these systems will look somewhat different from those below because journals differ among themselves in items such as how, if at all, they use italics and boldface in refer­ences.)

8.1. Name and Year System

Alvarez GA, Suter D, and Kaiser R. 2015. Localization-delocalization transi­tion in the dynamics of dipolar-coupled nuclear spins. Science 349:846­848.

Bern C. 2015. Chagas’ disease. N. Engl. J. Med. 373:456-466.

Shipman WM. 2015. Handbook for science public information officers. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

8.2. Alphabet-Number System

1. Alvarez, G. A., D. Suter, and R. Kaiser. 2015. Localization-delocalization transition in the dynamics of dipolar-coupled nuclear spins. Science 349:846-848.
2. Bern, C. 2015. Chagas’ disease. N. Engl. J. Med. 373:456-466.
3. Shipman, W. M. 2015. Handbook for science public information officers. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

8.3. Citation Order System

1. Bern C. Chagas’ disease. N Engl J Med. 2015;373:456-66.
2. Shipman WM. Handbook for science public information officers. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015.
3. Alvarez GA, Suter D, Kaiser R. Localization-delocalization transition in the dynamics of dipolar-coupled nuclear spins. Science. 2015;349:846-48.

In addition to its non-alphabetical arrangement of references, the citation order system differs from the others in its advocacy of eliminating periods after abbreviations (of journal titles, for example), periods after authors’ initials, and commas after authors’ surnames.

9. CITING ELECTRONIC MATERIAL

The Internet increasingly contains material appropriate for citation. In partic­ular, many scientific papers now are appearing in electronic journals or being posted online as well as appearing in print. In addition, some reports, databases, and other items accessed online can be valid to cite.

Accordingly, formats have been developed, and are continuing to be devel­oped, for citing electronic materials. These formats appear in recent editions of style manuals and in the instructions to authors of some journals. If you wish to cite electronic material, begin by consulting the instructions to authors of your target journal. These instructions may show the format(s) to use or direct you to a source of guidance in print or online. Also, you may find it useful to look in the journal for examples of references listing electronic materials.

10. ONE MORE REASON TO CITE CAREFULLY

Accurate citation is part of being a rigorous researcher. Whether you use refer­ence management software or prepare references by traditional means, ensure that the right reference is cited in the right place, that all information in every citation is accurate, and that content from the cited sources is accurately reported. Such accuracy is important in ensuring that your paper is useful to readers.

And, on a very practical note, careful citation helps keep you from alienating those evaluating your paper. Commonly, some of the referees (peer reviewers) chosen by editors are researchers whose work your paper cites. If your refer­ence section lists their writings inaccurately, or if your text misrepresents their findings or conclusions, they might well question whether you are a careful researcher.

So, take the same care with your references that you do with other aspects of your work. The effort is likely to serve you well.

Source: Gastel Barbara, Day Robert A. (2016), How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper, Greenwood; 8th edition.

1. WHEN TO USE TABLES

Before proceeding to the “how to” of tables, let us first examine the question of “whether to.”

As a rule, do not construct a table unless repetitive data must be presented. There are two reasons for this general rule. First, it is simply not good science to regurgitate reams of data just because you have them in your laboratory notebooks; only samples and breakpoints need be given. Second, the cost of publishing tables can be high compared with that of text, and all of us involved with the generation and publication of scientific literature should worry about the cost.

If you made (or need to present) only a few determinations, give the data in the text. Tables 16.1 and 16.2 are useless, yet they are typical of many tables that are submitted to journals.

Table 16.1 is faulty because two of the columns give standard conditions, not variables and not data. If temperature is a variable in the experiments, it can have its column. If all experiments were done at the same temperature, however, this single bit of information should be noted in the materials and methods section and perhaps as a footnote to the table, but not in a column in the table. The data presented in the table can be given in the text itself in a form that is readily comprehensible to the reader, without taking up space with a table. Very simply, these results would read: “Aeration of the growth medium was essential for the growth of Streptomyces coelicolor. At room temperature (24°C), no growth was evident in stationary (unaerated) cultures, whereas sub­stantial growth (OD, 78 Klett units) occurred in shaken cultures.”

Table 16.2 has no columns of identical readings, and it looks like a good table. But is it? The independent variable column (temperature) looks reason­able enough, but the dependent variable column (growth) has a suspicious number of zeros. You should question any table with a large number of zeros (whatever the unit of measurement) or a large number of 100s when percent­ages are used. Table 16.2 is a useless table because all it tells us is that “The oak seedlings grew at temperatures between 20 and 40°C; no measurable growth occurred at temperatures below 20°C or above 40°C.”

In addition to zeros and 100s, be suspicious of plus and minus signs. Table 16.3 is of a type that often appears in print, although it is obviously not very informative. All this table tells us is that “S. griseus, S. coelicolor, S. everycolor, and S. rainbowensky grew under aerobic conditions, whereas S. nocolor and S. greenicus required anaerobic conditions.” Whenever a table, or columns within a table, can be readily put into words, do it.

Some authors believe that all numerical data must be put in a table. Table 16.4 is a sad example. It gets sadder when we learn (at the end of the footnote) that the results were not statistically significant anyway (P = 0.21). If these data were worth publishing (which seems doubtful), one sentence in the results would have done the job: “The difference between the failure rates—14 percent (5 of 35) for nocillin and 26 percent (9 of 34) for potassium penicillin V—was not significant (P = 0.21).”

In presenting numbers, give only significant figures. Nonsignificant figures may mislead the reader by creating a false sense of precision; they also make comparison of the data more difficult. Unessential data, such as laboratory numbers, results of simple calculations, and columns that show no significant variations, should be omitted.

Another very common but often useless table is the word list. Such a list might be suitable for a slide in a presentation, but it does not belong in a sci­entific paper. Table 16.5 is an example. This information could easily be pre­sented in the text. A good copy editor will kill this kind of table and incorporate the data into the text. Yet, when copy editors do so (and this leads to the next rule about tables), they often find that much or all of the information was already in the text. Thus, the rule: Present the data in the text, or in a table, or in a figure. Never present the same data in more than one way. Of course, selected data can be singled out for discussion in the text.

Tables 16.1 to 16.5 provide typical examples of the kinds of material that should not be tabulated. Now let us look at material that should be tabulated.

2. HOW TO ARRANGE TABULAR MATERIAL

Having decided to tabulate, you ask yourself the question: “How do I arrange the data?” Since a table has both left-right and up-down dimensions, you have two choices. The data can be presented either horizontally or vertically. But can does not mean should; the data should be organized so that the like elements read down, not across.

Examine Tables 16.6 and 16.7. They are equivalent, except that Table 16.6 reads across, whereas Table 16.7 reads down. To use an old fishing expression, Table 16.6 is “bass ackward.” Table 16.7 is the preferred format because it allows the reader to grasp the information more easily, and it is more compact and thus less expensive to print. The point about ease for the reader would seem to be obvious. (Did you ever try to add numbers that were listed horizontally rather than vertically?) The point about reduced printing costs refers to the fact that all columns must be wide or deep in the across arrangement because of the diversity of elements, whereas some columns (especially those with numbers) can be narrow without runovers in the down arrangement. Thus, Table 16.7 appears to be smaller than Table 16.6, although it contains the same information.

Words in a column are lined up on the left. Numbers are lined up on the right (or on the decimal point). Table 16.7, for example, illustrates this point.

Table 16.8 is an example of a well-constructed table. It reads down, not across. Its title and headings are clear enough for readers to understand the data without referring to the text. Items in the body of the table appear in a logical order. The footnote provides supplementary information on how the data were obtained rather than repeating excessive methodological detail.

Note that these tables have three horizontal rules (lines) but no vertical rules. Virtually all tables are constructed this way. Occasionally, straddle rules (as below “Hospitalizations” and “Total charges” in Table 16.8) are used. Vertical rules normally are not used in tables.

3. EXPONENTS IN TABLE HEADINGS

If possible, avoid using exponents in table headings. Confusion has resulted because some journals use positive exponents and some use negative exponents to mean the same thing. For example, some have used “cpm x 10³” to refer to thousands of counts per minute, whereas others have used “cpm x 10^-3” for the same thousands of counts. If it is not possible to avoid such labels in table headings (or in figures), it may be worthwhile to state in a footnote (or in the figure legend), in words that eliminate the ambiguity, what convention is being used.

4. FOLLOWING THE JOURNAL’S INSTRUCTIONS

Instructions to authors commonly include a section about tables. Before pre­paring your tables, check the instructions to authors of your target journal. These instructions may indicate such items as the dimensions of the space available, the symbols or form of lettering for indicating footnotes to tables, and the electronic tools to use in preparing tables. Looking at tables in the jour­nal as examples also can aid in preparing suitable tables.

Style manuals in the sciences provide guidance in preparing not only text but also tables and figures. If your target journal specifies a style manual that it follows, consult it in this regard. Even if the journal does not specify a style manual, looking at one relevant to your field can aid in preparing effective tables and figures.

Traditionally, journals have asked authors to submit each table on a sepa­rate page at the end of the text. In addition, some journals have said to identify in the margin of the text the first mention of each table, for example, by writ­ing “Table 3” and circling it. This procedure helps ensure that the author has indeed cited each table in the text, in numerical order. It also indicates to the compositor, at the page makeup stage, where to break the text to insert the tables. Today, some journals ask authors to embed tables in the text near their first mention. And some journals ask authors to submit tables as separate files. To determine whether tables should be placed within the text, placed at the end, or provided in separate files (and to determine how, if requested, to indi­cate their placement), consult the instructions to authors.

5. TITLES, FOOTNOTES, AND ABBREVIATIONS

The title of the table (or the legend of a figure) is like the title of the paper itself. That is, the title or legend should be concise and not divided into two or more clauses or sentences. Unnecessary words should be omitted.

Give careful thought to the footnotes to your tables. If abbreviations must be defined, you often can give all or most of the definitions in the first table. Then later tables can carry the simple footnote: “Abbreviations as in Table 1.”

Note that “temp” (Tables 16.1, 16.2, 16.6, and 16.7) is used as an abbreviation for “temperature.” Because of space limitations in tables, almost all journals encourage abbreviation of certain words in tables that would not be abbrevi­ated in the text. Capitalize any such abbreviations used as the first word in a column heading; do not use periods (except after “no.,” which might be misread without the period). To identify abbreviations that your target journal consid­ers acceptable in tables, you can look at tables published in the journal. Also, some journals list in their instructions to authors the abbreviations that can be used without definition in tables that they publish.

6. ADDITIONAL TIPS ON TABLES

The following are some further tips to help ensure that you design and use tables effectively.

Use wording that will be clear without reference to the text. For example, a table should not just refer to “Group 1” and “Group 2.” Rather, it should identify each group by a more meaningful designation (examples: “High-Dose Group” and “Low-Dose Group,” “REM Sleep Group” and “NREM Sleep Group,” and “Graduate Students” and “Professors”).

If a paper includes a series of tables presenting analogous data, use an anal­ogous format for each. For example, if several tables compare the same four groups from different standpoints, list the four groups in the same order in each table. Or if different tables present data on the same variables at differ­ent times, keep listing the variables in the same order. Such consistency saves readers effort. (And it is easier for you, too.)

Finally, remember to mention every table in the text. Do so as soon as read­ers are likely to want to see the table. You have gone to the effort of preparing good tables. Be sure that readers can benefit fully from them.

Source: Gastel Barbara, Day Robert A. (2016), How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper, Greenwood; 8th edition.

1. WHEN NOT TO USE GRAPHS

In the previous chapter, we discussed certain types of data that should not be tabulated. They should not be turned into graphs either. Basically, graphs are pictorial tables.

The point is this. Certain types of data, particularly the sparse type or the type that is monotonously repetitive, do not need to be brought together in either a table or a graph. The facts are still the same: Preparing and printing an illustration can be time-consuming and expensive, and you should consider illustrating your data only if the result is a real service to the reader.

This point bears repeating because many authors, especially those who are still beginners, think that a table, graph, or chart somehow adds importance to the data. Thus, in the search for credibility, there is a tendency to convert a few data elements into an impressive-looking graph or table. Don’t do it. Your more experienced peers and most journal editors will not be fooled; they will soon deduce that (for example) three of the four curves in your graph are simply the standard conditions and that the meaning of the fourth curve could have been stated in just a few words. Attempts to dress up scientific data are usually doomed to failure.

If there is only one curve on a proposed graph, can you describe it in words? Possibly only one value is really meaningful, either a maximum or a mini­mum; the rest is window dressing. If you determined, for example, that the optimum pH value for a particular reaction was pH 8.1, it would probably be sufficient to state something like, “Maximum yield was obtained at pH 8.1.” If you determined that maximum growth of an organism occurred at 37°C, a simple statement to that effect is better economics and better science than a graph showing the same thing.

If the choice is not graph versus text but graph versus table, your choice might relate to whether you want to impart to readers exact numerical values or simply a picture of the trend or shape of the data. Rarely, there might be a reason to pres­ent the same data in both a table and a graph, the first presenting the exact values and the second showing a trend not otherwise apparent. Most editors would resist this obvious redundancy, however, unless the reason for it was compelling.

An example of an unneeded bar graph is shown in Fig. 17.1. This figure could be replaced by one sentence in the text: “Among the test group of 56 patients who were hospitalized for an average of 14 days, 6 acquired infections.”

When is a graph justified? There are no clear rules, but let us examine some indications for their effective use.

2. WHEN TO USE GRAPHS

Graphs resemble tables as a means of presenting data in an organized way. In fact, the results of many experiments can be presented either as tables or as graphs. How do we decide which is preferable? This is often a difficult decision. A good rule might be this: If the data show pronounced trends, making an inter­esting picture, use a graph. If the numbers just sit there, with no exciting trend in evidence, a table should be satisfactory (and perhaps easier and cheaper for you to prepare). Tables are also preferred for presenting exact numbers.

Examine Table 17.1 and Fig. 17.2, both of which record exactly the same data. Either format would be acceptable for publication, but Fig. 17.2 clearly seems superior to Table 17.1. In the figure, the synergistic action of the two- drug combination is immediately apparent. Thus, the reader can quickly grasp the significance of the data. It also appears from the graph that streptomycin is more effective than is isoniazid, although its action is somewhat slower; this aspect of the results is not readily apparent from the table.

3. HOW TO PREPARE GRAPHS

Early editions of this book included rather precise directions for using graph paper, India ink, lettering sets, and the like. Graphs had been prepared with these materials and by these techniques for generations.

Today we prepare graphs by computer. However, the principles of producing good graphs have not changed. The sizes of the letters and symbols, for example, must be chosen so that the final published graph in the journal is clear and readable.

The size of the lettering must be based on the anticipated reduction that will occur in the publishing process. This factor can be especially important if you are combining two or more graphs into a single illustration. Remember: Text that is easy to read on a large computer screen may become illegible when reduced to the width of a journal column.

Each graph should be as simple as possible. “The most common disaster in illustrating is to include too much information in one figure. Too much infor­mation in an illustration confuses and discourages the viewer” (Briscoe 1996).

Figure 17.3 is a nice graph. The lettering is large enough to read easily. It is boxed, rather than two-sided (compare with Figure 17.2), making it a bit easier to estimate the values on the right-hand side of the graph. The scribe marks point inward rather than outward.

If your paper contains two or more graphs that are most meaningful when viewed together, consider grouping them in a single illustration. To maximize readability, place the graphs above and below each other rather than side by side. For example, in a two-column journal, placing three graphs in an “above and below” arrangement allows each graph to be one or two columns in width. If the graphs appear side by side, each can average only one third of a page wide.

Whether or not you group graphs in such a composite arrangement, be consistent from graph to graph. For example, if you are comparing interven­tions, keep using the same symbol for the same intervention. Also be consis­tent in other aspects of design. Both conceptually and aesthetically, the graphs in your paper should function as a set.

Do not extend the ordinate or the abscissa (or the explanatory wording) beyond what the graph demands. For example, if your data points range between 0 and 78, your topmost index number should be 80. You might feel a tendency to extend the graph to 100, a nice round number; this urge is especially difficult to resist if the data points are percentages, for which the natural range is 0 to 100. Resist this urge, however. If you do not, parts of your graph will be empty; worse, the live part of your graph will then be restricted in dimension, because you have wasted perhaps 20 percent or more of the width (or height) with empty white space.

In the preceding example (data points ranging from 0 to 78), your reference numbers should be 0, 20, 40, 60, and 80. You should use short index lines at each of these numbers and also at the intermediate 10s (10, 30, 50, 70). Obviously, a reference stub line halfway between 0 and 20 could only be 10. Thus, you need not letter the 10s, and you can then use larger lettering for the 20s, without squeezing. By using such techniques, you can make graphs simple and effec­tive instead of cluttered and confusing.

4. SYMBOLS AND LEGENDS

If there is a space in the graph itself, use it to present the key to the symbols. In the bar graph (Figure 17.1), the shadings of the bars would have been a bit difficult to define in the legend; given as a key, they need no further definition (and any additional typesetting, proofreading, and expense are avoided).

If you must define the symbols in the figure legend, you should use only those symbols that are considered standard and that are widely available. Per­haps the most standard symbols are open and closed circles, triangles, and squares (o, A, □, •, ▲, ■). If you have just one curve, use open circles for the reference points; use open triangles for the second, open squares for the third, closed circles for the fourth, and so on. If you need more symbols, you prob­ably have too many curves for one graph, and you should consider dividing it into two. Different types of connecting lines (solid, dashed) can also be used. But do not use different types of connecting lines and different symbols.

As to the legends, they should normally be provided on a separate page, not at the bottom or top of the illustrations themselves. The main reason is that the two portions commonly are processed separately during journal production. Consult the instructions to authors of your target journal regarding this matter and other requirements for graphs.

5. A FEW MORE TIPS ON GRAPHS

Design graphs, like tables, to be understandable without the text. For example, use meaningful designations (not just numbers) to identify groups. And refer to each graph as soon as readers are likely to want to see it. Do not leave readers trying to visualize your findings by sketching them on a napkin—only to find three pages later that a graph displays them.

Use graphs that depict your findings fairly and accurately. For example, do not adapt the scales on the axes to make your findings seem more striking than they are. With rare exceptions, avoid beginning a scale at anything other than zero. And if you interrupt a scale line to condense a graph, make the interrup­tion obvious. Also, if the standard deviation is the appropriate way to show the variability in your data, do not substitute the standard error of the mean, which might make the data seem more consistent than it is.

Note that some journals (mainly the larger and wealthier ones) redraw graphs and some other types of figures to suit their own format. Whether or not a jour­nal will do so, prepare your graphs well. Doing so will help make your findings and their value clear and will help show the care with which you do your work.

Source: Gastel Barbara, Day Robert A. (2016), How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper, Greenwood; 8th edition.

1. PHOTOGRAPHS AND MICROGRAPHS

If your paper is to be illustrated with one or more photographs, there are several factors to keep in mind.

The most important factor to worry about, however, is a proper apprecia­tion of the value of the photographs for the story you are presenting. The value can range from essentially zero (in which case, like useless tables and graphs, they should not be submitted) to a value that transcends that of the text itself. In many studies of cell ultrastructure, for example, the significance of the paper lies in the photographs. If photographs (such as electron micrographs) are of prime importance to your story, ensure the journal you choose has high-quality reproduction standards, as discussed in Chapter 6.

As with graphs, the size (especially width) of the photograph in relation to the column and page width of the journal can be important. Try to avoid dimensions that will require excessive reduction of the photograph to suit the journal page.

2. SUBMISSION FORMATS

Today, journals normally request photographs in electronic format. To ascertain requirements for photographs, see the instructions to authors for your target journal. For example, check what formats (such as EPS, JPEG, or TIFF) are acceptable and what resolution is required. As indicated in Chapter 5, care must be taken to avoid making unwarranted changes in digital photographs. Sources of guidance on using digital images ethically include writings by Cromey (2010, 2012).

3. CROPPING

Whatever the quality of your photographs, you want to have them published leg­ibly. To some degree, you can control this process yourself if you use your head.

If you are concerned that detail might be lost by excessive reduction, there are several ways you might avoid this. Seldom do you need the whole photo­graph, right out to all four edges. Therefore, crop the photograph to include only the important part. Commonly, photographs are cropped digitally. If you are submitting a print, you can write “crop marks” on the margin to show where the photograph should be cropped. Figures 18.1 and 18.2 show photo­graphs with and without cropping.

4. NECESSARY KEYS AND GUIDES

If you can’t crop down to the features of special interest, consider superimpos­ing arrows or letters on the photographs, as shown in Figure 18.3. In this way, you can draw the reader’s attention to the significant features. Having arrows or letters to refer to can aid in writing clear, concise legends.

Unless your journal requests that photographs and other illustrations be embedded in the text, it is a good idea to indicate the preferred location for each illustration. In this way, you will be sure that all illustrations have been referred to in the text, in one-two-three order, and the printer will know how to weave the illustrations into the text so that each one is close to the text related to it.

With electron micrographs, put a micrometer marker directly on the micro­graph. In this way, regardless of any reduction (or even enlargement) in the printing process, the magnification factor is clearly evident. The practice of putting the magnification in the legend (for example, x 50,000) is not advis­able, and some journals no longer allow it, precisely because the size (and thus magnification) is likely to change in printing. And, usually, the author forgets to change the magnification at the proof stage.

In other photographs where the size of the object is important, likewise include a scale bar. Sometimes showing a familiar object, such as a paper clip, near the object can help readers discern an object’s size. Remember, though, that some objects (such as coins of given denominations) that are familiar to readers in one country might be unfamiliar to readers elsewhere.

5. COLOR

Until recently, journals seldom published color photographs and other color illustrations, because of the high cost of printing them. Today, however, color printing has become more affordable. And for articles online, color does not increase cost. Thus, more color illustrations are appearing, and use of color has become relatively common in some fields and journals. If you have the option of including color, consider whether doing so will improve your scientific paper. Would color help to tell your story? Or would it be merely decorative or even distracting?

If you are considering using color, see the instructions to authors of your target journal for specifications regarding color illustrations and for informa­tion on any charges for color. If color illustrations are to be printed, authors commonly must pay a fee. Some journals, however, do not charge for color. For example, the guidelines for illustrations in American Chemical Society journals state: “The use of color to enhance the clarity of complex structures, figures, spectra, schemes, etc. is encouraged. Color reproduction of graphics will be provided at no cost to the author.”

6. LINE DRAWINGS

In some fields (for example, descriptive biology), line drawings are superior to photographs in showing important details. Such illustrations are also common in medicine, especially in presenting anatomic views, and indeed have become virtually an art form. When illustrations are necessary, the services of a profes­sional illustrator generally are required. Such illustrators are available at many universities and other research institutions and can be identified through asso­ciations of scientific and medical illustrators.

Source: Gastel Barbara, Day Robert A. (2016), How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper, Greenwood; 8th edition.

1. WHAT IS COPYRIGHT?

Before you submit your paper to a journal, you should be aware of two items regarding copyright. First, if your paper includes illustrations or other materi­als that have been published elsewhere, you will need permission to republish them unless you hold the copyright. Second, you may need to transfer the copy­right for your paper to the journal (or, for some journals, transfer limited rights while retaining copyright).

Copyright is the exclusive legal right to reproduce, publish, and sell the matter and form of a literary or artistic work. (Here “literary and artistic” is broadly defined and so includes scientific papers.) Copyright protects original forms of expression but not the ideas being expressed. The data you are presenting are not protected by copyright; however, the collection of the data and the way you have presented them are protected. You own the copyright of a paper you wrote for the length of your life plus 50 years, as long as it was not done for an employer or commissioned as work for hire. If you have collaborated on the work, each person is a co-owner of the copyright, with equal rights.

Copyright is divisible. The owner of the copyright may grant one person a nonexclusive right to reproduce the work and another the right to prepare deri­vative works based on the copyrighted work. Copyright can also be transferred. Transfers of the copyright must be made in writing by the owner. An employer may transfer copyright to the individual who developed the original work. If you wish to copy, reprint, or republish all or portions of a copyrighted work that you do not own, you must get permission from the copyright owner. If you, as an author, have transferred the complete copyright of your work to a publisher, you must obtain permission for use of your own material from the publisher.

Fair use of copyrighted material, according to the 1976 Copyright Act, allows you to copy and distribute small sections of a copyrighted work. It does not allow you to copy complete articles and republish them without permission, whether for profit or otherwise.

2. COPYRIGHT CONSIDERATIONS

The legal reasons for seeking permission when republishing someone else’s work relate to copyright law. If a journal is copyrighted, and most of them are, legal ownership of the published papers becomes vested in the copyright holder. Thus, if you wish to republish copyrighted material, you must obtain approval of the copyright holder or risk suit for infringement.

Publishers acquire copyright so that they will have the legal basis, acting in their own interests and on behalf of all authors whose work is contained in the journals, for preventing unauthorized use of such published work. Thus, the publishing company and its authors are protected against plagiarism, misap­propriation of published data, unauthorized reprinting for advertising and other purposes, and other potential misuse.

In the United States, under the 1909 Assignment of Copyright Act, submis­sion of a manuscript to a journal was presumed to carry with it assignment of the author’s ownership to the journal (publisher). Upon publication of the jour­nal, with the appropriate copyright imprint in place and followed by the filing of copies and necessary fees with the Register of Copyrights, ownership of all articles contained in the issue effectively passed from the authors to the pub­lisher.

The Copyright Act of1976 requires that henceforth this assignment may no longer be assumed; it must be in writing. In the absence of a written transfer of copyright, the publisher is presumed to have acquired only the privilege of publishing the article in the journal itself; the publisher would then lack the right to produce reprints, copies, and electronic forms or to license others to do so (or to legally prevent others from doing so). Also, the Copyright Act stated that copyright protection begins “when the pen leaves the paper” (equivalent today to “when the fingers leave the keyboard”), thus recognizing the intellectual property rights of authors as being distinct from the process of publication.

Therefore, most publishers now require that each author contributing to a journal assign copyright to the publisher, either when the manuscript is submitted or when it is accepted for publication. To effect this assignment, the publisher provides each submitting author with a document usually titled “Copy­right Transfer Form.” Such forms are commonly available on the websites of journals.

Another feature of the 1976 Copyright Act that may interest scientists, both as authors and as users of the research literature, deals with copying. On the one hand, authors wish to see their papers receive wide distribution. On the other hand, they may not want this to take place at the expense of the journal. Thus, the law reflects these conflicting interests by defining certain kinds of library and educational copying as “fair use” (that is, copying that may be done without permission and without payment of royalties), while at the same time protecting the publisher against unauthorized systematic copying.

To make it easy to authorize systematic copiers to use journal articles and to remit royalties to publishers, a Copyright Clearance Center (www.copyright .com) has been established. Most scientific publishers of substantial size have joined the center. This central clearinghouse makes it possible for a user to make as many copies as desired, without needing to obtain prior permission, if the user is willing to pay the publisher’s stated royalty to the center. Thus, the user need deal with only one source, rather than facing the necessity of getting permission from and then paying royalties to hundreds of different publishers.

Because both scientific ethics and copyright law are of fundamental impor­tance, every scientist must be acutely sensitive to them. Basically, this means that you must not republish tables, figures, and substantial portions of text unless you have acquired permission from the owner of the copyright. Even then, it is important that you label such reprinted materials, usually with a credit line reading “Reprinted with permission from (journal or book reference); copyright (year) by (owner of copyright).” Often, information on how to seek permission is posted on the website of the journal or other publication in which the material appeared. If the website does not provide the information, contact the editorial office of the publication.

3. COPYRIGHT AND ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING

Traditionally, journals and books have been well defined as legal entities. How­ever, once the same information enters a digital environment, it becomes a compound document that includes not only text but also programming code and database access information that has usually been created by someone (often several people) other than the author of the paper. All copyright law, and all rules and regulations pertaining to copyright, hold true for electronic pub­lication, including material posted on the Internet. Unless the author or owner of the copyright of work posted on the Internet has placed on that work a specific note stating that the item is in the public domain, it is under copyright and you may not reproduce it without permission. Although you need not post a copyright notice for protection of your Internet materials, doing so acts as a warning to people who might use your material without permission. To post such a notice, you need only place the word “Copyright,” the date of the publi­cation, and the name of the author or copyright owner near the title of the work, for example, “Copyright 2015 by Magon Thompson (or Sundown Press).”

The electronic era has brought with it an interest in alternatives to transfer of copyright—in particular, the use of licenses, such as those developed by Creative Commons (creativecommons.org), allowing limited rights to works. Some open access journals use this approach, in which the authors retain copy­right but allow reproduction of their work under specified conditions, such as attributing the work to the authors. If you publish in a journal using such licenses, you will be asked to complete such an agreement rather than a copy­right transfer form. Information about various journal publishers’ copyright agreements can be accessed at the website SHERPA/RoMEO (www.sherpa.ac .uk/romeo/).

As electronic publishing evolves further, additional developments relating to copyright and permissions may well occur. Whether seeking to include material published elsewhere or seeking to publish your own work, look for the latest word from the publishers involved.

Source: Gastel Barbara, Day Robert A. (2016), How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper, Greenwood; 8th edition.