Tips from international experts on how best to prepare an article

Global Reviewers

25 tips from the expert reviewers of what to look for before submitting your article for review in an international journal.

"What's the most important piece of advice you can give to (potential) authors?" - We asked this question to reviewers using our channel "Reviewers' Update". As a result, we got 58 tips, 25 of which we will present below (grouped into different categories).

Selecting the appropriate journal

As I have already mentioned at many conferences, authors should be selective in choosing a journal and familiarize themselves with its content before submitting their work to this journal! - Andrejs Skaburskis

First, review several issues of the journal and make sure that your article meets the goals and objectives of the journal. I am the editor of a journal that publishes primarily theoretically based qualitative research in the social Sciences, and I have to refuse to publish a large number of quantitative research in the field of policy and strategy. This leads to a waste of my time, as well as the time of the authors of the articles. – Robert Dingwall

Strictly follow the guidelines for submitting articles that are published by magazines. Rajshekhar Bipeta

When choosing a magazine for your article, ask yourself why someone in Melbourne (Australia) would want to read it. (If you are in Melbourne, why would readers from Perth want to read your article?). If you can't answer this question, you should either rewrite the work to summarize the results, or submit an article to the national journal. - Andrejs Skaburskis

One of the most popular tips was choosing the proper journal to publish. If you are in doubt about choosing a journal, use our magazine finder tool – http://journalfinder.elsevier.com/

Writing style / language / connectivity

If English is not your native language, then before submitting an article to an English-language journal, you should use the help of a specialist from your field, for whom English is the native language. – Tammie

The most common problem that I have to deal with is that authors are not able to correctly present the results of their research, even if the research is really high-quality. Academic writing is often a difficult text to understand. It is very important to be able to present your ideas correctly, and a clear transfer of thought on paper is usually a sign of clear thinking, which is very important for the development of scientific knowledge. – Chris Carleton

I would advise authors to write in simple language, use as clear and concise sentences as possible, and pay attention to the coherence and consistency of the manuscript text. - Marija Stanković

Before submitting an article, ask someone who does not have information on the topic of the work to read it. If the article is logical, connected and understandable for this person, then it will be the same for other readers. If this person does not understand and re-reads the article to understand what it is about, then you need to work on the text and check the consistency of the presentation. – Cynthia Hollingsworth

Before sending, you should:

- discuss the article with colleagues, curators, and try to criticize it in order to find flaws.

- try to briefly convey your ideas to someone who doesn't work in your field. This will help you work on the logic of your arguments.

In my practice, I have come across many articles that had very interesting content, but which clearly have not been read by anyone other than the main author himself. Academic Supervisors, do not delegate your work to reviewers! - Andreas Reinecke

Make sure that there are no internal inconsistencies in your work. Very often there are cases when the information in the annotation differs from the information in the article itself and from the tables presented in it. Obviously, this can happen as a result of a large number of edits, but it can have a significant impact on the reviewer's perception of the quality of the work. – Joe

Authors should pay special attention to the clarity of their ideas. Authors are experts in their fields and know everything about their research, so they often get the impression that readers know more than they actually do. Authors should try to imagine that they are reading the article for the first time without having all this knowledge. – Robin Prescott

Specify the subject of research, bring something new

One of the common mistakes is the lack of a specific justification for choosing the subject of research. Sometimes authors simply refer to existing research and do not specify the contribution of their work to existing knowledge in the relevant field. – Francis C. Dane

Read the existing literature and make sure that your work brings something new and useful. – Golda

Carefully check your manuscripts for innovative ideas, do not repeat what is already known, and do not publish generally accepted data. Keep in mind that you need to link to sources with the date of publication, even if the key data was published a long time ago. Mathias

A scientific research article for the journal is not a term paper or a project report. Be sure to point the specific purpose of the study and the main results in your manuscript. Make sure that all the key details are contained in your manuscript, while the text itself is clear and concise. – Ryan Su

Always indicate at the very beginning (in the annotation, introduction) exactly what contribution your work makes to science and what its novelty is. Make sure that reviewers and readers understand what your work contributes to existing knowledge in the field. – Debra

Citation

Check your quotes and their appropriateness. Nothing tells me more about a frivolous attitude to work than a careless attitude to quoting. If you are not careful here, it means that you are not serious in other aspects of the work. – Michael Paul (Michael Pol)

Do not overdo it with references to your own work... – Ashraf Khalaf

If possible, cite primary sources. Make sure that the cited work contains the data you provided and is a full-fledged study. There were situations when articles mentioned works which only contained assumptions. – Linda

Tables or graphs / format

When describing a table or graph, do not try to retell everything that is shown there. Indicate the trend, main similarities or differences. – Kamo "chili" Perec

Another problem is the description of the methods in the introduction, the results of the research in the "Discussion" section, etc. This problem is quite common, so I advise you to carefully check your articles before submitting. – Airton Stein

Avoid submitting an article to multiple journals

Do not send the same manuscript (with small additions) at the same time to a large number of journals. In the future, this may lead to the withdrawal of your articles from journals. - Anurag Chaurasia

Take the time to work on the "Introduction" section

Since I often recommend rejecting publication based on the "Introduction" section, I advise authors to substantiate the research subject in this section. Use a simple but useful format: “What we know” -> “What we don't know” -> “What ideas do we have” -> “Research subject”- Georgios Vleioras)

Read your article in reverse order!

Read your article "from Z to A", that is, from the end. When you read your work from the beginning, you lose focus and speed up (because you are reading your own text describing your own results, which you know and understand perfectly well). Starting in the middle of your article, you don't read, but slide through the text. When you read from the end, it becomes much more difficult for you to slide. So, you have to focus on each individual sentence. Ask yourself, does each sentence sound good? - Sergey Korkin

“Discussion” Section

My main concern is the "Discussion" section. Most authors do not highlight key results, hiding them far away in the text, while they should be indicated at the very beginning! – Kimirei

This article was published in English on the ElsevierConnect website on June 14, 2016. Author: Global Reviewers.