Presented by: Anthony Newman, Senior Publisher

Location/Date: IPCAT Meeting, San Diego Sept. 2015

How to Write Great Papers and Get Published

Understanding and benefiting from

the publishing process

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Workshop Outline

How to get Published Scholarly publishing overview

What to publish

Select your journal/readers/audience carefully

Typical article structure

The review and editorial process and your response

Promoting your research

Behind the scenes in publishing

Publishing ethics

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Peer-reviewed journal growth 1990-2013

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Scholarly publishing today

Scientific, technical and medical (STM) publishing

2,000 STM publishers

1.4 million

peer-reviewed

articles

20,000

peer-reviewed

journals

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Trends in publishing

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Rapid conversion from “print” to “electronic”

1997: print only

2009: 55% e-only (mostly e-collections) 25% print only 20% print-plus-electronic

2014: 95+% e-only (in life sciences field over 99%)

2016: ???

Changing role of “journals” due to e-access

Increased usage of articles (more downloads)

at lower cost per article

Electronic submission

Increased manuscript inflow

Experimentation with new publishing models

E.g. “author pays” models, “delayed open access”, etc.

PDF versus HTML era currently

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A strong manuscript is needed!

It has a novel, clear, useful, and exciting message

Is presented and constructed in a logical manner

Reviewers and editors can grasp the scientific significance easily

Editors and reviewers are all busy scientists –

make things easy to save their time

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Find out what’s Hot (downloads)

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Find out what is being cited and from where

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Find out who is being cited

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There are many tools available such as SCOPUS, WoS, Google Scholar, PubMed.

Use what you have available. Become skilled in using these effectively…..

Strategic Information gathering

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Look at your references – these should help you narrow your choices.

Review recent publications in each “candidate journal”. Find out the hot topics, the accepted types of articles, etc.

Ask yourself the following questions:

Is the journal peer-reviewed to the right level?

Who is this journal’s audience? Multidisciplinary versus Niche

Level of exposure – high use platform e.g. ScienceDirect, or not.

How fast does it make a decision or publish your paper?

Do you want or need to publish Open Access?

What is the journal’s Impact Factor? Other Bibliometrics – SNIP etc?

Does it really exist or is it dubious? (check for example Beall’s List of Predatory Open Access Publishers) http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/

DO NOT gamble by submitting your manuscript to more than one journal at a time.

International ethics standards prohibit multiple/simultaneous submissions, and editors DO find out! (Trust us, they DO!)

Select the best journal for submission

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Choose the right journal

Investigate all candidate journals to find out

Aims and scope

Accepted types of articles

Readership

Current hot topics go through the abstracts

of recent publications)

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Impact Factor

[the average annual number of citations per article published]

For example, the 2013 impact factor for a journal is calculated as follows:

A = the number of times articles published in 2011 and 2012 were cited in indexed journals during 2013

B = the number of "citable items" (usually articles, reviews, proceedings or notes; not editorials and letters-to-the-Editor) published in 2011 and 2012

2013 impact factor = A/B

e.g. 600 citations = 2.000

150 + 150 articles

What is the Impact Factor (IF)?

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0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5

Mathematics & Computer Sciences

Social Sciences

Materials Science & Engineering

Biological Sciences

Environmental Sciences

Earth Sciences

Chemistry & Chemical Engineering

Physics

Pharmacology & Toxicology

Clinical Medicine

Neuroscience

Fundamental Life Sciences

Mean Impact Factor

Influences on Impact Factors: Subject Area

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Impact Factor

Bibliometric indicators and downloads

Eigenfactor SJR SNIP H-Index

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Impact Factor

Bibliometric indicators BioSystems and friends

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Alternative Metrics and BioSystems

h-index 2006-14 = 33

BioSystems:

A visible publishing platform:

170,000 downloads per year

9,500 institutes have access

4,244 institutes accessed the journal in the last 12

months

50 Year anniversary in 2017!

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Your Journals list for this manuscript

Each submission is different – there is no one master

list of suitable journals!

So you now have a sequence list of candidate journals

for your manuscript?

All authors of the submission agree to this list

Write your draft as if you are going to submit to the

first on your list. Use its Guide to Authors

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Stick to the Guide for Authors in your manuscript, even in the first draft (text layout, nomenclature, figures & tables, references etc.). In the end it will save you time, and also the editor’s.

Editors (and reviewers) do not like wasting time on poorly prepared manuscripts. It is a sign of disrespect.

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Read the ‘Guide to Authors’- Again and again!

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Why Is Language Important?

Save your editor and reviewers the trouble of guessing what you mean

Complaint from an editor:

“[This] paper fell well below my threshold. I refuse to spend time

trying to understand what the author is trying to say. Besides, I

really want to send a message that they can't submit garbage to us

and expect us to fix it.

My rule of thumb is that if there are more than 6 grammatical

errors in the abstract, then I don't waste my time carefully

reading the rest.”

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Scientific Language – Overview

Key to successful scientific writing is to be alert for common errors:

Sentence construction

Incorrect tenses

Inaccurate grammar

Not using English

Check the Guide for Authors of the target journal for

language specifications

Write with clarity, objectivity, accuracy, and brevity.

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Scientific Language – Sentences

Write direct and short sentences – more professional looking.

One idea or piece of information per sentence is sufficient.

Avoid multiple statements in one sentence – they are confusing to the reader.

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Typical Structure of a Research Article

Title Abstract Keywords

Main text (IMRAD) Introduction Methods Results And Discussions

Conclusion Acknowledgement References Supplementary Data

Journal space is not unlimited.

Your reader’s time is scarce.

Make your article as concise as possible

- more difficult than you imagine!

Make them easy for indexing and

searching! (informative, attractive,

effective)

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Methods Results Discussion

Conclusion

Figures/tables (your data)

Introduction

Title & Abstract

The process of writing – building the article

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Title

A good title should contain the fewest possible words that adequately describe the contents of a paper.

Effective titles Identify the main issue of the paper

Begin with the subject of the paper

Are accurate, unambiguous, specific, and complete

Are as short as possible

Articles with short, catchy titles are often better cited

Do not contain rarely-used abbreviations

Attract readers - Remember: readers are the potential authors who will cite your article

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Abstract

Tell readers what you did and the important findings

One paragraph (between 50-250 words) often, plus Highlight bullet points. Some journals have structured abstracts.

Advertisement for your article, and should encourage reading the entire paper

A clear abstract will strongly influence if your work is considered further

Graphite intercalation compounds (GICs) of composition CxN(SO2CF3)2 · δF

are prepared under ambient conditions in 48% hydrofluoric acid, using

K2MnF6 as an oxidizing reagent. The stage 2 GIC product structures are

determined using powder XRD and modeled by fitting one dimensional electron

density profiles.

A new digestion method followed by selective fluoride electrode elemental

analyses allows the determination of free fluoride within products, and the

compositional x and δ parameters are determined for reaction times from 0.25 to

500 h.

What are the

main findings

What has been

done

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Introduction

The place to convince readers that you know why your work is relevant, also for them

Answer a series of questions:

What is the problem?

Are there any existing solutions?

Which one is the best?

What is its main limitation?

What do you hope to achieve?

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General

Specific

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Methods / Experimental

• Include all important details so that the reader can repeat the work. • Details that were previously published can be omitted but a

general summary of those experiments should be included

• Give vendor names (and addresses) of equipment etc. used

• All chemicals must be identified • Do not use proprietary, unidentifiable compounds without

description. State purity and/or supplier if it is important.

• Present proper control experiments • Avoid adding comments and discussion • Write in the past tense

• Most journals prefer the passive voice, some the active.

• Consider use of Supplementary Materials • Documents, spreadsheets, audio, video, .....

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Reviewers will criticize incomplete or incorrect method descriptions, and may

even recommend rejection

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Results – what have you found?

The following should be included

the main findings

Thus not all findings. Decide what to share.

Findings from experiments described in the Methods section

Highlight findings that differ from findings in previous publications, and unexpected findings

Results of the statistical analysis

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"One Picture is Worth a

Thousand Words"

Sue Hanauer (1968)

Results – Figures and tables

Illustrations are critical, because:

Figures and tables are the most efficient way to present results

Results are the driving force of the publication

Captions and legends must be detailed enough to make figures and tables self-explanatory

Figures and tables should not need further explanation or description in text. Less writing and less reading. Let your figures do the work instead of words.

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Discussion – what do your results mean?

It is the most important section of your article. Here you get the chance to SELL your data! Many manuscripts are rejected because the Discussion is weak

Check for the following:

Do your results relate to the original question or objectives outlined in the Introduction section?

Do you provide interpretation for each of your results presented? Are your results consistent with what other investigators have

reported? Or are there any differences? Why? Are there any limitations? Does the discussion logically lead to your conclusion?

Do not: Make statements that go beyond what the results can support Suddenly introduce new terms or ideas

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Reference Management Software helps

Many journals are helpful in formatting the journal reference style for you (e.g. Elsevier’s Your Paper Your Way service).

If the publisher is not offering this service it is your responsibility to format references correctly!

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_reference_management_software

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Cover Letter

Your chance to speak to the editor directly

Submitted along with your manuscript

Mention what would make your manuscript special to the journal

Note special requirements (suggest reviewers, conflicts of interest)

Final approval from all

authors

Explanation of

importance of research

Suggested reviewers

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Suggest potential reviewers

Your suggestions will help the Editor to move your manuscript to the review stage more efficiently.

You can easily find potential reviewers and their contact details from articles in your specific subject area (e.g., your references).

The reviewers should represent at least two regions of the world. And they should not be

your supervisor or close friends.

Be prepared to suggest 3-6 potential reviewers, based on the Guide to Authors.

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Submit a

paper

Basic requirements met?

REJECT

Assign

reviewers

Collect reviewers’

recommendations

Make a

decisionRevise the

paper

[Reject]

[Revision required]

[Accept]

[Yes]

[No]Review and give

recommendation

START

ACCEPT

Author Editor Reviewer

The Peer Review Process – not a black hole!

Michael Derntl. Basics of Research Paper Writing and Publishing.

http://www.pri.univie.ac.at/~derntl/papers/meth-se.pdf

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Why?

The peer-review system is grossly overloaded and editors wish to use reviewers only for those papers with a good probability of acceptance.

It is a disservice to ask reviewers to spend time on work that has clear and evident deficiencies.

Initial Editorial Review or Desk Reject

Many journals use a system of initial editorial review. Editors may reject a manuscript without sending it out for review.

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First Decision: “Accepted” or “Rejected”

Accepted Very rare, but it happens

Congratulations! Cake for the department

Now wait for page proofs and then for your article to be online and in print

Rejected Probability 40-90% ...

Do not despair It happens to everybody

Try to understand WHY Consider reviewers’ advice

Be self-critical

If you submit to another journal, begin as if it were a new manuscript

Take advantage of the reviewers’ comments and revise accordingly

They may review your manuscript for the next journal too!

Read the Guide for Authors of the new journal, again and again.

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First Decision: “Major” or “Minor” Revision

Major revision

The manuscript may finally be published in the journal

Significant deficiencies must be corrected before

acceptance

Usually involves (significant) textual modifications and/or

additional experiments

Minor revision

Basically, the manuscript is worth being published

Some elements in the manuscript must be clarified,

restructured, shortened (often) or expanded (rarely)

Textual adaptations

“Minor revision” does NOT guarantee acceptance after

revision, but often it is accepted if all points are addressed!

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Manuscript Revision

Prepare a detailed Response Letter Copy-paste each reviewer comment, and type your response below it

State specifically which changes you have made to the manuscript

Include page/line numbers

No general statements like “Comment accepted, and Discussion changed

accordingly.”

Provide a scientific response to comments to accept, .....

..... or a convincing, solid and polite rebuttal when you feel the reviewer was

wrong.

Write in such a manner, that your response can be forwarded to the reviewer

without prior editing

Do not do yourself a disfavour, but cherish your work You spent weeks and months in the lab or the library to do the research

It took you weeks to write the manuscript.........

.....Why then run the risk of avoidable rejection

by not taking manuscript revision seriously?

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Increasing the likelihood of acceptance

All these various steps are not difficult.

You have to be consistent.

You have to check and recheck before submitting.

Make sure you tell a logical, clear, story about your findings.

Especially, take note of referees’ comments. They improve your

paper.

This should increase the likelihood of your paper being

accepted, and being in the 30% (accepted) not the 70%

(rejected) group!

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Your Paper is Published – What now?

Your paper becomes visible online in the journal website, such as ScienceDirect, Springer Link etc. and in databases as SCOPUS, PubMed, etc.

There are many things you can do to draw attention to your great research just online…

Think Social Media!

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Publishing as a springboard in science

How can scientists be more visible? How can publishers help? What do publishers do?

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Publishing as a springboard in science

Journals: Editors linked to journals benefit the journal, and benefit themselves by extra exposure and status. The same applies to editorial board members, and many list their position as board member on their CV, or web page listing their achievements. People added to board are either active referees, or high-profile researchers. So the sooner you start being a reviewer the better for your career. But how?

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Publishing as a springboard in science

Scientists who are not editors or editorial board members? Publishing high quality original research papers is always the best way to become known and respected, but there are other ways too. Publishing quality reviews usually attracts high downloads and citations – chance to highlight specific themes or specific papers, thus influencing direction of research field.

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Review articles vs Original Articles

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

Review Article Review Article Review Article

Average cites per paper

Author 2 Author 3

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Publishing as a springboard in science

Impact: Become a Guest Editor for a Thematic Special Issue for a journal. Guest Editor selects authors important to the subject area, and writes an editorial for the special issue. Chance to ‘steer’ a field. The Special Issue is often referred to by the Guest Editor’s name - helps exposure and recognition. Special Issues are often highly downloaded and cited - good for authors, and good for the guest editor too.

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Downloads of Special Issue editorials

Journal VolumeIssue Article Name Author(s) Downloads

Methods 50 4 The ongoing evolution of qPCR Pfaffl, M.W. 3,618

FEBS Letters 584 7 Autophagy Mizushima, N. 2,594

FEBS Letters 585 13 Epigenetics Issa, J.P.; Just, W. 1,948

FEBS Letters 584 17

Telomere biology and DNA repair: Enemies with

benefits Lange, T.d. 1,809

FEBS Letters 586 14 TGF-@b signaling in development and disease Massague, J. 1,687

FEBS Letters 585 10 Circadian rhythms Merrow, M.; Brunner, M. 1,292

Methods 58 3

3C-based technologies to study the shape of the

genome de Laat, W.; Dekker, J. 1,081

Methods 61 2

Distinguishing between apoptosis, necrosis,

necroptosis and other cell death modalities Martin, S.J.; Henry, C.M. 1,031

FEBS Letters 585 18

The ubiquitin clan: A protein family essential for

life Wolf, D.H. 1,023

Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology Part A: Molecular & Integrative Physiology158 3

The challenge of measuring energy

expenditure: Current field and laboratory

methods Halsey, L.G. 971

Methods 52 3 A-Z of methylome analysis Beck, S. 956

Methods 54 2

RNA Nanotechnology: Methods for synthesis,

conjugation, assembly and application of RNA

nanoparticles Guo, P. 828

Methods 55 4 A roadmap to membrane protein structures Stevens, R.C. 806

Methods 52 1 Protein folding Gruebele, M. 729

ABB 500 1

Heme peroxidase biochemistry - Facts and

perspectives Obinger, C. 589

ABB 525 2 Catalases and hydrogen peroxide metabolism Obinger, C. 584

ABB 503 1

The central role of the skeleton in chronic

diseases Teti, A.; Eastell, R. 570

October 2013 data

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Citations of Special Issues vs Regular Issues

Fitzpatrick/Trends in Enzymology (S.Sec.)

Guengerich/P450 Catalysis and Mechanisms

Mukhtar/Biochem and Biophys of the Skin

Walsh/Protein Kinases

Grant/Allosteric Regulation

DeLuca/Vitamin D

Klotz/Cell-Cell Communication

Obinger/Catalysis and H2O2

Rüker/Antibody Engineering

Santes-Buelga/ Polyphenols and Health

0.000

2.000

4.000

6.000

8.000

10.000

12.000

14.000

1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 1-2

1 2 1 2 1-2

1-2

1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 1-2

1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2

505 506 507 508 509 510 511 512 513 514515 516 517 518 519 520 521 522 523 524 525 526 527 528

2011 2012

Total

Archives of Biochemistry and Biophysics

October 2013 data

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Publishing as a springboard in science

Refereeing/reviewing: Active referees often added to editorial board. Not that visible until then, except for annual list of referees published in many journals. Referee acknowledgment programme just starting.

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Publishing as a springboard in science

Author clinic: As an experienced author, younger researchers and post docs need your experience to help them write better papers. With more published papers, the university authorities are grateful, and your help is often recognized. It feels good too!

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What a Publisher does (1):

Solicit and manage submissions to journals.

Manage Peer review process.

Edit and prepare papers.

Publish and disseminate online and in print.

Develop innovations to help author/reader e.g. Apps.

Archive journal articles ‘forever’.

Promote and market content.

Support young scholars with grants/awards.

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What a Publisher does (2):

Bibliometric analysis to help journals change to

reflect their field better.

Plagiarism control and other publishing ethics issues.

Recruitment and training of journal editors.

Support societies and associations by attending meetings

and conferences.

Produce training materials/courses/workshops to help

authors and referees.

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Launching and Developing journals

3% more scientists every year

More than 3% more papers every year

Traditional fields splinter and niche fields develop

Many Funding bodies insist on Open Access publishing

So new journals are needed regularly!

And existing journals need to evolve to match needs of researchers

Examples:

OA Launch Evolution

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Editor/Publisher relationship

The Scientific Editor is essential for managing peer-review and scientific

quality.

Publisher and colleagues do all the back-office tasks for the Editor around the

journal.

The Publishing House takes care of marketing, subscriptions, typesetting,

online content, analysis, permanent archiving of papers, etc.

Editor and Publisher together are a symbiotic team managing the quality,

focus, and strategy of the journal so that its scientific content best reflects the

community who publish in, and read it.

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Author Responsibilities

As authors we have lots of rights and privileges, but also we have the responsibility to be ethical.

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Plagiarism Detection Tools

Elsevier is participating in 2 plagiarism detection schemes:

TurnItIn (aimed at universities) iThenticate (aimed at publishers and corporations)

Manuscripts are automatically checked against a database

of 30+ million peer reviewed articles which have been

donated by 200+ publishers, including Elsevier.

More traditional approach also happens: Editors and reviewers Your colleagues Readers "Other“ whistleblowers

“The walls have ears", it seems ...

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Publication ethics – Self-plagiarism

Same colour

left and right

=

Same text

2003 2004

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An article in which the authors committed plagiarism: it will not be

removed from ScienceDirect ever. Everybody who downloads it will

see the reason for the retraction…

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Figure Manipulation – some things are allowed

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Figure Manipulation Example - Different authors and reported experiments

Am J Pathol, 2001 Life Sci, 2004 Images worked on, added to,

rotated 180°, to become:

Rotated 180o

Zoomed out ?!

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Author Services: CiteAlert. New. Free. Unique. Automated service to notify authors when their articles are cited in Elsevier-published journals. For more info and an example please visit: www.elsevier.com/locate/citealert Audioslides. A new tool for authors to put their article in the spotlight. See www.elsevier.com/about/content-innovation/audioslides-author-presentations-for-journal-articles Article Usage Reports. Know and advance your paper’s impact. See http://www.elsevier.com/connect/article-usage-reports-enable-authors-to-track-downloads-and-views

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Questions?

Or for questions later, please

contact a.newman@elsevier.com

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There is full permission granted to distribute them as long as they

are not edited.