Making Word Work for You in Academic & Scientific Writing Microsoft Word is an incredibly helpful tool for authors, but only if it is used effectively with an understanding of its abilities and limitations. Functions such as spell check, grammar…
Why Publish a Research Paper in a Collection of Essays?
Why Publish a Research Paper in a Collection of Essays? Given the current focus on publishing academic and scientific articles in top-tier journals, edited collections of scholarly essays seem less important than they once were. However, such collections still occupy…
Comparing Abstracts for Academic and Scientific Articles & Presentations
Writing a Winning Abstract: Articles versus Presentations The LSE Impact Blog features a pair of how-to postings on writing abstracts that can be usefully compared and contrasted when preparing an abstract for a scholarly article or conference presentation (http://bit.ly/1LhaAu9 and…
Tips for Author-Suggested Preferred & NON-Preferred Peer Reviewers
A brief article recently published in BioEssays provides helpful insight into the thought processes of journal proofreaders when choosing peer reviewers for scholarly articles. The writer of the article, an editor speaking from experience, suggests that the efforts of authors to…
Interstitial Text and the Scholarly Author
Interstitial Text and the Scholarly Author There is considerable talk these days about interstitial text specifically designed for consumption in the brief moments that exist between the primary activities that fill our busy days. Instead of leafing through whatever magazines…
How To Design and Write a Well-Organised Scientific Article
How To Design and Write a Well-Organised Scientific Article Given that every scientist who writes an article does so with the hope that it will be read and ideally well or highly cited, it is essential to produce an article…
How to Write about Scientific Research in Highly Citable Ways
How to Write about Scientific Research in Highly Citable Ways No matter how significant the research you describe in a scientific article is and how passionately you wish to have a positive influence on your scholarly community, neither will earn…
Designing Headings for an Academic Manuscript in Microsoft Word
Designing Headings for an Academic Manuscript in Microsoft Word Microsoft Word is often used by academics and scientists when writing up their research, yet many of its tools are little understood by those who would benefit from them. Heading Styles…
A Pre-Submission Checklist for Academic & Scientific Journal Articles
A Pre-Submission Checklist for Academic & Scientific Journal Articles Before submitting an academic or scientific article to a scholarly journal for publication, a thorough proofreading is always required. Ideally, this proofreading will involve checking all aspects of the paper, but…
Increased Accessibility to Academic and Scientific Journals?
Are Institutions Paying Fair Prices for Academic and Scientific Journals? Well, some might say that the obvious answer is no and has been for a very long time. Institutional subscription rates for scholarly journals are, after all, notoriously high as…
The Dark Side of Peer Reviews, or Should That Be Dark Sides?
The Dark Side of Peer Reviews, or Should That Be Dark Sides? If you have ever had to remove all hints of your identity from an article before submitting it to a scientific journal, you have probably experienced a double-blind…
The Taboo Topic of Reviewer Paper Killing in the Sciences
The Taboo Topic of Reviewer Paper Killing in the Sciences I love the term (not the practice of) ‘chartacide’ (paper killing) that is used in the Knoepfler blog’s ‘elephant in the lab series’ on taboo topics in the sciences: http://bit.ly/1SEfLFc….
How To Write about Methods and Results in a Journal Paper
Describing Methodology & Reporting Results in Academic Writing Once the focus and aims of the research presented in an article have been introduced and the necessary background information has been provided, an explanation of the methodology used to approach the…
Open Access vs. Subscription Journals: An 83% Boost in Citations on Academia.edu?
Open Access vs. Subscription Journals: An 83% Boost in Citations on Academia.edu? If you visit the Academia.edu web site at present (http://bit.ly/1x6BSKM), you will encounter the claim that ‘a recent study found that papers uploaded to Adademia.edu receive an 83%…
Using Headings for Structure and Clarity in Successful Journal Articles
Using Headings for Structure and Clarity in Successful Journal Articles When well designed, headings in academic and scientific articles can be far more than just fancy words: they can provide structure and clarity for the anticipated audience and also lend…
Identifying & Avoiding Plagiarism in Academic & Scientific Writing
Identifying & Avoiding Plagiarism in Academic & Scientific Writing The classical Latin word ‘plagiarius’ means ‘kidnapper,’ and even in the ancient world the term could be used to refer to a ‘literary thief.’ Plagiarism is not (and has not been)…
How to Publish in High Impact Factor Academic & Scientific Journals
How to Publish in High Impact Factor Academic & Scientific Journals Whether or not you consider impact factors a valid measure of scientific influence, they nonetheless play an important role in evaluating, hiring, promoting and funding scientists, so you may…
Forming English Possessive Nouns with an Apostrophe Only
Forming English Possessive Nouns with an Apostrophe Only In my previous discussion of apostrophes, I listed a number of instances in which both an apostrophe and an ‘s’ should be added to form the possessive case of words. In this…
Using Hyphens in Formal English Writing: Rules and Perils
Using Hyphens in Formal English Writing: Rules and Perils Hyphens may seem too small an element of writing to warrant the term ‘perils,’ but a consistent system of hyphenation can be incredibly tricky to establish because the use of hyphens…
The Importance of Reviewing and Revising an Academic or Scientific Article
The Importance of Reviewing and Revising an Academic or Scientific Article As wonderful as it may be to imagine that an academic or scientific article can reach a state of perfection when first written, this is highly unusual, and very…
Responding to Letters from Editors – Negotiating Conditional Reconsideration or Acceptance
Responding to Letters from Editors – Negotiating Conditional Reconsideration or Acceptance If after submitting a paper you have been lucky enough to receive unconditional acceptance or unfortunate enough to receive a definite rejection, the path ahead is usually straightforward –…
Plurals and Punctuation of Numbers in Academic and Scientific Writing
Plurals and Punctuation of Numbers The plural forms of numbers expressed as words do not use an apostrophe; instead, they are formed just as other plurals are by adding an ‘s’ or ‘es’ (‘sixes and sevens’) or by changing a…
Why English Verbs Should Not Be Split and Other Writing Tips
Why English Verbs Should Not Be Split and Other Writing Tips English is a notoriously difficult language to use correctly, more so to use elegantly, and verbs are among the most troublesome aspects of English to negotiate. Care must be…
Advice on Formal Academic & Scientific English & Journal Guidelines
Formal Academic and Scientific English and Journal Guidelines In this PRS article, we discuss the writing of professional English that meets the expectations and requirements of academic and scientific journals. All scholarly journals publishing articles in the English language will…
Formatting Numbers (Dates & Time) in Academic & Scientific Writing
Dates In all academic and scientific writing, precise dates are far more effective than general references such as ‘lately’ and ‘in recent years,’ but if clarity is to be maintained, the format of dates and eras must be precise and…