22 PRS Proofreading and Editing Service PhD Experts • All Academic Areas • Fast Turnaround • High Quality PARt II: PRePARIng, PResentIng And PolIsHIng YoUR woRk Part II: Preparing, Presenting and Polishing Your Work cHAPteR 3 deciphering Journal guidelines and designing an effective Presentation Paradoxically, successfully following the author guidelines or instructions provided by academic and scientific journals (usually on their web sites) can be both the simplest and most complicated aspect of preparing a scholarly paper for publication. If your first language is not English and you’re dealing with author instructions written in English, following the guidelines becomes even more complicated because exactly what is meant can sometimes be tricky to decipher even for native English speakers. The requirements differ from journal to journal, sometimes slightly and at others enormously, and some journals provide extremely detailed instructions about almost every part or feature of a paper, while others are far more general and leave much about presentation up to the author. No matter how small or insignificant a detail requested by a journal may seem, however, it should be treated with great importance. If, for instance, a journal’s guidelines call for a 10-point Times New Roman font with 1.3 line spacing but 1.8 before headings, which should be in a 12-point font, don’t question it – simply adjust the format of your paper to conform to the requirements. The journal would not have given such detailed instructions if this format weren’t important, and it’s much easier to comply than to have your paper rejected simply because you think such details unimportant or even because you have a better reason,