Paper publication tips
Ten tips for getting your scientific paper published. Over the last 25 years I have been able to publish a reasonable number of scientific papers. None of them were easy. Most of the young scientists I meet, who have not yet published their work, all underestimate how much work it takes to get their research paper accepted by a journal for publication. So here, I thought I would give ten tips for getting your paper published.
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1. Choose an appropriate journal
The first step, once you have some publication worthy data, is to select a journal to submit your work to. It should be relatively straightforward selecting a short list of journals as you will generally select one that publishes your kind of research. No point in sending your work to the Astrophysical Journal if you are a cancer cell biologist. Generally, you will have two main decisions. Do you go for a more general journal that publishes a range of subjects e.g. Scientific Reports or PLOS One, or a more focussed journal e.g. the International Journal of Cancer or Cardiovascular Research. The answer to this is really down to what audience you think your work is most relevant to. Is it likely to be of interest to a broader community of scientists working in different fields or is it likely to be of more interest to a specialised field of scientists. Read recent issues. Skim the last year of abstracts. Do they publish the kind of work that you have done, with similar methods and similar claims? If the answer is no, then you may have the wrong journal.
All journals have scope statements on journal websites describing the type of work they publish. Match your cover letter to that language without stretching it. If you need to rewrite the introduction so the story fits the journal’s audience, do that before you submit, not after a rejection letter tells you the same thing.
The second question is what impact factor the journal has. Of course, everyone wants their paper published in the highest possible impact journal. High impact factor journals carry a lot of prestige and attract a lot of competition for publication. Their editorial policies are also designed to maintain this prestige, and so they only accept papers for publication that describe the most novel and impactful research. As a result, their acceptance rate is relatively low. Submit your solid, respectable but maybe not groundbreaking paper to Nature or Science and you are probably just wasting a month waiting for a rejection without reviewers or a savaging from the reviewers. Aim too low on the other hand and you risk missing out on some well-deserved prestige of a higher impact journal and the work sits in a place your field barely reads. You want overlap between what you did and what the journal routinely publishes, not just a respectable impact factor.
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2. Thoroughly read the journal’s instructions to authors
The instructions to authors documents provided by each journal are very boring. You should read them anyway, slowly, and with a checklist. Journals care about word limits, reference styles, figure resolution, file formats, and whether you need a separate title page etc. Most rejections for technical reasons never reach peer review.
Highlight anything that costs time. Some journals want graphical abstracts, structured abstracts, or specific reporting guidelines for clinical or animal work. Some have specific requirements for supplementary files. Note whether they want line numbers or continuous line numbering in the manuscript file.
Format references according to the journal style. For this, please use a dedicated bibliography software package such as Endnote. You can often directly download a journal’s referencing style into your bibliography software. Don’t try and organise and format your references manually. The same goes for figure panels. If the journal wants panels labelled in a certain way, label them that way from the start.
When instructions conflict with what you see in published papers, trust the instructions. Published articles sometimes predate a rule change or slipped through with exceptions. Your job is to make the editor’s job easy. A clean, compliant package signals that you will be reasonable to work with through review.
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3. Structure your paper
Without structure a paper would be a chaotic mess. The classic IMRaD (Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion) layout exists and is used by most journals because it works. Introduction sets up a clear gap in our knowledge. Methods tell people what you did in enough detail to be able to replicate your work. Results show what you found without burying the reader in interpretation. Discussion explains what it means and where it stops.
Within each section, lead with the point. Paragraphs can open with a sentence that says what the paragraph is for. In results section, use subheadings that match the figure title to break up the section into logical chunks. In the discussion, briefly summarise your main findings, then discuss what the results mean, how they relate to the existing literature and what the limitations are.
Including signposting helps. A sentence that previews the next block of results, or that tells the reader why a control experiment matters, saves confusion. Reviewers read at night, on the train or between meetings. They should not have to reconstruct your logic from scattered hints. Try to make the reader’s and reviewers’ job easier.
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4. Make the abstract interesting
The abstract is often one of the trickiest parts of your paper to get right. You have a lot of information to communicate in a very limited space and it is essential that the abstract catches the reader’s attention or interest if they are to read the main body of your paper and hopefully cite it in their own papers. Many readers never go beyond the abstract. It should stand alone, report the main question, the main approach taken, the headline findings, and a plain statement of why anyone should care. All in about 250 words, no citations, no undefined jargon, no figure references.
I would recommend opening with the problem you aim to address in language a smart outsider could follow. Then say what you did, with enough specificity that the approach is clear, not using vague statements like “we investigated X using advanced methods.” Then give results, with numbers where possible. End with the main takeaway message, not a vague call for more research unless more research is genuinely the point.
Avoid cutting and pasting sentences from the introduction. Abstracts need much tighter language. Try to avoid using “Suggests” and “may indicate” as these can make the work sound weak, even when the data are solid.
I usually write the abstract after I have written a full draft of the main body of the paper, after the figures are pretty much finalised. Try reading it aloud. If you run out of breath or lose the thread, a reviewer probably will as well. Don’t worry about the word limit initially. Craft a good abstract first and then edit it down later to fit the word limit.
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5. Choose a title carefully
The title of your paper is very important. Choose it carefully. This is the first, and possibly the only thing other scientists will read of your paper. The title is what people will see in search results, email alerts, and conference programmes. A good title names the topic, hints at the system or dataset, and signals the kind of contribution. It needs to be accurate so that nobody feels tricked after reading the abstract but also catchy and engaging, to encourage potential readers to progress beyond the title.
Try to avoid overly long titles as these are often truncated by the databases. On the other hand, a title that is too short means you may waste keywords people actually search for. Include the organism, intervention, or method if that is how people find papers in your area.
I recommend running a few versions of possible titles past your colleagues outside your subfield.
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6. Make your figures look nice
Figures are the visual argument of your paper. Reviewers forgive imperfect prose more easily than confusing plots and messy figures. Every panel should have a purpose you can state in one sentence. If you cannot, cut it or move it to supplement.
It might sound trivial but make sure your figures look nice. Use consistent fonts and text sizes, line weights for graph axes, and consistent colour palettes across figures. Make sure things line up vertically and horizontally. Label all axes with appropriate labels and units. Include statistics markers on graphs where needed. Make legends readable without zooming to four hundred percent. For microscopy images, show scale bars on all images. In the figure legends, include n numbers and the statistical test used. For graphs, show the mean plus the SD or SEM and the raw data points.
Export the figures at a high resolution. It is easy to reduce resolution later but not so easy to increase it.
If possible, design figures so they make sense in black and white. Some readers print paper in B&W to read on the bus on their way home. Use the main message of the figure as the figure legend title.
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7. Proofread your manuscript
Carefully proofread the manuscript before submitting it for review and get the co-authors to do so as well. I personally find it easier to spot errors and typos by reading a printed copy, rather than proofreading from a screen. Some people find it helps to read backwards through paragraphs to slow your brain down so it stops auto correcting. Run a spell checker, then still read manually because checkers miss field specific terms and wrong but real words. If English is not your first language, consider asking a native English speaker to help with the proofreading.
Check that all the figure references in the text point to the correct figure. Check that you have used official gene names and formatting. Also, check that all figures and tables are cited in order and that supplementary files are mentioned where needed.
Ask a co-author or a friend to read the final version cold. Give them a short list of what to look for. Fresh eyes catch “the the” and missing panels faster than you will after living in the file for months.
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8. Suggest reviewers for the editor to use
Many journals invite or require the corresponding author to suggest names of potential reviewers. This is not nepotism when done honestly. It helps the editor find people who understand the methods and the literature, and who have an interest in the subject matter. Often, an editor will fire off over 20 request emails to potential reviewers to get just one to accept, so by suggesting reviewers who may be interested in your work, you are making their job easier and hopefully reducing the time you have to wait to get a decision on whether your paper is acceptable for publication. Suggest experts who know the area but do not have conflicts of interest. You shouldn’t suggest people who you have recently (probably within the last 5 years) co-authored other publications. Also, don’t suggest people from the same institution as you.
Pick people who have recently published on your topic, not just the big names. A busy star is likely to decline. A mid-career researcher who uses your assay may say yes and read carefully. Be careful about suggesting more junior researchers. I often find that they can be more critical, as if they have a need to demonstrate their intellect by identifying every single error and weakness in your manuscript, however small it may be.
You may be asked to briefly justify your suggestion. Don’t write an extensive bio, just say why each person is suitable in one line if the form has space. Do the same for opposed reviewers if requested. Opposed reviewers should be real conflicts, not people you think might give your work a rigorous review.
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9. Be nice to your reviewers
Reviewers give their time for free to review your manuscript. They are volunteers. They are also the gatekeepers to publication. A rude or overly defensive response letter makes editors side with reviewers more often than authors expect. This also only serves to annoy the reviewer that you need to give your manuscript a positive rating. You do not have to agree with every comment they make. You do have to answer every comment, clearly and without sarcasm. In my experience, if you can respond positively to most of the reviewer’s comments, then often your manuscript will be accepted.
Never write responses to reviewers’ comments the same day that you receive them. You will be disappointed by the rejection and possibly frustrated, angry even. You need to strip any emotion from your responses. Give it a day or two. Read between the lines and consider what message the reviewers’ comments communicate.
Organise responses point by point. I find it helpful to include the reviewers original comment followed by your response, explaining how you have amended the manuscript or why you disagree politely (and explaining why). If you disagree, explain with data or citations, not with attitude or opinion.
When a reviewer misunderstood something, treat that as a signal. Treat this as an indication that you have not explained things clearly enough, not an indication of the reviewer’s stupidity (however tempting it may be!). Maybe a paragraph or statement was unclear. Fix the text even if you also explain in the response letter. Editors like seeing “we clarified in the discussion, page X” more than “the reviewer is wrong.”
Thank reviewers for taking the time to review your manuscript and providing you with feedback that will improve your manuscript.
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10. Don’t give up
Rejection is normal. I have never had a paper accepted on first submission, without some form of revision. Even good papers get bounced for being a poor fit for the journal, timing, or a reviewer having a bad day. Treat a rejection with useful comments as a revision plan for another journal or a stronger resubmission. A desk rejection can still teach you about scope. Resubmission and transfer networks exist. Editor recommendations after rejection sometimes name sensible next venues. Preprint posting can keep the work visible while you regroup.
Talk to your supervisor, mentor, colleagues and co-authors about strategy, not just morale. Publishing is a skill that improves with cycles. Plenty of well cited papers in the literature failed somewhere first, often more than once. Persistence plus listening beats talent alone.
But most importantly, don’t give up. Just as I have never had a paper accepted on first submission, I also have never submitted a paper for review and not succeeded in getting it published. It may take a few journals and up to a year for submitting and revising, but you will get there in the end.
And the final thing you need. Good luck!