How To Pass Peer Review For Your Manuscript

Posted by Ankit Verma on Dec 15, 2016 in Manuscript Peer Review | 0 comments

Publishing your research in a science journal is important to advance your career and your research. However, like every magazine, science journals often follow a very strict guideline to showcase your work. A lot of times, your work may not get selected for publication, even if you think you did a great job. If you are preparing to write a manuscript for such peer review, there are a few points you need to take care of.

1. Read the Author Guidelines: Every journal will issue a set of author guidelines that outline how the research needs to be presented. Ignoring these guideline or deviating from them will increase your chances of rejection. Read the guideline carefully and make a note of the salient points and adhere to them.
2. Write a precise abstract: The abstract gives a concise idea about your work or research. Make sure that you write a crisp abstract and highlight the best points of your work. Unless your abstract generates enough interest for your work, the chances of a peer review happening for you is almost nil.
3. Stick to sections: It is easy to get carried away and put in as much information as you can in a manuscript. Doing so, you risk repetation which is abhorred by most reviewers. Make sure that you write as per the sections such as introduction, results, discussion, conclusion etc. Never overlap the sections and don’t be afraid to make cuts where needed.
4. Avoid grammatical errors: The one thing that makes your manuscript lose credibility is wrong grammar or spellings. If you are not proficient in the language that your manuscript needs to be published, do not hesitate to take help from language experts. You need to present your idea in a clean manner and not let it become lost in translation.
5. Stick to the word count: Although you are tempted to cross the word limit by a few hundred, try to stick to the maximum word limit. The last thing you would want is a rejection due to an excess word count. Prune the text to edit out words that seem to fill but not contribute to your work in any way.

If you are finding it difficult to begin, start with reading other published works for some inspiration. Success is not as elusive as you might believe it is.