Elsevier

Surgical Oncology

Volume 18, Issue 4, December 2009, Pages 350-356
Surgical Oncology

Review
Successful publishing: How to get your paper accepted

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.suronc.2008.09.001Get rights and content

Abstract

Medical science is rapidly evolving and an incredible number of publications are being published. Are they all worth reading? Authors are deemed responsible for what they put down in writing; whether they are first or corresponding author, it really makes no difference. Editors of peer-reviewed international journals have agreed to share their views with the readership, in order to optimise the quality of contributions as well as to assist junior colleagues in their editorial efforts. Starting from an historical perspective, ethical issues in publishing are discussed and technical suggestions on how to get the final draft accepted for publication are outlined. Contributing towards medical science is a great pleasure to be experienced and shared.

Section snippets

Respect

Clinical scientists are overwhelmed by 2 million biomedical papers published every year by almost 20,000 journals: reading 5500 new papers/day is certainly an impossible target. It is crucial to avoid wasting the reader's time.

For this reason the publication of meaningless or previously published data should not be attempted; this is different from conducting confirmatory studies and sharing such findings with the bio-medical community. It was previously stated that “You don't write because you

Ethical issues

The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) published a document called Guidelines on Good Publication Practice [13] providing clarifications on study design, data analysis, authorship, conflicts of interest, peer review, redundant publication, plagiarism, duties of editors, media relations and advertising.

This is a must-read document for all those who are involved in any editorial activity. Similar suggestions have also been provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (ICMJE) [14], the

The layout

Since its origin in 1665, the structure of scientific papers has undergone substantial changes (Table 1) because the form and the style were not initially standardised: the letter and the experimental report coexisted. Letters were usually single authored, written in a polite style, and addressed several subjects at the same time. The experimental report was descriptive and the events were often presented in chronological order. Reporting experiments evolved to a more structured form in which

The English

Complying with the home style and strict regulations of the modern electronic submission may help authors to homogenise their submissions; this is intended to make the final issue more clear and pleasant to read. Electronic submission guidelines are to be religiously followed simply because the article will never reach any reviewer if not structured as requested.

Accurate editing is crucial: sloppy submissions with substandard layout, grammatical and punctuation errors, inaccurate referencing

Bring home messages

  • Write with your readership in mind—undergraduates, nurses, PhDs etc.

  • Imagine you have to pay for every single word you write: keep it short. Content comes first, lay out second: on special occasions, when the submission is exceptionally valuable, Elsevier may be available to amend the text and improve the final layout.

  • The process of conducting clinical/basic research can only be fully understood after experiencing the process of writing a scientific paper; oncologists are very good at that.

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank Sarah Jenkins, Publishing Editor, Elsevier Ltd., for her valuable comments and continuous support.

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