How to prepare a manuscript for publication in a scientific journal

Anything that is not obviously wrong or old can be published! What can be published? Anything that is not obviously wrong or old can be published! There are several thousand SCI journals, not all of them are receiving a large number of submissions. Most local (national) journals will accept any well-written paper!

What is a well-written manuscript? The manuscript must be prepared with the same effort as if you were submitting it to a top journal. That is, the composition, English, figures, etc. must be well made.

You are not wasting your time when you spend a lot of effort in preparing a manuscript for a journal of the physical society of a banana republic. As in research, you are always gaining experience!

How to increase the chance of paper acceptance! Select the results publication Preliminary preparation Important points (scientific) Important points (presentation) Important points (manuscript) Important points (submission) Important points (revision and reply)

Your research work Check and analyze your results seriously, even if they look trivial. If your result is negative (not as expected), you should analyze it more seriously and find out the reason. You gain experience most effectively this way! Don‘t throw away any result (especially unclear results) unless it is definitely wrong!

Mental attitude Every paper must be prepared seriously and carefully, as if it were an important work – especially if the result is trivial or not so novel.

What to publish? Choose one and only one result for the paper. This result should be the most novel or most interesting, even if it is not the most useful or the part you have spent the least time on. Don’t include results that are secondary, unless they are needed to clarify the main result!

Preliminary writing First write (by hand) a very short informal version in 2 pages. Using it, give a talk on your work and results in 10 to 15 minutes. This version should be such that a reader can completely understand what you have done and what your main results are.

Keep the manuscript short Use the simplest sentence and words. Do not put in anything that is not directly related. Do not repeat anything: do not copy your own lines. Unless the paper is very long, do not include In the next section, we …. In Sec. III, we …. In the Conclusion, we … Do not include long derivations and descriptions, only mention the most essential points and give reference. For example, you can write: From the conservation and the Maxwell equations, following the approach of Wang [3], we obtain after some straightforward algebra … (insert the final equation) …

Remember: The main aim of a paper is to announce a new discovery, not to teach the reader how to obtain or derive it, unless the process itself is your aim.

How to start writing Do not wait and think, just start! Start with the derivation of equations or description of the experimental setup, never with the Introduction! Include only the crucial points. Next describe the results and write the figure captions. Then the discussion of the results. The last 3 parts are the Conclusion, Introduction, and Abstract. This ordering is useful for the start of the writing. Also, remember that new ideas often appear and you understand more of your work during the manuscript writing.

About the writing itself The writing should be as clear as possible. Use simple English only. Use common words only. Use simple sentences, avoid long ones. Do not use old-style literal or flowerly English, as in outdated English literature. Do not put in unnecessary words and lines.

Some notes on English Don’t use colloquial English, such as don’t, we’re, we’ve. There must be an “article” in front of most nouns. Use “a” and “an” for an object that cannot be pointed at, “the” if you can point at it. The empty spaces behind the punctuations are important. (In Word, such errors are shown!) Punctuations are also needed for the formulas. Make use of useful connecting words, such as accordingly, however, in contrast to, furthermore, in fact, … But first make sure that you know their meanings!

Some technical points Read the author’s instructions of the journals carefully. Use Latex and the journal’s style (.sty) file if possible, avoid using Word. If you use SWP, export the manuscript in plain latex. If you must use Word, you should very carefully check the symbols and formulas in the pdf file made by the journal during submission. Prepare the figures with a simple editor. Use only the most common character sets. Avoid writing labels inside a figure. Check the author’s instructions. For most journals the figures must also be submitted separately as eps or tiff files (even if the are already included in the manuscript file, like in Word). For APS journals, you can only submit the figures in EPS.

Tricks of getting your ms accepted Cite many references. An inappropriate referee will usually pass your paper. Refer to your good friends and suggest them as referees. (There are many “author gangs” that pass each other’s papers.) Reply to the referee’s comments point by point. Do not try confuse the questions. Never say that the referee is wrong unless you can very clearly show that. Also, do not flatter him in your response. If you don’t want to respond to the referee, you can ask for a new one. But editors not like that. He will send it to a more difficult referee, together with the first comments.

Notes on final manuscript preparation If you use Word, all formulas involving symbols must be in MathType since they can appear differently in different versions of Word and/or Windows!! You can use Word for single English characters, such as x and y, but put them in italics: x and y. If a certain symbol (but not punctuation marks such as [ ] ) is on your keyboard, you should use that, instead of MathType. Do not use the characters in the character set “Symbols” in Word since they are Windows specific and can appear differently in different versions of Word and/or Windows. You can verify this by typing a symbol (such as b) and copy it to MathType. For US journals, the units (MeV, cm, sec, km, W, …) should NOT be in italics. Note that in MathType, you can choose between Math and Text characters (in the menu bar Style).

Follow the “author instructions” as closely as possible, especially the instructions for the figures, including the style, character and label sizes, etc. For some journals, the figures should be at the very end of the manuscript and all the captions should be on a separate page. This is because in Word the figure caption can get mixed up with the text. For some journals, such as PoP, all authors in the references must be listed in the manuscript (the journal may replace them with et al. during printing)! That is, you cannot use et al. in the manuscript reference list. For US journals, the superscripts should be behind the punctuations (T. P. Yu,1,2 instead of T. P. Yu1,2, ).

More details about English writing See the file Scientific English.doc Don’t listen to your teacher in an English class in China, unless he/she is a recent graduate of a college in the US or UK!

How to improve your English? Read some modern popular novels in English. Note carefully the English writing in the physics textbooks. Don’t follow the classical novels, which mostly contain out-of-date Inglish! Don’t worry about errors when speaking to a foreign visitor! Get an English or American boy or girl friend! This is the most natural and efficient way.

Final notes The manuscript must be complete and in the “final” form. Don’t plan to improve it in the revision. No journal will make major corrections and style improvements for you. Latex is now the most important platform for publication. You should learn to write a latex manuscript using a simple editor. If you use Windows-based latex, export the manuscript in plain latex for submission. The duty of a modern scientist includes writing, typing, drawing figures, and publishing a paper. Learning the technical details of these is very useful!