Six essential steps to get your article published

2 September 2017

Getting your article published in a peer-reviewed journal can be a challenging and time-consuming task. Fortunately, there are several essential steps you can take to improve your chances of success. This post explains the six essential steps to getting your article published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Six essential steps to get your article published in a peer-review journal

Presenting your research work as an article is essential for researchers and students and is the best way to disseminate your work’s output to your peers. However, the main obstacles in your way to an article published are the journal’s editor and reviewers! It’s generally hard to convince editors and reviewers that your work is worth publishing, but we’ll give you some tips to get your work published (provided that it is scientifically sound!). The following steps allow you to have your paper evaluated based on scientific merit and not a lack of proper presentation.

Select a target journal

#1 Select a target journal: The first step of the article published is to select the journal in that you want to publish your work. Many people write their manuscript first and then try to format it according to the journal to which they want to submit the manuscript. But if you consider your target journal while writing, you can arrange the contents of your manuscript according to the interests of the editor. This way you make a good impression on the editor and your manuscript is more likely to be sent to reviewers for evaluation.

Be specific in the title

#2 Be specific in the title: The title of your article is the “packaging” of the article. The more ambitious and attractive the title is, the higher the rate of success. Never use a simplistic title. For example, if your study is about climate change and you have found that the temperature of the earth’s climate has risen in the last 10 years, do not use titles such as “Study of the earth’s climate change” or “Investigation of the earth’s climate change.” Rise of Europe temperature since 2005 or 10-degree temperature rise in Europe within the last decade.

Smart abstract

#3 Smart abstract: Do not only summarize your results in the abstract but also include a very short survey of the literature in a maximum of two lines at the start of the abstract. This provides a good impression to the readers (in particular the editor and reviewers) that your work pushes your field of interest forward. In other words, the abstract of the paper should not solely represent the outcome of your paper. Rather, it should be a short version of your paper.

A simple and comprehensive introduction

#4 Simple and comprehensive introduction: Literature survey or introduction is an essential part of each paper. Here, you should provide a short story on the latest research and progress on the topic of your research. You should especially try to show that the scope of your work is the biggest challenge in the field. In other words, you should convince the editor and reviewers that you are pushing forward the frontline of the field by this work. Note that the last sentence should make a linkage between the state-of-the-art in the subject of your work and your contribution to the field. Global warming is the most serious problem of our century, and it might lead to a catastrophic end if proper measures are not taken to stop it. Hence, knowing the rate of temperature change in the past could provide better insight in order to stop or reduce the risk of disaster. In this work, we have systematically measured the temperature changes and …”.

Attractive illustration for article published 

#5 Attractive illustration: Graphs are an integral part of scientific articles. If you make them nicer, the journals are also more likely to give you nice comments. A simple illustration in which the summary of your objective is depicted can be very helpful. As an example, I have made two graphs in which the same results are shown. Proper font size, colour and features can make a boring graph more attractive! Below you see two graphs wherein the temperature gradient of 10 years is drawn. I guess, the difference is too obvious and doesn’t need further comment (both the graphs are drawn by Excel 2013 (relevant software is listed in our earlier posts)).

Importance of conclusion

#6 Importance of conclusion: You should of course summarize your work, but also add an ambitious perspective to your results. For instance, you could summarize your climate change study from point 2 with something like: ” …these results provide a clear warning that politicians should take immediate action to reduce pollution and thereby save the earth from certain disaster.” As you see, although the aim of your study was a temperature change analysis, you can further show the importance of the results as a global issue. These steps make your work much more brilliant than it is and publishing your several years of studies turns out to be easier than doing the work itself! Following these steps will identify your work as timely, important, and professional-looking, and will greatly ease the publishing of your work.

What are the Characteristics of a Good Academic Journal?

An academic journal is a publication that is produced by an academy or institution, and which typically includes peer review articles on the subject of scholarship in order to advance knowledge.

The characteristics of a good academic journal are that it is peer-reviewed and has a reputation for quality. It also has an impact factor.

Academic Journal impact factor

An impact factor is a measure of the average number of citations a journal receives per paper published in that journal. This number has been studied extensively by researchers and universities, who have found that it can be used to assess the quality of an academic journal as well as determine how much an author’s work has been referenced by other academics.

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