Writing Manuscripts for Peer Review: Your Guide to Not Annoying Reviewers and Increasing Your Chances of Success

Abstract

Publish or perish.'' Does this send chills down your spine? For many academicians, it certainly does. Publishing your work is a necessary part of achieving success in an academic and research career. The ability to articulate your ideas and contribute to the body of knowledge in your discipline is an essential skill and, happily, one that can be cultivated and refined. We have drawn on our own experiences in learning to write, being reviewed, successfully publishing and being reviewers ourselves. We also have included some excellent resources in the literature to help you maximize your chance of success.

Manuscript rejection in ophthalmology and visual science journals: identifying and avoiding the common pitfalls

“…Structure is a vital part of writing a good manuscript and having robust methodology and a well‐written results section are important features in any scientific article. There are several guides for novice authors, including those specifically relating to ophthalmology and visual science 5 that provide clear guidance on how to structure a manuscript using the widely accepted IMRaD style – Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion 10 . Gilhotra and McGhee include a valuable table of questions a reviewer will ask of a manuscript.…”

Author, Reviewer, Decision, Oh My!

“…The journal's editor chooses reviewers based on their expertise in a particular area and also on their availability (Grindstaff & Saliba, 2012). Kalpakjian and Meade (2008) penned a whimsical yet practical article delineating 10 ''tips to assure that you will not get published'' (p. 230): From a survey of 63 nursing journal editors, three main reasons for manuscript rejection were described: (a) poorly written manuscript, 35.8%; (b) irrelevant topic for journal, 32.8%; and (c) issues of methodology, 16.4% (Northam, Yarbrough, Haas, & Duke, 2010).…”

“…Reviewer annoyance from poor grammar, punctuation, and spelling 2. Colleagues can be excellent proofreaders before submissionVone way to show respect for the journal's editor and peer reviewers (Kalpakjian & Meade, 2008). Overwhelming or underwhelming review of the literature 4.…”

“…Reviewers look for logical organization of headings in this section: design, setting, participants, variables, and/or outcomes and a reasonable plan for statistical analyses based on research questions (Holzmueller & Pronovost, 2013;Kalpakjian & Meade, 2008;Roederer et al, 2103). Reviewers look for logical organization of headings in this section: design, setting, participants, variables, and/or outcomes and a reasonable plan for statistical analyses based on research questions (Holzmueller & Pronovost, 2013;Kalpakjian & Meade, 2008;Roederer et al, 2103).…”

“…The word ''significant'' should only be used in the Results section if ''statistical significance'' was achieved (Grindstaff & Saliba, 2012). Reviewers look for information on whether assumptions of statistical tests were met, any reported effect sizes, confidence intervals, p values of significance, study power, and reliability of measurement tools (Kalpakjian & Meade, 2008).…”