Publishing the work they done in any of the scientific journal are the biggest dream of every scientist. Publishing their work in the highly reputed journal will help them take their work to next level, so every scientist could face the “publish or perish” moment in their research work. The process of publishing your work after the completion of it is seems to be very long and difficult. To get your work even the progress you made from your research into the eyes of the world has some barriers within it and you have to acquire lot of patience for it. This article will help you out with publishing paper in a sci journal.
Get Peer Reviews
When you want to publish a paper in journal then the peer review process is an important step of it. It is the process in which the peer committee will verify on the presentation and quality of your paper and gives feedback on it before it is accepted by a publication. With the result from peer review the journal editors can find the quality of your paper based on the validity, significance and originality.
How does the Publication Process work?
This process constitutes of three main stages: The pre submission stage, next is the submission and the review, and then the post acceptance done by publication.
- Pre-submission
Before submitting your paper you have to decide on which journal you want to publish your paper. There are several factors you should consider to select one.
- Choosing the target journal: Choose a journal to publish your paper appropriately by considering some factors. Before selecting one go through the articles published in their journal to find whether the theme matches your work.
For example: If you want to publish your work related to cancer genetics in the journal which focus more on translational medicine then the editor of that journal will not have interest on your paper to publish on their journal.
Consider publishing your paper in a journal having higher impact factor. Everyone in the research field would be aware of JIF ‘journal impact factor’ which is the measurement of the frequency of an article that has been cited in other articles within a specific period of time from a particular journal. The journal with more impact factor, have more number of citations so that indicates, how impactful is that journal to the particular field. Every scientist wants to publish their work on a highly impactful journal than with the lower one. Get feedbacks from your peers and colleagues to choose one.
- Manuscript writing: If you have identified the suitable journal, now you have to read the guidelines provided for authors in it before start writing your manuscript. It will give some instructions regarding the paper writing like word limit, format for figures and other additional information, so focus more on it. The journal like Cell press is asking for graphical abstract of the paper nowadays. You can also get to know about the copyright criteria of the journal and you should provide reference for the images and tables which you used in your paper from other articles.
Based on the principles followed for scientific writing, you start crafting your paper. To make it more attractive for reviewer and editor you have to write it more logically than writing chronologically. Take help from someone who can help you with making your writing English better if you are not a native speaker. After writing make sure to check copyediting and proofreading, recheck it again with the help of collaborators and colleagues. To make sure your writing work is error free and neatly presented you can get help of a scientific writer who can also save your time. The XKCD comic states that “it’s possible for dubious studies to fool even well-established scientists at first glance”.
- Submission and Review
- Letter submitted for the editor: It is the most important and difficult part in the process of paper submission. You should not write the abstract of your paper here in this section. This section should give an outline of your research also any extra information which you want the editor to know about your work.
If you can convince the editor with your cover letter from you with all the significant values of the work then your paper will be moved to the next level for peer review. The number of reviewers may vary which depends to the journal from two and four reviewers. After getting feedbacks from reviewers the editors will contact you with the result, it can be either accepted or accepted with revision or rejected. Accepted with revision is the most common result. Don’t be worried with the revision reply; because you have crossed all the major hurdles, this is some minor mistakes that needed to be corrected.
- Rebuttal letter to the editor: When you resubmit your paper you have to provide two documents for it. One is the corrected manuscript, with highlighting all the corrections made and the other one is rebuttal letter which is considered as the reply for reviewers comment. This letter is equally important to the first cover letter you made for editor. In this you should write about how you changed your paper after the feedback received from reviewers.
You have to address every comment individually and make sure to correct every point. If you have some different opinion for the reviewer’s feedback you can justify your point to the editor clearly and politely. The editors can accept your explanation when you explain them calmly about the acceptable feedbacks from your side after considering all of them.
- Post Acceptance Publication Process
After all you get to receive acceptance notification from the journal for publishing your article. But with this it won’t get over, after this one more step is pending. The editor of your paper will contact to inform you about the final editing process that may be of formatting. After all those editing, you will now receive a duplicate copy of final paper in print format for doing proofread. That one is going be the final paper which will be published, so make sure to check every detail possible. If they need any disclosure for mismatch of reviewer’s feedback or any acknowledgement for funding, then provide them with it. You have to process with the license and copyright agreement.
If they want you to make payment for publication fees then pay it without any further delay. Sometime you may be charged with extra amount for using color images and also for open source journal. One thing you have to keep in minds that don’t drop your manuscript. Every paper will undergo lots of edit and rejection before it would be published, even the Noble Prize winners might get rejected at any place. The one who discovered cycle of citric acid, his paper rejected naturally. To get published and even cited you have to ensure every point including language error, factual error also comments of reviewers. If your paper got published it will take you to next level and might open path for new innovations.
