REVIEW ARTICLE

Year : 2015  |  Volume : 1  |  Issue : 3  |  Page : 61-62

How to write and publish a scientific manuscript in english: Introducing some practical guidelines for non-english speaking scholars

Mohsen Rezaeian
Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Occupational Environmental Research Center, Rafsanjan Medical School, Rafsanjan University of Medical Sciences, Rafsanjan, Iran

Correspondence Address:
Mohsen Rezaeian
Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Occupational Environmental Research Center, Rafsanjan Medical School, Rafsanjan University of Medical Sciences, Rafsanjan
Iran

Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None

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DOI: 10.4103/2468-6565.190971

Nowadays, the skill of writing scholarly articles in English has become a necessary skill for the researches. If you are a non-English speaking scholar who would like to write and publish a paper in English, you should read this article very carefully. The aim of this narrative review article is to provide non-English speaking scholars with the details of some practical guidelines on how to write and publish a scientific article in English.

Keywords: Non-English speaking scholars, practical guidelines, writing scientific English paper

Introduction

Practical Guidelines

1. The first practical guideline is to carry out a comprehensive literature review. This not only helps you to design and conduct a sound research but also avoids you to commit research misconduct due to not comprehensively carry out your literature review.^[6] Furthermore, it helps you to become familiar with the English rhetoric of scientific writing related to your topic. Read each retrieved paper carefully. Learn how other scientists in your filed write their papers. At the same time, meticulously examine their obtained materials and methods. Remember that if you are going to publish an English paper in a prestigious journal it should add something new to the existing knowledge. Therefore, you should design and conduct a better study in comparison with the previously published studies
2. Based on what has mentioned in the previous step, write your research proposal. At this stage and based on your type of study, try to prepare your research proposal according to its appropriate publication guidelines.^[7] Furthermore, you should also try to get your research proposal funded by an appropriate funding agency.^[8] If it would be possible, you should allocate some of your requested budget for translating and editing your final manuscript into English
3. It is very wise if from the first place you would be able to design and carry out a collaborative research with an English native speaking team and/or person.^[9],[10] It would help you to not only raise the standard and quality of your research but to prepare its final manuscript in English
4. Carry out your designed research with the highest possible standard. Avoid any types of research misconduct either serious ones such as data fabrication or data falsification and less serious ones such as ignoring outliers or ignoring missing data ^[6]
5. As soon as finishing your actual research within the laboratory, bedside or field and carrying out your data analyses, write the first draft of your manuscript. If you have already had a native English scholar in your team, it is straightforward to prepare your first draft in English. Otherwise, you should write your first draft in your mother-tongue language
6. In the next step and if you have written your first draft in your mother-tongue language, you should find someone to translate it for you in English. At this stage, you should be very cautious to select someone whose first language is English and fully familiar with academic writing.^[11] Beware of predatory persons or organisations who simply would like to take your money away. Besides, if you select a professional person/organisation for translation, you could be sure that they protect you from other types of research misconduct, especially plagiarism.^[6] Otherwise, selecting an inappropriate person/organisation might also put you endanger of innocently committing such awful research misconduct
7. When receiving the first translated draft read it for a number of times. If you are uncertain about anything, ask it from your translator to make everything clear. Ask other authors of the manuscript to read it very carefully and inform you immediately of any comments that they might have. It is also wise if someone not in the authorial team who is familiar with English academic writing read your manuscript.^[12] At this stage, you should make sure to resolve any problems within the manuscript before submission
8. Submit your manuscript to the most appropriate prestigious journal ^[13] and beware of some open access predatory journals.^[14] Remember that a prestigious journal applies peer review process the outcome of which almost helps authors to raise the quality and standard of their manuscript.^[15] While an open access predatory journal only tries to accept as much as article that it can without applying a proper peer review process. As a result such journals put you endanger of publishing an article full of errors ^[5]
9. In due course, if the outcome of the last step is positive, that is, the editor asking you to resubmit your manuscript either with minor or major corrections, you should carefully revise and resubmit your paper based on the comments of reviewers and wait for the final outcome to be announced. If the outcome of the last step is negative, you do not get disappointed. Based on the comments of the reviewers/editor, carefully revise your article and send it to the second most appropriate prestigious journal.^[13]

Conclusion

References

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