The Unofficial Guide For Authors: (Or How To Produce Research

The unofficial guide
for authors
(or how to produce research
articles worth citing)
Tomislav Hengl
&
Mike Gould
2006 EUR 22191 EN

This document may be cited as follows:
Hengl, T., Gould, M., 2006. The unofficial guide for authors (or how to produce
research articles worth citing). EUR 22191 EN, 54 pp. Office for Official
Publications of the European Communities, Luxemburg. ISBN: 92-79-01703-9
Illustrations by Josip Vranjković (jvranjkovic@inet.hr), Zagreb, Croatia.
© European Communities, 2006
LEGAL NOTICE
Neither the European Commission nor any person acting on behalf of the
Commission is responsible for the use which might be made of the following
information. For more information see also http://www.europa.eu.int
Contact
Dr. Tomislav Hengl

Scientific/technical support officer
Institute for Environment and Sustainability, Land Management and Natural Hazards Unit
European Commission, Directorate General JRC
MAIL: JRC TP 280, Via E. Fermi 1, I-21020 Ispra (VA), Italy

TEL: +39-0332-785535; FAX: +39-0332-786394
E-MAIL: tomislav.hengl@jrc.it
Foreword
Writing scientific articles and getting them published in peer reviewed journals
is not an easy task, and it is often the most time consuming and demanding part
of research nowadays. The continuously increasing pressure on scientists, all over
the world, to write papers and get them published has created a “publish or perish”
syndrome resulting in an enormous increase in the numbers of articles published.
Often at the expense of quality.
Many criteria have been proposed for the evaluation of scientific excellence in
research institutions. The dominant parameter in most research organizations remains
the number of publications and the impact factor of journals in which scientific results
get published. It is legitimate to ask whether these are the right criteria for assessing
the quality and productivity of a research organization or should we perhaps focus
more on the impact these publications make in a period of time?
The JRC is no exception in this context, with publications still ranking high in the
periodic action review (PAR) exercises that are organized every year. It is therefore
extremely useful and timely to have such an “unofficial guide for authors” published,
that may provide some helpful hints and guidance for researchers within the JRC who
wish to improve their output and for scientists in general.
Certainly a good publication must have new, relevant results. Excellence in re-
search remains the cornerstone for any scientific publication. Good writing and skill-
ful ‘packaging’ of scientific achievements can help promote awareness of such new
discoveries. This is particularly true in a time when the ‘envelope’ often tends to be
more important then its actual ‘substance’. A word of caution is therefore needed: a
well-written article may not necessarily report relevant scientific results. While the
opposite is clearly often the case: we often come across completely unreadable articles
reporting excellent new scientific achievements. As a consequence, too many excellent
scientists do not get the recognition they deserve, simply because they are not capable
of presenting their result in a readable form that is acceptable to high-impact scientific
journals. This is particularly true for non-anglophone scientists, who have to face the
additional hurdle of language barriers.
This short unofficial guide for authors is certainly a valuable source of information
for both young students and experienced scientists. It does not have the pretension
of being exhaustive, but it surely provides interesting ideas and strategies which can
improve the quality of scientific publications.
Luca Montanarella
Action leader (MOSES)

The unofficial guide for authors
(or how to produce research articles worth citing )
Tomislav Hengl and Mike Gould

Contents
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Science and what lies beneath . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1.1 A brief guide to science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1.2 The purpose of a research article . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.1.3 Types of research articles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.1.4 Types of journals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.2 What’s eating science? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.2.1 Ludicrous pressure to publish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.2.2 A lack of evaluation of reviewers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
1.2.3 Fashionable pliability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
1.2.4 Possible solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2 Guide to authors 21
2.1 From ideas to first draft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.1.1 The one-page concept paper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.1.2 Rethink the results and repeat the experiment . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.1.3 Investigate your audience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.1.4 Write it up — now that’s easy! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.1.5 Analyze the article sentence by sentence . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2.1.6 Avoid common language mistakes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2.2 Pre-submission checklist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
2.2.1 Find the right journal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
2.2.2 Do the work of the reviewers yourself . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
iii
2.2.3 Make a full information package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
2.2.4 Final tips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
3 Appendix 43
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
3.2 Methods and materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
3.3 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
3.3.1 RA structure and style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
3.3.2 RA sub-structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
3.4 Conclusions and discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Most scientific journals provide guidelines for authors – how to format
references and prepare artwork, how many copies of the paper to submit
and to which address. However, behind any formal editorial system are
real people with their professional and personal interests, which often have
a profound influence on the chances that your paper will get accepted (or
rejected). The official guidelines say little about how you should prepare
your paper and what are the chances that it will be accepted. You will
not be able to find such information on journal websites. This gave us the
idea to write an unofficial guide for authors, in which we could tell you
frankly what you can expect from journals, editors, reviewers and, indeed,
the whole system of science. We offer some pragmatic tips on how to
manage the production of your paper — based on a training programme
in academic writing and our own experience. We also address some of
the deeper aspects of preparing and publishing research articles as well
as the limitations and frustrations that are inherent in current editorial
systems such as hyperproduction, phoney co-authors and poor reviews.
This guide is primarily intended for inexperienced researchers, although
we hope more experienced authors will also find some of the points raised
in it of interest.
T. Hengl and M. Gould
In Ispra, March 2006.

Chapter 1
Introduction
1.1 Science and what lies beneath
“First principles, Clarice. Simplicity. Read Marcus Aurelius. Of each

particular thing, ask: What is it, in itself, what is its nature...? ” 1
1.1.1 A brief guide to science
Indeed, before jumping into tips ’n tricks for getting your paper published, we need to
go way back before the actual submission of the paper and address some philosophical
aspects of preparing and publishing research articles. It might surprise you that we
start by talking about first principles, but less experienced researchers, in particular,
often try to publish their work without having any idea of what science is about, where
they see themselves in the world of science, and for whom their work was intended in
the first place. We will use the answers to these questions to back up more specific
instructions for producing scientific publications. Avoiding philosophical debates,
these are the essential concepts:
What is science? — The most compact definition of science is that it is a col-

lection of objective knowledge that was derived through systematic
investigations that are well-described and can be repeated2 . In a way,
science is an ever-growing evolution of human knowledge about our surroundings
1
The first simplicity principle of Hannibal Lecter that helped agent Clarice Starling break the
case of serial killer. From the “Silence of the lambs” by Thomas Harris.
2
We would like to emphasize the three key words from this definition that we will come again and
again in this article: objective, systematic and repeatable.
2 Introduction
and ourselves. This knowledge is often rather soft and needs to be questioned
over and over again — “the greatest obstacle to progress in science is the illusion
of knowledge” (Daniel Boorstin). What we take as fact is often just a hypothe-
sis with a certain amount of evidence, but we should not get into such debates.
What is important to emphasize is that science is not only a encyclopedia galac-
tica, i.e. a systematized record of facts. Scientists also contribute to science with
new, experimental systems, which might not have direct applications straight-
away.
What are the rules of science? — Although there is no official booklet listing the
laws of science, science does have some basic rules. The number one (unwrit-
ten) rule of scientific work is that scientific knowledge needs to be built on
arguments and proofs and not on beliefs or authority. The second most
important rule is that a researcher needs to offer models that best fit re-
ality and not personal (subjective) aspirations. For science, even the most
pessimistic truth is better than fiction. Another interesting rule is that there is
no democracy in science: all can be wrong and a single person can be right
as long as he/she can prove it. Researchers who do not accept arguments, but
follow the herd, often discover that the whole community was mistaken. On the
other hand, if existing knowledge is rather ‘soft’ and uncertain, pluralism and
open discussions, even speculation, need to be allowed3 . Of course, as
long as these are all backed up by data and strong arguments, science should
not limit possible solutions and interpretations of unexplained phenomena: ev-
erything is a priori possible; the issue is only how probable it is. Of
course, we are mostly interested and would report only on things that are highly
or most probable. The sixth important rule of science is that scientific proofs
need to be built primarily through systematic investigations — re-
search experiments4 . In addition, the results of research experiments
need to be reported in an unbiased, clear, concrete, coherent and
3
For example, the problem of global warming is still a soft theory — it is therefore advisable to
use a variety of models to explain this phenomena and then slowly evaluate them.
4
Experiments are tests that are systematically designed and described in (more or less) controlled
conditions. These can be physical or virtual (and even mind) experiments, i.e. simulations.
2
1.1 Science and what lies beneath 3
logically-structured way, again giving much more emphasis to arguments

and proofs than to personal impressions/aspirations. Many people believe that
researchers also need to be able to report on new knowledge in a
popular, open-minded way, trying to reach as wide an audience as possible
and not only writing for themselves. The last rule worth mentioning is that
science does not have a final goal nor final theories5 . There are certainly
no limits to imagination or perfectionism. So if a researcher thinks he/she has
the final word or that he/she has discovered the ultimate theory, he/she might
be disappointed.
What are the goals of science? — The core goal of any scientific work is to make
discoveries and explain them. In most (or all) cases, these discoveries / ex-
planations are then used to help people benefit more from their lives. Although
many distinguish pure experimental research from applied research, all results,
both experimental and applied, are eventually used for the benefit of researchers
and/or the wider community. In that sense, science is always application ori-
ented, the only issue is whether users will benefit immediately or much later.
However, researchers working on theoretical or experimental topics cannot be
held responsible if there is no direct financial benefit from their work. Scientists
need a certain degree of creative freedom — just like artists.
Who are scientists? — Scientists are people who actively conduct experiments and
investigations in order to explain existing phenomena or suggest new ways to
improve current systems. Although scientists are like anyone else, with many
different characters and habits, they also have some specific characteristics that
differentiate them from others. In principle, scientists are driven to do science by
three psychological phenomena: curiosity, imagination and perfectionism.
We would also like to add to this trinity enthusiasm, although this character-
istic can sometimes be counterproductive.
Are you a (born) scientist? — You can certainly check it if you have some of the
characteristics listed above. You need to be determined6 , of course, that this
5
There is a whole book on this topic (Weinberg , 1993).
6
A good starting point to understanding the essence of science is the Carl Sagan’s opus.
3
4 Introduction
is the business that you wish to be in. Then you need to produce records of
your ideas and theories and publish them. After some time, you can log into a
scientific information system and see if others are referring to your work. The
more hits you find, the more certain you can be.
Rules of science
(1) Scientific knowledge needs to be built on arguments and proofs — not on beliefs or authority.
(2) Even the most pessimistic truth is better than fiction.
(3) There is no democracy in science: all can be wrong and a single person can be right.
(4) Pluralism and open discussion, even speculation, need to be allowed.
(5) Everything is a priori possible, the issue is only how probable it is.
(6) Scientific proofs need to be built through research experiments that are repeatable and
unambiguous.
(7) The results of research experiments need to be reported in an unbiased, clear, concrete,
coherent and logically-structured way.
(8) Researchers need to be able to report on new knowledge in a popular, open-minded way.
(9) Science neither has a final goal, nor final theories.
Note that some of the precepts listed above might give you the impression that
science is some sort of religion and scientists its followers. Maybe we should focus
more on the concrete world of science. For that reason, we will further speak about
researchers (people who professionally conduct research experiments), research
groups (groups of researchers working on similar topics and meeting regularly at
scientific meetings and workshops), system of science (national and international
organizations with their members, structure, formal rules and evaluation criteria),
research organizations (research societies, institutes and schools), commercial
scientific companies (publishers, scientific information providers) and research
publications (articles and books published by scientific publishers).
1.1.2 The purpose of a research article
Did you ever ask yourself what the essence of a research article is? Is it solely a report
about an experiment or is it an essay or a user guide for colleagues who would like to
4
conduct similar research? In fact, a research article is a bit of all of these. It looks like
a research report, but it also contains some unique spices — (belletristic) elements
similar to an essay or article from a magazine. However, unlike essays or novels,
articles must rigidly follow a logical structure. In principle, in every research article
three levels of structure can be distinguished in all research articles: macro (sections),
meso (paragraphs) and micro (sentences). Most journals require that authors precisely
follow at least the macro structure7 , although, these days, even the meso structure
(the so-called ‘logical moves’) can be predefined and agreed on (see also the appendix).
Note also that the main purpose of every article is the same — to communicate new8
data and new ideas to a research community.
Important point 1 The purpose of a research paper is to communicate new,

original knowledge (new concepts, new data), so that readers can apply, mod-
ify and extend that knowledge.
Although researchers also communicate their ideas through conferences, meetings

and through the educational system, their contribution to science is mainly measured
through research output by means of publications. Many researchers9 in the history
of science, who did not publish their work in their time, are no longer connected with
their work. This is nicely illustrated by the well-known aphorism publish or perish. In
some sense, the publish or perish aphorism gives a competitive character to scientific
work — scientific discoveries are connected with those who first publish them (in a
visible journal). That’s the name of the game.
1.1.3 Types of research articles
Publication of your ideas/discoveries is not (at least it should not be) the ultimate
ambition of a researcher. The most important thing for a researcher is to make a signif-
7
The common format is IMRaD: Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion.
8
Except in the case of a review article where authors try to systematize existing discoveries.
9
The school example of a researcher that perished is the Christian Huygens who may have been
a superior scientist to Descartes or even Newton, but did not seriously consider publishing his work
(Crump, 2002).
5
6 Introduction
icant contribution to science, i.e. to make an impact. Impact can be evaluated in vari-
ous ways. One of the best-known organizations that measure the impact of articles and
authors is the Institute of Scientific Information10 (http://scientific.thomson.com)
in Philadelphia. ISI monitors around 8,000 journals and has accumulated approxi-
mately 20 million of articles in its database since immediately after the 2nd World
War. In simple terms, ISI enters articles into a database to count the number of times
they are cited by others. Based on this simple measure, ISI make lists of the most
important authors, journals and articles. So the true motto of a researcher should in
fact be: make an impact or perish.
Once the article is published, it starts accumulating ‘points’ i.e. citations. This is
the absolute measure of its impact. Of course, it is not fair to compare the number of
times a paper has been cited for a 15-year-old paper and a rookie. The most objective
measure of the impact of a paper is probably the average number of annual citations
(Garfield, 1990), in other words, the relative impact factor. The higher the number of
citations per year, the more important the paper. Note also that all articles gradually
disappear from references, which means that they all have a citation ’half-life’: the
number of years that one has to go back in time to account for 50% of the total
references (Garfield, 1990). In Natural sciences, the citation half-life typically ranges
from 3-10 years, although most articles will only be cited during the first few years
(or not at all).
Important point 2 The most objective evaluation criteria for a research arti-
cle are the number of times it has been cited per year and its citation half-life.
Based on how often an article is cited, we can roughly distinguish the following
five categories of articles:
Born-dead papers — These are papers that are almost never cited. Their citation
half-life is infinitely short, which means that the topics do not have an audience,
the paper is ‘indigestible’ or it’s simply dull. Some papers are simply bad science
10
Since 1992, ISI is a part of part of the Thomson Corporation, a private company. Still, many
use the old name.
6
chasing a bad idea, but it takes time until the research community forms an
opinion on this. Some might argue that such papers are simply a waste of
resources, but this is not completely true. A small proportion of born-dead
papers have great potential (‘sleeping beauties’), but they are too avant-garde,
too introspective or too hypothetical. So, it is good to have a record of some
good ideas/discoveries even if we do not exactly know what they mean and how
can they be used to solve real-life problems. The real problem is that about
two-thirds of all papers belong to this ’born-dead’ class (see also the work of
Garfield (1979) and Latour (1987)).
Proving-the-known papers — Many papers are routinely well-written, based on

excellent data and the whole project seems to be well organized and conducted,
but they are simply not significantly novel enough (others have already done the
work). They can often still be useful, because they retell known theory in a more
‘digestible’ way or they are more effective in providing a bigger picture. Note
(see point 1), that a paper needs to be successful in transferring new knowledge.
So if an author thinks that he/she can do a much better job then the original
author, such a paper will be welcomed. Of course, the author then needs to
search for and acknowledge the original work, even if he/she is not immediately
aware of it (do your homework — dig into the literature).
Promising papers — These are the papers that reveal new discoveries/ideas that
are significant for both experimental and applied science. Sometimes, even a
badly written paper can be promising. Unlike the born-dead and proving-what-
you-know-papers, authors of promising papers show both talent and dedication
to science. Also consider that research groups usually need at least a few years
to absorb the ideas laid out in a paper, so such promising papers can eventually
get promoted to a higher class.
Most cited papers — The most cited (Garfield, 1990) or the most downloaded
papers are those that have not only proved to be promising, but also ones
that the research community has shown most interest in. Such papers usually
7
8 Introduction
distinguish leading scientists11 from run-of-the-mill ones. In many cases, the

most frequently downloaded papers do not need to be of exceptionally high-
quality (they do not even need to have practical implications for everyday life),
but they nevertheless tackle the right topics with the right arguments at the
right time, and hence provide inspiration for other scientists.
Breakthrough papers — These are absolute outliers and usually mean a partial or
complete change in an important theory. The most famous examples are Ein-
stein’s four articles, which he published in 1905 in Annalen der Physik, Watson
and Crick’s “A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid ”12 and such like. The
chances that you will write something like this are extremely low, both in space
and time. But you never know.
1.1.4 Types of journals
Like scientists, journals have the ambition to lead in their field, which can also be
measured through citations. Based on this aspect, (at least) four groups of journal
can be identified:
The hottest journals — These journals are the ones that everybody is dreaming
of getting their name printed in. It’s hard to define the hottest journals or set
a boundary between top and standard journals, but one can certainly make a
list13 of the journals with the highest impact. According to sciencewatch.com,
only Nature (http://nature.com) and Science (http://sciencemag.org) are
true all-around hot players. Articles from various fields published in these two
journals are, on average, cited over 50 times per article.
Journals indexed by ISI — ISI monitors journals and, based on some minimum
quality criteria, selects journals that it will index. There are three major groups
of journals: Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Science Citation Index and
11
See also the http://in-cites.com for annual analysis of the most cited articles/scientists and
ISI’s list of the most cited researchers at http://isihighlycited.com/.
12
This one of the most cited research article of all time.
13
See http://sciencewatch.com for an updated list of the hottest journals.
8
Social Sciences Citation Index. For the Natural Sciences, the most important
database is the Science Citation Index (SCI), which lists about 5600 journals.
Another important ISI database is Current Contents (CC) Connect (about 8,000
journals), which is somewhat less inclusive than SCI and also less detailed.
Other international journals — Many journals are not indexed by ISI but still
offer a chance to communicate your ideas to a wider audience. In this case
it is enough if the paper can be easily located and downloaded from Inter-
net. The best-known websites with electronic journals are Elsevier’s Science
Direct (http://sciencedirect.com), Blackwell Synergy (http://blackwell-
synergy.com), Springerlink (http://springerlink.com), Wiley Interscience
(http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/), Cambridge (http://journals.-
cambridge.org) and Oxford (http://oxfordjournals.org/) University Press.
Note that many journals that provide electronic versions of articles are not listed
in the CC or SCI database and vice versa. So make sure you check your journal
before sending any materials.
Local journals — Papers in what we call local journals are either not accessible to
a wider audience or the review process is ’too soft’. Many journals, even if the
review process is rigorous, will remain local because the papers are not written
in English. Yes, in science too, globalization (read Americanization) is taking
place. Still, SCI is the most professional scientometric database in the world.
Obviously, we would all like to send our papers exclusively to journals that are
indexed by ISI. On the other hand, sending a relatively good paper to journals that
are not indexed by ISI can be a good investment in such a journal. Remember, it is
not ISI that decides which journals are the most important ones but you. A lot of
journals that are now in ISI’s database had to go through a rigorous evaluation before
they appeared there.
9
10 Introduction
1.2 What’s eating science?
“I think it is important to distinguish fraud – a definite intent to deceive

– from bad scientific practice, often a result of inexperience or the current
pressure to publish... I think fraud can only possibly be a tiny problem in
soil science, bad scientific practice is a much bigger one, but by far the
biggest problem we have, is a lack of new ideas.”14
In 2005, three MIT students submitted an abstract entitled “Rooter: a methodol-

ogy for the typical unification of access points and redundancy” to the World Multi-
Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics. The abstract was accepted
for oral presentation and printing and nobody would have complained if the authors
had not admitted that they produced this abstract using a computer program15 that
randomly assorted computer science jargon and produced a grammatically correct yet
nonsensical paper (New Scientist magazine, issue 2496). What the three MIT stu-
dents indirectly managed to prove is that there is a lot of gibberish being published
in science today. A more extreme example is that of Alan Sokal, who managed to
publish a totally nonsensical paper in a respected journal. More about misuse of fancy
scientific jargon can be found in his book (Sokal and Bricmont, 1998). This brings us
to the next topic of this article — the grey side of current scientific systems.
As the above quote states, although there is also a lot of fraud and cheating in
science, a much bigger problem for science is so-called ‘bad scientific practice’ or the
grey side of scientific work. In our opinion, there are three major causes for most of
the grey in science:
Ludicrous pressure to publish
A lack of evaluation of reviewers
Fashionable pliability
14
Alex McBratney, joint editor-in-chief of Geoderma, speaking about fraud in Alfred Hartemink’s
book on Publishing in soil science.
15
You can generate a nonsense paper yourself using the on-line application at
http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/.
10
1.2 What’s eating science? 11
More on Alan Sokal: Alan Sokal, Professor of Physics at NYU wrote a parody of post-
modern science criticism in the late 1990s, called “Transgressing the boundaries: towards
a transformative hermeneutics of quantum gravity? ”. This was submitted to the cultural
studies journal Social text, without telling the editors that it was a parody. They pub-
lished it as a serious scholarly article, and when the author revealed the hoax three weeks
later, people were very angry with him. Like the genre it was meant to satirize, the article
was a mixture of truths, half-truths, falsehoods, non sequiturs and syntactically correct,
high-flown language that had no meaning whatsoever. It also contained appeals to au-
thority rather than logic, rhetoric that sounds good but whose meaning is ambiguous, and
confusion between the technical and everyday senses of English words (for example, lin-
ear, non-linear, local, global, multidimensional, relative, frame of reference, field, anomaly,
chaos, catastrophe, logic, irrational, imaginary, complex, real, equality and choice).
1.2.1 Ludicrous pressure to publish
In most national academic systems, scientists are still evaluated by their output (in-
stead of by their impact). People are assessed mainly by the number of papers they
publish. The pressure to publish is rising every day. This has a number of negative
effects, of which we will mention the three most significant ones:
Hyperproduction — Many researchers find a fruitful topic that is very catchy and
gets published easily and then go on to publish (very) similar papers in several
different journals, which is known in scientific slang as the hyperproduction effect
(Newman, 2000). Writing more papers on the same topic might be good because
this will make the topic better known to different research groups, but if the
papers are extremely similar, and especially if the same data and results are
emphasized, this cannot be good for science. In extreme cases, hyperproductive
authors only change the title of a paper plus a few lines and then publish it in
two or more journals.
Lobbying and self-publishing — Many editors, members of editorial boards and

even reviewers are biased towards papers with which they have some personal
11
12 Introduction
connection. This creates a clear conflict of interest. The extreme case is self-
publishing: many journals (almost all journals in the world) allow submission of
papers of which members of the editorial boards are co-authors. This situation
is negative both for editors and the journals. If an editor publishes his/her paper
in a journal when he/she works in the editorial board, this will not necessarily
be a weak paper. But how can we tell with the obvious conflict of interest?
Phoney co-authors — In many cases, a person listed as a co-author does not

actually know much about the paper and would not be able to defend its content
or reproduce it from scratch. Obviously, phoney co-authors are listed because
of the benefits of getting published. In principle, there are two types of phoney
authors: (a) those who use their position and funds to make colleagues list them
as co-authors and (b) those who trade authorship among themselves. The latter
is less serious and can be summarized as: “Put me on your paper and I will put
you on my papers so we both get two SCIs instead of one each.”
Phoney co-authorship is a problem that has many negative side-effects, although

it does not seem to be all that serious. Phoney co-authors are, in a sense, the parasites
of science and they lack moral values. One may argue that, as long as the first author
is authentic, all the others can be phoney, but this situation is much more dangerous
than it appears. Firstly, if an author supports a parasite, this means that the parasite
will stay in the system of science. After a few years, the hard-working authors will
want to apply independently for research funds and then they will have to compete
with the parasites, who (on paper) may have similar references. A second more serious
effect is that an author who permits phoney co-authors shows that he/she is open for
trade with scientific discoveries.
Reputations in the system of science are extremely important. Once it is known
that an author is ready to trade moral responsibility for material benefits, then all
confidence in this individual will be lost and others will try to avoid collaborating
with him/her. The worst case scenario is that an author accepts the system as such
and then one day waits for his/her turn to be a parasite on other colleagues.
12
If I don't like your

paper, I can still use Should editors be
it to fertilize my the gods of science?
garden.
ef
Chi
o r in
he Edit
T
Figure 1.1: Editors usually have the last word in an editorial system. Often, they do
not need to justify their actions and decisions to anybody.
Important point 3 Is someone who just signs bills an author? The author of
an article can only be someone who contributed to the intellectual content of a
manuscript by participating in the design of an experiment, in data processing
or in writing and/or editing the article.
In our opinion, an author of the article can only be someone who participated
(physically and/or mentally) either in:
1. field/laboratory data collection, and/or
2. data processing and statistical analysis, and/or
13
14 Introduction
3. writing and editing of the paper.
If someone is listed as a co-author, this means that he/she made a significant contri-
bution to the intellectual content of the manuscript. A research investigation is not
routine work16 , so if somebody is a co-author of the article, that should also mean
that he/she invested some of his own creativity and original ideas/data. Our experi-
ence is that the principal author is usually responsible for production of about one to
two thirds of the paper, while the co-authors mostly get involved in the final phases
of production. So if your supervisor, head of project or other superior asks for their
name to be listed on the paper, there is still some time for them to get involved.
However, if they ask for their name to be automatically listed on the paper without
any serious involvement, be sure that this is wrong and immoral.
1.2.2 A lack of evaluation of reviewers
Because reviewers are typically not rewarded or even mentioned for their work, they
often deliver a slow or poor service. In fact, reviewers are asked to do high-quality
consultancy without receiving any benefit at all. In an optimal situation, a reviewer
will take one day to read the paper and then a few days to cross-check its findings.
Such investment of time is obviously a luxury that few can afford, so reviews are
usually done in a few hours. Because researchers are publishing more and more, there
is less and less time to do proper reviews. In fact, many good reviewers have to
refuse to do reviews because they are over-booked with papers or they agree to do
reviews which are incomplete or superficial (Moore, 2005). Reviewers often grade and
comment only on the form and style of a paper and not on its intellectual content.
At the moment, most journals allow 3-6 months for the return of reviews, which
does not mean that the reviewers spend that much time reading and thinking about
the papers. Unfortunately, when a paper lands on a reviewer’s desk, it will first
gather dust for some time. Eventually, the reviewer will find time to read it and make
comments (usually half a day). Often the editor needs to find a replacement for the
reviewer because he/she does not respond. Because reviewers are not rewarded for
16
For example, a laboratory technician should probably not become a co-author of the article for
a routine laboratory analysis that he/she conducts on a regular basis.
14
their work,17 reviewers can have problems justifying this investment of time to their
employers. In the worst case scenario, the reviewers can sit on a paper or give it a
bad review because it is in their interest. The editors or publisher cannot complain
because they are not paying for this work. As a result, reviewers have no feeling of
responsibility for their output.
Important point 4 The biggest problem of most scientific journals is that the
review process is slow, inefficient, inconsistent, unrepresentative and biased.
This is simply because reviewers are not rewarded for their work or evaluated
on their performance.
Because publishers do not appreciate the work of reviewers, they are forced to
work with poor or delayed reviews. In most cases, an editor will be happy if he/she
gets two completed review forms. It can be easily shown that deciding about a paper
based on two or three samples can lead to fairly poor estimates. In fact, two reviews
can even contradict each other. To illustrate this problem, we will use the Monte-
Carlo simulations with different sample sizes. In this example there are four grades for
papers: (“1”) accepted with minor revision, (“2”) accepted with moderate revision,
(“3”) major revisions needed and (“4”) rejected. Now imagine that the grades are
based on negative points (0–100), where papers with < 10 negative points are classified
as “1”, < 40 as “2”, < 70 as “3”, while the papers with ≥ 70 points are rejected.
Fig. 1.2 shows that the results of the Monte-Carlo simulations using x=40, sx =20 and
2, 3 and 5 for sample size. Note that in the case of only two samples, the decisions
can vary from accepted with moderate changes to rejection (Fig. 1.2a). We estimated
that, if a sample of two is used, in about 30–50% of cases the decision grade will differ
from the expected one. The situation is a bit better for the sample of three (only
30–40%) and much better if a sample of five is used (< 20%). The results of this
simulation exercise, of course, depend on how variable the opinion of the reviewers is,
but we hope we illustrated the problem.
17
Many companies, even governmental organizations, do not like the fact that their staff spend
paid time on reviewing papers, from which only the publisher receives financial benefit.
15
16 Introduction
(a)
1 2 2 4 2 3
(b)
2 3 3 1 3 2
1 3 2
(c)
2 2 2 3 3 2
3 3 3 2 2 3
2 3 4
Figure 1.2: Three simulations of reviewers’ decision with different samples. Deciding
on an average from a sample of two can lead to some strange outcomes (a). Three is
slightly better, but still difficult (b). With five samples (c) we can be much more con-
fident. “1” — accepted with minor revision; “2” — accepted with moderate revision;
“3” — major revisions needed and “4” rejected.
1.2.3 Fashionable pliability
The final serious problem with the current system of science is the ease with which
authors follow fashionable topics or styles. On the one hand, it is positive to learn from
top researchers. On the other hand, those who imitate other authors forget that in
science we need to be cautious and critical about everything. In fact, many researchers
made a respectable career by proving that something does not work or is inaccurate.
Some authors see their supervisors as Gods of science and blandly repeat whatever
they say or write. Their identity is thus lost and they become eternal second authors.
Other authors think that if they pick up a ‘sexy’ topic that this will guarantee them
success in getting their papers published (which is often unfortunately true). Form
16
should never be more important than content.

Young academics and, especially non-native speakers, assume that the best way
to get published is to imitate the heavy, unreadable articles they see in many journals
and textbooks. Such beliefs are based on a big misunderstanding. What actually
gets articles published in top journals and more importantly — read, is clear, well-
structured, well-argued writing. Another common misconception among researchers
is that they will make the ultimate research career as long as they publish in Nature,
Science or a similar journal with a high impact factor18 . This is a rather naı̈ve con-
ception, which is nicely demonstrated by Seglen (1997). The correlation between a
journal’s impact and the actual citation rate of articles from individual scientists or
research groups is often poor. In fact, publication in a high impact journal will not
necessarily increase the impact of an article (Seglen, 1997). Therefore, you should
focus on writing high-quality articles and not on ways of getting into the top journals
at any cost.
1.2.4 Possible solutions
We all know that problems such as hyperproduction, phoney co-authors, self-publication,

copycatting and poor reviews will continue to exist. The question is whether such prac-
tices can be reduced or even prevented? We can try to put prevention mechanisms in
place. For example, a simple solution to lobbying and self publishing would be not to
allow editors to handle papers where there could be a conflict of interest19 . However,
this is not as simple as it may seem, because researchers work as editors mainly on
a voluntary basis without any financial reward, which means that not many people
would edit journals if they were prevented from processing papers in which they have
some interest.
The artificial pressure to publish, with all of its negative side-effects, can be simply
avoided by introducing more sophisticated evaluation criteria. As previously men-
18
The impact factor of a journal is defined as the ratio between citations and recent citable items
published in the previous two years or, in other words, as the average number of citations in a given
year of articles published in that journal in the preceding two years.
19
Papers in which the editors are listed as co-authors or papers from departments/units where the
editors are employed.
17
18 Introduction
tioned, society should think much more about quality20 than quantity. Having your
name on 20 born-dead SCI papers cannot be more important than publishing a single
high-impact paper. In fact, in many countries, scientific evaluation teams do not even
distinguish if a person is the first or the last author of the publication.
Poor or delayed reviews can also be avoided by rewarding reviewers for their work.
This need not necessarily be a financial award. It would be enough for journals to
list reviewers and the amount of work they have done. In fact, editors could monitor
how satisfied authors are with the work of reviewers and then, based on such criteria,
promote successful reviewers to become senior reviewers or at least give them some
kind of diploma or symbolic reward. Reviewers could then add such information
to their CVs and use it to get greater acknowledgment in their research community.
Another (cheap) solution to the problem of biased and unrepresentative reviews would
be to ask all members of a society to participate in the review of all papers. This
could be organized through on-line editorial systems, in which all reviewers can (at
any moment) see the results of the reviews and jointly grade the intellectual and
technical quality of an article.
Scientific journals could learn much from the Open encyclopedia, Wikipedia for
example. In Wikipedia (http://wikipedia.org), every registered member can at
any time edit a topic and see the history with all previous versions. This saves
reviewers a lot of time because they do not have to repeat themselves, but it also
saves the authors time, because they get feedback much faster. These days, authors
can also get involved in publishing papers through a web application (see for example
http://writely.com).
In fact, we would encourage all authors to co-publish their work on the web and
to support an initiative called open access archiving. Any establishment is inherently
conservative and the publishing world is no exception. Currently authors often have
to wait far too long before their work is published and journals forbid them to disclose
results during this period (e.g. at conferences). This is not good for the progress of
science. But there are glimmers of light on the horizon. The greatest hope for scientists
— especially in developing countries — may well be OA (Open Access) Publishing,
20
Google derives most of its profit from the brilliant idea of listing sites by the number of times
they have been accessed.
18
although there are still some uncertainties surrounding the best way to finance this
approach. OA Archiving21 on the other hand is simple, cheap and essentially ‘win
win’ in character. The main advantages of Open Access Archiving are:
1. Nothing needs to change for publishers, because they will continue to publish in
parallel with the OA Archives (case study: physics archive http://arxive.org
initiated in 1991). Around 85% of publishers have agreed to the institutional
archiving of already published papers in OA Archives, including Elsevier and
Nature Publishing.
2. Nothing needs to change for authors because they can continue to publish pa-
pers in their favorite journals. However, the impact of their work will be hugely
increased if they can also archive their papers in institutional archives using
the free software that allows interoperable searching across all archives. The
latest figures quote 5 times the impact for OA papers compared with non-
OA equivalents, but more detailed research is underway (Harnad and Brody,
2004). Authors would be wise to publish in one of the majority of journals
that agree to OA Archiving in order to benefit from this much increased in-
ternational impact. Impact factors are mathematical and impartial to whether
sources are printed or web-based. OA-compliant archives are now also search-
able through various search engines. See also the Directory of Open Access
Journals (http://doaj.org/).
3. The research output of the authors’ institutes can be greatly enhanced by setting
up institutional OA Archives, show-casing their academic publications. OA
Archives use free software and there are many support organizations. Note:
three major workshops on setting up Open Access Archives were held in the
summer of 2005 in Brazil, China and India (Chan and Costa, 2005).
4. If institutes are unable to set up their own institutional archives, authors may
archive their research in any of the established archives (e.g. Cogprints, Bioline
International, etc.). It does not matter where papers are archived, since the
21
Archiving of already published and refereed research papers in interoperable, minimal-cost in-
stitutional archives.
19
20 Introduction
archives are all interoperable. However, establishing institutional archives has

the advantage of additionally promoting the research output of the institutes.
5. As more and more archives are established, more of the world’s research will
become accessible for free internationally. Stevan Harnad of Cogprints puts it
like this: “Archive unto others as you would have them archive unto you” (Har-
nad and Brody, 2004). For developing country institutes, the main benefits (as
well as having access to the increasing volume of international research output)
are sharing their research with countries facing similar research priorities and
making their research ’visible’ internationally clearly has advantages (closing the
South/North information gap).
The UK Government Select Committee Report on Science Publishing22 has said:

“We recommend that the Research Councils and other official funding organizations
mandate their funded researchers to deposit a copy of their articles in their institution’s
repository within one month of publication. . . as a condition of their grant”, and the
US has recommended that the publications from the National Institutes of Health be
likewise archived. Archiving already published research in interoperable institutional
archives greatly benefits global science at virtually zero cost. This can be done now,
without changing established publishing practices. For developing country science
and medical research this offers enormous opportunities. Maybe the World Health
Organization should consider supporting the setting up of an OA Archive for medical
research publications so that all developing countries can benefit from free access?
It’s that rare thing — a truly ‘win win’ proposition.
Note that we do not want to imply here that the scientific publishers and commer-
cial agencies should be replaced with quick-and-dirty systems23 . However, our general
impression is that the time from research to application could be shortened to the
benefit of all. It seems that the best way to achieve this objective is to replace the
traditional editorial systems with (cheap) web-applications that can speed up both
data editing and distribution.
22
Recommendations at http://epublishingtrust.org
23
Note that, in the case of OA publishing, there are also two distinct categories of papers: pre-
prints (no peer review, no editing) and post-prints (peer reviewed, editing). This allows scientists to
get new work out quickly, even with limited credibility.
20
Chapter 2
Guide to authors
2.1 From ideas to first draft
“It’s not just a matter of presenting your work accurately — you have to
sell it! ” 1
So far, we have discussed some of the problems with the current system of science.
Now we can recommend you some tips ’n tricks on how to produce high-quality
papers. The first tip is to carefully plan the whole thing right from the start.
Papers are usually born from ideas, i.e. when an author intuitively senses an important
discovery. In principle, every idea/discovery can lead to a potential publication. The
only question is in how many copies it will be finally printed (Fig. 2.1). So you should
first ask yourselves whether your work is truly novel and whether it has a large enough
potential audience2 ? In many cases, you need to be honest and face the reality that
the idea you have is simply not good enough for top journals or not even good enough
for any journal. Such work can still be published, but maybe in different format. Once
you are sure, however, that you want to produce a research article, you can proceed
with the following steps.
1
David G. Rossiter, during one of our meetings at ITC.
2
The researcher who managed to attract the largest audience until the day is probably Carl Sagan
with his “Cosmos” documentary series.
22 Guide to authors
Important point 5 Early drafts of a manuscript may be publishable and

useful for science; the only question is: how many copies should be
printed/distributed?
IDEA /
DISCOVERY
1-PAGE It is novel and

CONCEPT significant
PAPER
investment of time/resources
DRAFT
RESEARCH
PAPER
It is
SHORT publishable
NOTE It is not so
novel but still
useful RESEARCH
PAPER
TECHNICAL
/ LECTURE
NOTE
It has wider
BOOK audience
CHAPTER
PAPER FOR
WEB A TOP
MATERIALS JOURNAL
MASS
MEDIA
importance / impact
Figure 2.1: Types of publications in relation to investment of time/resources and

potential impact.
22
2.1 From ideas to first draft 23
2.1.1 The one-page concept paper
The first step you should take is to prepare a one-page concept paper. This should
include the topic, the authors and their roles and responsibilities, main ideas and
assumptions, technical details about the experimental setup and a time-line with
phases and deliverables. After the main design of the paper has been established, it
is much easier to organize the production of the paper. Think about it as a small
project. These are some issues that you should definitively consider when preparing
a one-page concept paper:
What do you want to ‘sell’ with this paper?
Is the topic really3 novel?
Who is it intended for (research groups)?
What will be its strong aspects?
How are you going to prove your hypothesis and is this proof going to be con-
vincing?
Will you be able to organize the experiment and data processing (resources,
support)?
Who will be first, second etc. author and what will be their responsibilities?
In which form do you want to publish it?
Important point 6 The most important step in starting a paper is to produce

a one-page concept paper. This should include the topic, authors, their roles
and responsibilities, main ideas and assumptions, technical details about the
experimental setup and a time-line with deliverables.
3
Often we are sure that the topic we are working on is completely novel. We then find out that
it has already been discussed and described, sometimes as long as 50 years ago.
23
24 Guide to authors
2.1.2 Rethink the results and repeat the experiment
Now you have your master plan, you can proceed with the collection of data i.e.
experiments. The first results confirm your expectations and you are excited about
the whole thing. You would like to publish it as soon as possible. At this stage, it might
be wise to reconsider some of your results and even repeat the experiment
several times. Sleep on it. The worst case scenario is that you get your paper
published and then find out that some things were incorrect or wrongly interpreted.
Of course, once people find out, you will get a bad reputation and will have much a
lower chance of publishing similar papers. This means that, although you scored a
publication, you have damaged your career.
Authors are often impatient to publish, so they hide unexpected findings or things
that they cannot explain. This is bad scientific practice with many negative effects,
both for the authors and the scientific community. In fact, the most important
discoveries are often hidden among the results/effects that you cannot
explain. Are you aware that the most significant discoveries4 in the world happened
unexpectedly, through serendipity or even error? Really important ideas only become
clear in retrospect. Great ideas might be emerging right now, but we don’t know it.
Good ideas are like yeast in the historical progress of science. In other words, if you
are too sure about the results you expect and too routine in your work, do not expect
to discover something great. For the same reason, always be very flexible and
ready to adjust the key topic of your article, depending on what you and your
co-authors think is the most significant discovery.
2.1.3 Investigate your audience
Once you have done several tests and got the same results over and over again, you
will be very confident about your discoveries. However, you should not immediately
start writing the paper. Now is a good moment to investigate your audience, i.e.
those who will read and evaluate your work. This is nicely emphasized by Gopen
and Swan (1990): “An academic paper cannot exist without the interpretation of each
4
For example, electricity, telephone, Röntgen rays, cosmic background radiation, etc. See also the
book by Jones and O’Brian (1994).
24
reader. If the reader is to understand the writer, the writer has to know what the
reader needs. We can’t be sure that even a single sentence we write will mean the
same to every reader; all we can do is increase the chances that most readers will
interpret our writing the way we intended.” The best way to find out how potential
reviewers will receive your paper is to communicate some preliminary results at
a research conference or seminar. Communicating your preliminary results and
key ideas to potential reviewers will give you ideas about what they will see as strong
points and what they will criticize.
If you do not get any questions about your work, this is a bad sign. Either your
colleagues are not interested in the topic, or they have problems understanding it, or
you have not emphasized the key points in your presentation. Also, if you offer too
many ideas/results (even good ones), this can tire an audience and they will not be
receptive to your work. The same will probably happen with the paper. Sometimes,
throwing things out of the paper really helps — less is more! Many investigations
(see for example the work of Hartemink (2002) about publishing in soil science) have
shown that shorter, more focused papers generally have a higher impact5 .
Research conferences are also a good place to find out more about the topics that
your colleagues are working on. It is not only important to find out what others
think about your ideas, it is also important to know what the most interesting topics
that people are working on at the moment are. The best scenario is that your topic
(research problem) is attacked by many authors and that it is hot. This is definitively
a sign to start preparing the first draft of your paper.
2.1.4 Write it up — now that’s easy!
OK. Now you have all the data, you are sure about your results and the message that
you want to transmit, and you are sure that there is an audience for it. You can now
start writing the paper. If all the above criteria are satisfied, writing the article could
just be the easiest part of the job. Because information is much easier to interpret if it
is placed where most readers expect to find it, many scientific articles follow the broad
5
Blaise Pascal once said: “I have made this longer than usual, only because I have not had the
the time to make it shorter.”
25
26 Guide to authors
IMRaD structure (Introduction, Method, Results, and Discussion). This provides a

kind of roadmap for readers. In particular, writing the methods and results sections
can be a pretty straightforward job.
Important point 7 Clarity of writing follows clarity of thought. So first think

what you want to say. Then write it as simply as possible.
Your first draft will probably just be “an incoherent stack of notes you’ve written
to yourself ” (Jones, 2003). But this should not worry you because most high-quality
papers go through 10 or more editing iterations. Even if you are just putting the pieces
together, you should already check whether your first draft contains the following main
elements:
‘The big picture’ — the background to your research and why it’s important.
The purpose statement — what you set out to show.
How you went about answering the research question — what you did.
The answer to the research question — what you concluded.
The answer to the so what? question — why should the reader care?
The consequences for future research — note this could mean a change in
the ’big picture’ — the circle is then complete.
For more detailed tips ’n tricks, see also our “Rules of thumb for writing research
articles” in the appendix. If you closely follow these guidelines, you should be able
to produce the first draft of your article, which you can then revise and polish to
perfection. At this stage, you should first focus on the quality of the writing
and not think so much about the impact factor of the journals, where you want to
publish your work or about the number of publications you can produce from these
results. Keep in mind that a good paper is one that makes an impact, i.e. one that
will be widely read and used by many to further their research. If you invert point 1,
you will get an answer to the question how to write high-quality papers:
26
Important point 8 A well-written article is one in which target readers are

able to apply, modify and extend its content, swiftly and accurately, without
much external support.
Note the word apply! Especially if a paper is about new methods, it should address
the issue of whether readers can understand the article and apply its findings in their
work.
When you re-read your paper, you may still be unhappy with it. It might have
many novel elements, but if you feel that something is missing — excitement, enlight-
enment, sparkle. . . call it what you like, such papers will not make much of an impact
in science. Then go back to your title, introduction and discussion and see if you can
emphasize the story of the article more powerfully. The points that you are trying to
make need to be visible, clear and strong. You should not be afraid of adding some
new thoughts — terms or expressions. Do not forget that scientific writing is both a
science and an art.
How do you create your own style of writing? Rule No. 1 is, of course, to avoid
copying sentences from other people — be yourself. On the other hand, a distinctive
writing style often comes through the richness of phrases, expressions and idiosyncratic
use of language. So make sure you do your homework and read other people’s work6 .
The best writers in the world are also the best readers. This is because
creative people inspire each other and great ideas can be born through interactive
brain-storming. Another thing you might consider is to think up original expressions
or mottos (these are known as streamers or callouts). One day, somebody might
identify or even remember you for this.
It usually will take at least three to five iterations until you have a version that is
ready for submission. If you and your co-authors are not sure any more which things
should be left out and which should be extended, this is a sign that you should now
send the paper to the journal. It is not a good idea to keep going round in circles
with your co-authors.
6
For example, if you are interested to learn how to write in ordinary language but for both
scientists and non-scientists, start with the Dawkin’s book “The selfish gene.”
27
28 Guide to authors
Why is it important to write science using popular language? — For many fiction
writers, academic writing is a stereotyped joke — a museum of passive voice, obscure and
dull jargon, and stilted paragraphs — without excitement or entanglement (Jasper, 2002;
Webster, 2003). Early in their careers, most academics develop the idea that editors are
impressed by a ‘dense’ writing style with heavy abstract nouns instead of lively active
verbs. Similarly, researchers must take care to use everyday (popular) language wherever
possible to captivate an audience that is intelligent but does not necessarily knows much
about the topic. Stylewise, we recommend using the language of everyday speech — not
that of spokesmen, lawyers and bureaucrats — to link scientific concepts. For example, use
words with an Anglo-Saxon base to link scientific terms, which usually have a Latin/French
origin. Fortunately, much scientific and technical writing in the past years has gone strongly
in the direction of spoken English — shorter sentences and more direct, plain language.
Unfortunately, there is still a tendency to overuse the kind of jargon that is sometimes
referred to as ‘business babble’: “As soon as these resources are there, we will kick off the
implementation” instead of “As soon as these people are appointed, we’ll start implementing
the system”. Recall also Rule of science No. 8.
2.1.5 Analyze the article sentence by sentence
Once you are sure that you and co-authors are satisfied with the macro (sections) and
meso (paragraphs) structure of your article, you might consider zooming even more
into the paper. The key to improving the micro structure of a paper is to compress
sentences, improve balance in the sentences and the links between the sentences (this
is known as “the art of line editing”). There are a few important steps that you might
consider:
Compress the sentence by reducing unnecessary or redundant words. Instead

of writing “a considerable number of ” use “many”; instead of “this result would
seem to indicate” use “this indicates”. However, be careful not to overdo the use
of short sentences — “Every sentence cannot be urgent. Good writing normally
requires a combination of longer and shorter sentences, carefully orchestrated in
each paragraph” (Jasper, 2002).
28
Improve the flow: at the beginning of a sentence put old information that
links back to the previous one and, at the end, put the new information you
want readers to focus on. In English, the steps in an argument tend to be
built up in long, integrated paragraphs, with each step linked to the one before,
usually through sentence subjects. Example: “The use of land, water and min-
erals has increased more than tenfold during the past two centuries ⇒ Future
increases in population and economic development will intensify this pressure
⇒ The cumulative impacts of human activities are likely to lead to major en-
vironmental changes, varying from disruption of local ecosystems to disturbance
of the biosphere.”
Use link words such as although, as is clear from, as a result of which, but,
most of which, or, so, gerund forms (using. . . requires), while, which is why, which
indicates that, when, where, and yet. This approach improves ‘message manage-
ment’ by arranging information to show what is important, grouping related
ideas, and highlighting the relationships between different parts of the argu-
ment. It enhances readability, allows variation in sentence length, and avoids
redundancy.
If too much information is placed at the front of the sentence (frontal overload)
and too little at the end, the rhythm of the sentence is disturbed and it becomes
more difficult for many readers to process the information. Instead of writing:
“Working with students is what attracts me most in this job” write: “What
attracts me most in this job is working with students”.
Putting information in the middle of a sentence may disturb its flow and
can lead to the wrong elements (e.g. pronouns) being stressed, or to redundancy.
Unlike Germans, English readers are unused to the verb coming at the end of a
sentence. They process information as they go along. Avoid writing: “It is for
the purpose of the present study convenient to. . . ”.
29
30 Guide to authors
On the use of ‘I’ — Much discussion in recent years has focused on the use of first person
in scientific writing (Raymond, 1993). The traditional (depersonalized) technical, early
18th century writing style is still a prerequisite for submitting articles in which the author
writes about what he or she has done in the first person. Editors simply do not accept
articles where the author is “telling about his/her impressions in the first face”. Indeed,
it might sound egoistic if an author were to write everything in the first person. Recall
Rule of science No. 7 — an research article needs to be objective and unbiased. Therefore,
research articles should not be just a chronological narration of work done. If an author has
produced some results, and if these are accurate, then we should all come to the same results
and hence the use of “It can be concluded” is completely legitimate. However, if you write
“It is assumed that. . . ”, “It was decided to. . . ”, “Sites were chosen. . . ”, the reader might
ask: who assumes?, who decided? — the author? or his boss? his client? or. . . Obviously,
if such information is missing, readers may completely misunderstand the paper (Webster,
2003). There are definitely situations when authors need to make a clear distinction with
between their opinion and the opinion/results of others. Recall also Important point # 1.
2.1.6 Avoid common language mistakes
Editors have discovered that many inexperienced authors (especially non-native En-
glish speakers) often repeat the same mistakes. Here we list some of the most frequent
ones:
Active or passive? — Note that it may be necessary to use a passive verb to

maintain sentence flow. However, wherever possible, use active constructions
within sentences (e.g. write “This programme focuses on. . . ” rather than “The
programme is focused on. . . ”).
He or she? — Use plural forms to avoid sexist writing. Instead of “. . . the end
user, unless ‘he’ possesses. . . ” ⇒ “. . . end-users unless ‘they’ possess. . . ”. If
this solution doesn’t work, then use “he or she” / “his or her.”
Color or colour? — Use either UK or USA spelling, consistently. Follow the

spelling of the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of English (for instance:
30
analyse, honour, colour, realize, organize, programme, centre) or use the US

Websters dictionary. Words in a title or a heading should be written in lower
case, except for the first word and any proper nouns such as names of persons,
organizations or countries, if you use UK style. In the US all keywords in
headings are capitalized.
To measure or to make a measurement of? — Wherever possible use verbs,

not heavy, abstract nouns (e.g. write “achieve a reduction” rather than simply
“reduce”). Nouns make sentences stand still. Verbs make them move and push
our meaning across to readers. Turning verbs into nouns hides their actions.
Use “adapting to” instead of “the adaptation to”; “for measuring” instead of
“for the measurement of ”; a project “designed to develop” instead of “aiming
at the development of . . . ”.
Munich or München? — Foreign terms for which there are no widely accepted
English equivalents should be used with an English translation (in brackets) the
first time they appear. Spell all foreign words correctly and pay special attention
to diacritical accent marks such as è, é, ä, ö and ü.
NGO or ngo? — Abbreviations must be capitalized. If they can be made

plural, this should be done by adding a lower-case s without an apostrophe.
For instance: NGOs rather than ngo’s. Spell out terms that are subsequently
abbreviated when you use them for the first time, with the abbreviation be-
tween parentheses. For instance: Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD).
Europe or europe? — Names of newspapers, periodicals and organizations,

official titles, and the like are to be given in their original spellings (with English
translations in parentheses, where necessary). Geographical terms commonly
accepted as proper names are capitalized. Terms are not capitalized when they
denote simply direction or compass points. For instance: The Middle East, but
western, central and eastern Europe.
31
32 Guide to authors
On the use of however, therefore, so and thus — In research on readability — what

makes texts readable or not — scholarly writing ranks the lowest, not just for the content
but also for the ‘style’ in which it’s written (Raymond, 1993). A number of textual factors
are analyzed: length of sentences, word choice, etc. One factor is the use and placement
of linking words such as ‘however’ (as well as thus, therefore, and, but, also, because,
although, etc.). Placing these words at the beginning of sentences can help to signal to
readers quickly — without them having to delve — when the author intends to make a logic
connection or shift. However, if it sounds unnatural it will reduce readability, so the impact
may be different on native and non-native speakers of English. The use of ‘however’ and
‘thus’ at the beginning of sentences is, of course, different in written and spoken English.
And written English in the US tends more than British English to mimic spoken English.
Why can the connector ‘so’ be placed in the initial position, while our other connectors
are less preferred in that position? Clearly, there is no actual grammatical rule actually
forbidding connectors at the beginning of sentences. And native speakers do use them. So
it’s not actually wrong. The difference with ‘so’ is that a sentence starting with ‘so’ flows
along quite happily, whereas one that starts with ‘thus’ has to come to a stop before it
even gets started. This is slightly less of a problem with ‘therefore’ and less awkward still
in the case of ‘however’.
Hyphenation or hy-phe-na-ti-on? — Hyphenation should always break at sylla-

ble boundaries. In reports, leave a blank line between paragraphs and do not
use indentation at the beginning of a new paragraph. Avoid a single line of text
at the top or bottom of a page (known as ‘widows’ and ‘orphans’).
Dot or comma? — Use the comma (,) rather than the full stop (.) in num-
bers containing more than four digits (for example: 10,000). Be aware of and
consistent in your use of currency symbols. These symbols precede the amount
of money. Use the euro sign (e); do not use the words euro or euros. Other
currencies should be treated similarly. If you need to refer to American dollars,
use US$. Don’t leave a space between the currency sign and the amount. For
instance: e10,000 rather than e 10,000 (or 10.000 euros). Use a full stop rather
than a comma for decimal places (e.g. write 4.25, not 4,25). Round currency
figures off to the nearest euro (or other currency). For instance: e10,234.59
32
2.2 Pre-submission checklist 33
must be written as e10,235. Numbers below 10 are written in full when used
in text (one, two, three. . . nine) unless the sentence contains a combination of
numbers. For instance: “Nine delegates attended the meeting. The 9 delegates
represented 18 organizations.“
A small number of or a few? — Avoid using long-winded expression: always

try to use a shorter alternative, e.g. replace “A small number of ” with “few ”;
“Despite the fact that” with “Although”; “In order to” with “To”; “Has been
engaged in a study of ” with “Has studied ”; “There is a reason to believe” with
“I think ”;
2.2 Pre-submission checklist

7
“You cannot eat an elephant in a day.”
Prior to submitting your article, we strongly advise seriously investigating the

journal in which you intend to publish your work and perhaps you should rethink
some elements in your paper. There are still many things that you need to consider.
2.2.1 Find the right journal
Once you have prepared a one-page concept paper, you should already have a good
idea about where to publish the manuscript. Your paper needs to closely match the
scope and format of the journal, otherwise even if it is a very promising paper, it
may well be rejected (right message in the wrong place). If you have a list of possible
journals, now is the time to think about which will be the best candidate. Always go
first for the highest quality journal that may be interested in your topic.
If the journal rejects the paper, you can always turn to the second on the list. The
following checklist can help you judge the quality of a journal and the editorial process:
Check if the journal is indexed by ISI in the SCI or CC database. This you can
do at any time from ISI’s Master journal list8 . If the journal is listed by ISI, this
7
Colloquial Croatian saying.
8
See http://scientific.thomson.com/mjl/
33
34 Guide to authors
will increase the chances that the article will be seriously considered. You can
also check the impact of the journal or even the impact of the country9 where
you intend to publish.
Check if the article (or at least its abstract) will be available on-line in a PDF
format. This will increase the chances that it will be accessed by many readers.
Check if your article will receive an unique identifier, such as a Digital Object
Identifier10 , which is something like the ISBN for books. This will make it easier
to locate.
Check if the journal provides English language and graphics editing. Journals
usually do not do this, but you can often find out from colleagues. This will
increase the chances that the article will be of high technical quality.
Check if the journal has an on-line editorial system. This will help ensure that
your article is not kept on hold for a long period of time.
Check if the journal offers a double-blind review. This will help ensure that you
will receive a fair and unbiased review.
Note that each journal has its own review system, preferred style and specific
jargon. You should match your paper and with the context of the journal. At this
stage, you should re-think the title of your paper and maybe some of its key points.
There is about a 10 times higher probability that somebody will read the
title and abstract of your paper than the paper itself. You should therefore
spend about 10 times as much effort on writing and rewriting them. The topic of how
to brainstorm good titles probably deserves a whole new article. Some ideas are given
in the appendix.
9
For example, the country with the highest number of citations per article in the last 10 years
is Switzerland. It is also the country with the highest number of citations per researcher. See also
http://sciencegateway.org/rank/
10
See http://doi.org for more details.
34
2.2.2 Do the work of the reviewers yourself
Another useful pre-submission tip is to try to do the work of the reviewers

yourself or give the paper to your colleagues and ask them to review it. Once you
have created some psychological distance from the draft paper, you can read your
work more critically. Reviewers commonly complain about similar things — either
they are not convinced enough, they are frustrated trying to understand it, or they
are disappointed that you are not acknowledging their work. In general, you can make
a stronger argument if you:
Consider alternative solutions — Compare your method with alternative meth-

ods using rigorous criteria. Try to describe both the strong and weak aspects of
your method in relation to alternative techniques. Recall rule of science No. 7:
report your discoveries in an unbiased way; you should even try to challenge
your own initial ideas.
Test it under different conditions — Evaluate the performance of your method

using several case studies i.e. experiments. How does the method behave under
different conditions, both global and local? How universal are your discover-
ies/conclusions?
Emphasize possible applications/implications — If you give very concrete in-

structions to readers on how to apply your methodology, this will certainly
increase its impact.
Identify yourself with a broader research group — Think of a research group

as an international company in which you have your shares. You need to support
the work of your colleagues and find your identity (your niche) in that company.
This means that you need to be self-critical and acknowledge the fact ‘that
other colleagues might find better solutions. Modest opinions and statements
are usually more accurate!
This means that you may have to return to your data and even do some extra
data collection. Although you might not be in the mood to do this, think about how
you would feel if you were to receive a negative review (rejection or serious revision
35
36 Guide to authors
needed). And you would lose some six or more months waiting for advice that you
can anticipate now.
You have carefully and You do not actually know what has
systematically studied the work of been published by others on this
colleagues and referred to it topic
You have critically evaluated your You are sure that your technique is
methods/results versus the state-of- optimal and that there is no better
the-art findings alternative
You have tested the performance of You do not actually know if you will
your technique using multiple case get the same results under various
studies / experiments conditions
You make significant claims, but You do not want to make significant
these are backed up by strong claims or you are making them
arguments without sufficient proof
You have considered what You do not actually know how your
implications of this work are and technique can be applied to solve
how these ideas/discoveries can be real-life problems and what the
used to solve real-life problems implications of your findings are
You have adjusted your style and You have not previously tried to
jargon to the target audience communicate your ideas/results to
the targeted research group
Figure 2.2: Some Do’s and Don’ts that you might consider before submitting your
article.
2.2.3 Make a full information package
Consider a multi-level description of your method/results — go from the simplest

case to a more specific case and then on to a general case. For example, we recently
prepared a paper with colleagues about an interpolation technique called regression-
36
kriging (Hengl et al., 2006). In this paper, we demonstrate how the methods work
using the simplest case (five points only) and then three case studies with different
environmental data. The simple case study (show real numbers/figures) will help
readers understand the technique, while the multiple case studies will convince them
that it works in various conditions. The important thing is that readers can zoom in
and out in the technique, depending on their interest.
Prepare additional promotional11 materials such as websites, posters, brochures
etc. that can help users understand your work or convince them that the results are
correct. Graphical elements can play a key role here because scientific information is
often communicated more easily through figures12 . Sometimes it can help your paper
if you include extra diagrams — even sketches or photographs. Such final editing
might seem like make-up-ing of papers but, usually, whatever helps you convey your
message or at least draws attention to it is good13 . So your final product might
include:
The core paper itself (15 pages of text typically).
Technical notes or supplementary materials in which data collection, analysis

and interpretation are evaluated in detail.
A website where all supplementary materials/datasets can be found and ac-

cessed14 . A website is also very useful for multimedia such as animations, videos
etc.
Promotional materials such as brochures, posters and similar, where the key
ideas/discoveries are presented in a popular way.
11
In business, this is called post-production and is especially well developed in the show business.
12
Displaying data is also an art! See also an amusing article on how to display data (badly) by
Wainer (1984).
13
Stewart (1989), for example, named his book “Does God play dice? ” A title can draw a lot of
attention!
14
In general, it is not recommended that you put your whole manuscript on the web before it
has been accepted for publication (unless the publisher accepts distribution of pre-prints). ‘Soft’
publications are soon forgotten and somebody else might take the credit.
37
38 Guide to authors
2.2.4 Final tips
During the review process, you should also consider some of the following things that
might be crucial for the success of your article:
Meet your editors — Investigate the people who will decide about your work: edi-
tors, established researchers and other potential reviewers. Check all the little
things that annoy them and try to deal with them. If you want to ask them
something about your paper, do it in a concise and concrete way. Editors are
extremely busy people.
Be ready for unfortunate developments — Be prepared to receive biased, harsh

or even offensive reviews. It is very possible that your paper is weak and
misses the most important point (recall rule of science No. 5) or does
not have an audience, but this needs to be backed up by detailed arguments.
Otherwise, if you have received a poor review, consider finding a higher quality
journal. Recall rule of science No. 1: there is no authority in science, only
arguments.
Work with your heart, write with your head — One needs a lot of passion to
do research and write research publications, but being emotional when com-
municating with editors, reviewers and other colleagues is something
you should always avoid.
Don’t get discouraged and give up — Fighting for a publication is like playing
a sports match — the further you get, the more serious you need to be. Once
you submit your article, this is only the beginning of the game.
Be honest towards yourself and your work — Take some distance from your
work and try to critically evaluate it. Then, try to improve or even re-design
the paper. If you cannot afford to do this, then just be honest and mention
the limitations of your findings. Recall rule of science No. 2: even the most
pessimistic truth is better than illusion.
If your paper gets rejected or the editors asks for major revisions, there are three
possible scenarios:
38
You have sent it to the ‘wrong’ journal — As already mentioned, the choice
of journal can be crucial for the success of the paper. If the topic of your paper
does not fit the scope of the journal, of course they will reject it. Similarly, the
quality of your paper should match the quality of the journal. A PhD student
cannot expect to get a positive response if he/she sends his/her paper to Nature.
You have received a lousy review — This does not happen too often, but it may
happen because of the reasons mentioned previously. You can consider writing
to the editor to ask for a second review. If the editor disagrees with you without
sufficient justification, then you should give up on this journal and send the
paper to a higher quality journal. Sometimes, if the review you received is
lousy, but the paper has been accepted for publication, you should still consider
sending it to a higher quality journal.
The reviewers are correct and clear — The best thing to do in a situation like
this is to give up on the current version and completely change course. Often
when we work on the same topic for an extensive period of time, we can no longer
see it objectively. Some people become obsessed with their work and have a very
hard time giving it up. It is human nature to be biased toward our own beliefs
and concepts. Many researchers simply cannot give up parts of a project they
have been working on for a long time. In such situations, it might be wise to
consult some senior colleagues and then be honest with yourself. A researcher
should always be very flexible in considering a change of course or even
a change of topic that he/she is working on.
39
40 Guide to authors
40
Bibliography
Chan, L. and Costa, S., 2005. Participation in the global knowledge commons: Chal-
lenges and opportunities for research dissemination in developing countries. New
Library World, 106(3/4): 141–163.
Crump, T., 2002. A brief history of Science. Costanble & Robinson Ltd, London,
pp 403.
Dawkin, R., 1999. The selfish gene. Oxford University press, Oxford, pp 345.
Garfield, E., 1990. The most-cited papers of all time. SCI 1945-1988. Current Con-
tents, (7):3–14.
Garfield, E., 1979. Citation Indexing — Its Theory and Application in Science, Tech-
nology, and Humanities. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. NY, pp. 259.
Gopen, G.D. and Swan, J.A., 1990. The Science of Scientific Writing. American Sci-
entist, 78:550–558.
Harnad, S. and Brody, T., 2004. Comparing the Impact of Open Access (OA) vs.
Non-OA Articles in the Same Journals. DLib Magazine 10(6).
Hartemink, A.E. 2002. Publishing in soil science – Historical developments and current
trends. IUSS, Vienna, pp. 196.
Hengl, T., Heuvelink, G.B.M, Rossiter, D.G., 2006. About regression-kriging: from
theory to interpretation of results. Computers and Geosciences, in review.
42 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Jasper, J.M., 2002. Why So Many Academics are Lousy Writers. Chronicle Careers,
3/26/2002.
Jones Clark, L., 2003. The Writing Coach. Thomson Delmar Learning, Clifton park,
NY, pp. 288.
Jones Foltz, C., O’Brien, J., 1994. Mistakes That Worked: 40 Familiar Inventions and
How They Came to Be. Random House Children’s Books, New York, pp 96.
Latour, B., 1987. Science in Action — How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through
Society. Harvard University Press, New York, pp 271.
Moore, K., 2005. Publish and flourish. CSA News, 6 (June), 11–14.
Newman, J., 2000. Twenty of the greatest blunders in Science in the last twenty years.
Discover Magazine, 21(10).
Raymond, J.C., 1993. I-Dropping and Androgyny: The Authorial I in Scholarly Writ-
ing. College Composition and Communication 44(4): 478-83.
Seglen, P.O., 1997. Why the impact factor of journals should not be used for evaluating
research. Education and debate. British Medical Journal, 314-497.
Sokal, A., Bricmont, J., 1998. Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse
of Science. Picador USA, New York, pp. 297.
Stewart, I., 1989. Does God Play Dice? The mathematics of Chaos. Blackwell, Oxford,
pp. 341.
Wainer, H., 1984. How to Display Data Badly. The American Statistician,
vol. 38(2):137-147.
Webster, R., 2003. Let’s re-write the scientific paper. European Journal of Soil Science,
vol. 54(June): 215-218.
Weinberg, S., 1993. Dreams of a Final Theory: The Scientist’s Search for the Ultimate
Laws of Nature. Vintage books, New York, pp. 323.
42
Chapter 3
Appendix
Hengl, T. and Gould, M., 2002. Rules of thumb for writing research articles.
Hengl, T. and
Hengl, T. Gould, M., M.,
and Gould, 2002. Rules
2002. of thumb
Rules forfor
of thumb writing research
writing researcharticles.
articles.
Try to pick a
catchy title!
Rules of thumb for writing
RULES OF THUMBresearch articles
FOR WRITING
Try to
Trypick a a
to pick 1
catchy title!
catchy title! RULES
RULESOF RESEARCH
OFTHUMB
THUMB FOR ARTICLES
FOR WRITING
WRITING
RESEARCHARTICLES
RESEARCH ARTICLES 11
Tomislav Hengl , Michael GouldB
A
A a,∗ b
Tomislav
International Institute ofHengl
Tomislav
Tomislav Hengl
Hengl Mike
Geo-Information
AA, Michael
, Michael Gould
Science and Earth
Gould
Gould
BB Observation (ITC), P.O. Box 6, 7500
A
AA Enschede, Netherlands, hengl@itc.nl
A International
International Institute
B of Geo-Information
Michael
Institute Science
Gould Associates,
of Geo-Information andEarth
Earth Observation
Apeldoornseweg
Science and Observation
21, 6814(ITC), P.O.
P.O.Box
BG Arnhem,
(ITC), 6,6,7500
Netherlands
Box 7500
a
European Commission,
B AAAA
Directorate Enschede, Netherlands,
General
Enschede, JRC, hengl@itc.nl
mike.gould@mgassoc.demon.nl
Institute
Netherlands, for Environment and Sustainability, Land
hengl@itc.nl
B Michael Gould Associates, Apeldoornseweg 21, 6814 BG Arnhem, Netherlands
Web: http://www.itc.nl/personal/hengl/RT/
Michael Gould Associates, Apeldoornseweg 21, 6814 BG Arnhem, Netherlands
Management and Natural Hazards mike.gould@mgassoc.demon.nl
Unit, TP 280 Via E. Fermi 1, I-21020 Ispra (VA), Italy
mike.gould@mgassoc.demon.nl
b
Michael Gould Associates, Apeldoornseweg 21, NL-6814 BG Arnhem, Netherlands
Abstract
Abstract
The paper provides Abstract
'rules of thumb' for writing research articles (RA) and abstract s
Abstract
The paper provides
getting them'rules of thumb'
published. These for were
writing researchduring
discussed articlesthe (RA) and An writing
"Scientific abstract be short b
Thegetting
paperthemprovides
course" 'rulesThese
published.
organized of for
thumb'
were
ITC for writing
discussed
PhD research
during
students by the articles
"Scientific
Cressie (RA) and should
writing
Communication abstract
Services. should
This paper lists ‘rules of thumb’ for writing research articles (RA) and getting them give the ov
be short
getting
course"them published.
organized for These
ITC PhD were discussed
students by during
Cressie the "Scientific
Communication
Important aspects of macro and sub-structure of a paper werebutselected writing
Services. be short but
give the idea:
published. These
course" were discussed
organized
Important for
aspects during
ITC
of PhD
macro a and
scientific
students writing
by Cressie
sub-structure course organized
ofCommunication
a paper were for ITC
Services.
selected
through group discussions. The substructure and functions give the
of overall
different overall
idea: what was d
PhD students through
Important
by Cressiegroup
aspects
sections discussions.
of
of macro
Communication
RAs are The
and substructure
sub-structure
Services. Important
described. and
of afunctions
aspects
Results ofpaper
of
previousof
thewere different
macro selected
and idea:
what
investigations anddone,what was fo
was
sub-structure
sections
through of were
group RAs
interviews
of a paper
are
discussions.
amongdescribed.
explored The
journal
in group
Results
substructure
editors of previous
were
discussions. and
used investigations
The functions
to summarize
(meso)structure what and what
of different
andmakes what was
a was
good done,
found
and what ar
interviews
sections ofRA. amongare
RAs journal editors were
described. Resultsused ofto summarize
previous what makes a good
investigations and and what
what thefound
was main
main conclu
functions of different sectionsIt was concluded
of RAs are that
described. clear,
The logical, coherent,
resultsfocused,
of previous focused, good
investigations argument and
conclusions are
RA. It was
interviews amongconcluded
journal that clear,
editors logical,
were coherent,
used to summarize good
what argument
makes and
a Some and what are the
good important
well-structured writing gets the paper published and read.
RA.well-structured
and interviews Itamong journalwriting
was concluded
rules
editorsgets
of thethat
werethe
clear,
thumb
used paper
logical,
selected
published
to identify
coherent,
were:
what and read.
makes
focused,
“Adjust your good Some
a good important
RA.
argument
writing
It was
to the and main conclusions
audience and
rules of
concludedwell-structured
the
that clear,purpose”,
thumb
logical,writing selected were:
gets balanced
coherent, the paper“Adjust
and
your
published writing
and read.
well-structured
to the
writing
audience
Some and
getsimportant
papers
purpose”, “Avoid redundancy“Avoid redundancy
and unnecessary and unnecessary
explanations” explanations”
and “Write like and “Write like
rules
published and of
read.theyou
Somethumb
speak selected
and
important thenwere:
rules “Adjust
revise”.
of the thumb your
were:writing
Adjust to
your the audience
writing to and
the
you speak and then revise”.
purpose”, “Avoid redundancy and unnecessary explanations”when andselecting
“Write when
like
KWs,selecting KWs,
audience and purpose, Avoid redundancy and unnecessary explanations and Write like you speak and
youKeywords:
speak and then
Keywords: revise”.
Research
Research article, rulesarticle,
of thumb,rulesstructure,
of thumb, structure, publishing.
publishing. imagine you imagine
are you are
when
then revise. These rules can help inexperienced writers present their work in aselecting
more
searching KWs, way.
for searching
effective
your for your
Keywords: Research article, rules of thumb, structure, publishing. imagine
article in you
someare
article in some
searching for
database your
database
I. INTRODUCTION
Key words: research article, writing, rules of thumb, structure
I. INTRODUCTION
article in some
database
A scientific or research
A scientific article or
or research I. article
INTRODUCTION
paper is
or apaper
technicalis a (or essayistic?)
technical document that
(or essayistic?) document that
describes a significant experimental,
describes a significant experimental, theoretical or observational
theoretical extension
or observational of current
extension of current
1 Introduction
A scientific
knowledge, ororresearch
knowledge, advances or article
in the or
advances paper
practical is aportant
technical
in the application
practical
to emphasize
of known
application
the fact that
(or essayistic?)
principles
of known(O'Conner
a research
document
principlesand
article
that
(O'Conner and
describes
Woodford,aWoodford,
significant isexperimental,
1976). It1976). important to theoretical
emphasize or
(further
that a observational
referred
research RA) extension
asarticle should
(further report
It is important to emphasize that a research article (further referred as of current
on
referred research
as
knowledge,
RA) should or
RA) advances
A scientific
report
should onor inresearch
reporttheon
research practical
research application
article or
findings that findings
findings ofthat
are notthat known
only
aresound
are principles
not
not (valid)
only sound
only (O'Conner
and
sound previously
(valid)
(valid)and andpre-
and previously
MOVE 1: Woodford,
MOVEunpublished
1: 1976).
paper (original),
It
is is
a but
important
technical also to
(or
unpublished (original), but also add
add some
emphasize
essayis- new understanding,
that a research
someunpublished
observation,
article
new understanding, (further proofs,
referred
observation,
i.e.as proofs, i.e.
Introduce potentially viously (original), but also add some
Introduce important
RA) shouldpotentially
report information
on important
research (Gordon,
findings
information that 1983).
are notUnlike
(Gordon, only a novel,
sound
1983). Unlike
newspaper
(valid)
a
article
and previously
novel, newspaper
or
article or
MOVEthe1: topic tic?) document
an essay, a(original),
RA has a but that
required describes
structure a
someand new understanding,
style, which is by observation,
internationalproofs, consensusi.e. i.e.
poten-
the topic
unpublished an essay, a RA alsoa add
has required new
structure understanding,
and style, observation,
which is by proofs,
international consensus
Introduceandpotentially
and
known asimportant
"Introduction
significant Methods(Gordon,
experimental,
information Results
theoret-and Discussion"
1983).
tially Unlike
important or IMRaD.newspaper
a novel,
information However,
(Gordon, a RA
article
1983). isorUn-
emphasize known as "Introduction Methods Results and Discussion" or IMRaD. However, a RA is
the why
topic not
emphasize only
is it an essay, a RA a technically
ical has rigid
aa required
or observational document,
structure
extension of but
and likealso
style, a subjective
which is by intellectual
international product
consensusthat
and important! not
why it unavoidably
is only technically
reflects personal rigid
opinions document,
and a
beliefs. novel,
but newspaper
also
Therefore, a article
subjective
it requires or an essay,
intellectual
good skills an RA
product
in is that
known
emphasize important!
as "Introduction
current
unavoidably Methods
knowledge, or Results
advances
reflects personal and
in
opinionsDiscussion"
and or
beliefs.IMRaD.
Therefore, However,
itare a
requires RA
is bygood
inter-skills in
why is it not both
onlystructuring
a both
technically and rigid
structuring
phrasing the discoveries
document,
and phrasing but
the
hasand
also thoughts.
a required
a subjective
discoveries and
These
structure andskills
intellectual
thoughts.
style,
These
acquired
which
productskills thatare acquired
through experience,
the practical but can also be
application taught. national consensus known as Introduction-Methods-
of known
important! unavoidably reflectsexperience,
personal opinions and be
beliefs. Therefore, it requires good skills in
principles
through
(O’Conner and
but can also taught.
bothMany
structuring andWoodford,
books have phrasing
been
1976).
written
It is im- Results-Discussion
theondiscoveries and thoughts.
general guidelines These
and rules skills
ortoIMRaD.
help are acquired
However,
scientists an RA is
write
MOVE 2: through experience, but can also be taught.
RAs (Day,
Many 1994;
∗ Tel.: +39-0332-785535;
Relate MOVE fax:Trelease,
books 1958).
have been Theseon
written days, many
general scientific and
aguidelines societies
rigidrules and groups
to help
butscientists write
to 2: +39-0332-786394. E-mail not only technically document, also a
write quite
RAsdetailed
(Day, publications and style
1994; Trelease, manuals
1958). Theseto days,
help both
many authors and publishers
scientific societies and groups
Relate
currentaddress:
Many tobooks have beeninfo@mgassoc.demon.nl
tomislav.hengl@jrc.it; written on general subjective and
guidelines intellectual
rules product
to help that unavoidably
scientists write re-
MOVE 2: current
knowledge: to get along; see for example the CBE's style manual (1994) or the ACA-CSA-SSSA's
write quite detailed publications and style manuals to help both authors and publishers
RAs (Day, 1994; Trelease, 1958). These days, many scientific societies and groups
Relate to knowledge: to get along; see for example the CBE's style manual (1994) or the ACA-CSA-SSSA's
current write
1
quite detailed publications and style manuals to help both authors and publishers
Anto
example
get of free
You are
along; a research
see forpaper
to distribute 17any
this document, or use it in class, as long as you give credit to the source and you don't use it for
example the CBE's style manual (1994) or the ACA-CSA-SSSA's March 2006
knowledge: commercial purposes. In Enschede, September 2002.
1
You are free to distribute this document, or use it in class, as long as you give credit to the source and you don't use it for any
commercial purposes. In Enschede, September 2002.
1
You are free to distribute this document, or use it in class, as long1as you give credit to the source and you don't use it for any
commercial purposes. In Enschede, September 2002.
1
describes a significant experimental, theoretical or observational extension of current
manual (1998
knowledge, or advances in the practical application of known principles (O'Conner and
level of meso
Woodford, 1976). It is important to emphasize that a research article (further referred as
Hengl, T. and Gould, M., 2002. Rules of thumb for principles of ca
writing research
RA) should report on research findings that are not only sound (valid) "What's been
and previously
MOVE 1: unpublished (original), but also add some new understanding, observation, done" and proofs, i.e.
(McPhee, 200
Introduce potentially important information (Gordon, 1983). Unlike a novel, "What newspaper need's (sentences) an
paper was to summarize manualthe (1998). What
main conclusions
to be used
done?" to article
from beand short orguides
the topic an essay,
Swan, 199
flects personal opinions andabeliefs.
RA has a required
Therefore, it re-structure
these
and style,
discussions in
which
levelan of is by and
meso
easy-to-read
international
micro-elements
format.
consensus of the pap
and especially if y
emphasize
known as "Introduction Methods Results and Discussion" principlesorofIMRaD. creatingHowever,a good title a RA is
(Ackles, 199
quires skill both in structuring and formulating con- "What's been makes a goo
why is it not only a technically rigid document, but also a subjective intellectual
(McPhee, 2001; Swales, 1981).researchers? product that
Some go to
cepts and findings. These skills reflects
are acquired through done"
Note andwe do not focus on cor-
that
important! unavoidably personal opinions and beliefs. Therefore,
(sentences) andit requires
provide good
a skills
framework infor a lo
"What need's
experience, but both structuring
be taught.and phrasing the to rectness.
discoveries Rather, we try to show MOVE 3:
can also be done?" and andthoughts.
Swan, 1990; These skills are
Kirman, 1992).acquired
However,this
Following wr
Introduce
through experience, but can also behow taught.
authors would be more/less
especially if you your are awork non-native betterEnglish
to says
There are many books on gen- likely to write makes a good paper and which rules ofwrt
"Scientific
in a particu- Give the
MOVE 2:
Many books have been written on general guidelines and
researchers? rules to help scientists write
eral guidelines for scientists wish- purpose and personal expe
Relate to
RAs (Day, 1994; Trelease, 1958).larThese way indays, a specified
many context.
scientific societies and groups
MOVE 3: main conclusions fr
ing to
write writedetailed
quite RAs andpublications
survive the and style manuals
The need for unambiguous to help both authors and publishers
current Hengl, T. and Gould, M., 2002. Rules of thumb for writing Introduce
research articles. Followingclear this question,
objective we tried to formulate
knowledge: to get
review along;
process see for
(Germano,example 2001; the CBE's style manual
better (1994)
fuzzytoprefer- or the ACA-CSA-SSSA's
say publishing) of RAs. These rul
your work
rules, rather than
Day, 1994; Trelease, 1958). These ences, Give the "Scientific writing for non-native English sp
is probably culturally determined (Hofstede,
manual
1
(1998). What used to be short guides for writing a
purpose and personal experiencesRA has been extended withtoscientific
the writing.
days, many scientific
level ofsocieties
You are
meso publish
free to distribute
and quite
this
micro-elementsdetailed
document, or use it in class, as long as you give credit to the source and you don't use it for any
of 1996).
the Fortunately,
paper. Various the structure
authors have of scientific
investigated writ-the
commercial purposes. In Enschede, September 2002. main conclusions from these discussions and bring
The Scientific
style manualsprinciples
to help both of authors
creatingand a good title (Ackles,
publishers; 1996),
objective
ing is writing and
well-defined a good we abstract
can also or introduction
indicate what
"What's been period from M
see for
done" and example(McPhee,
the CBE’s 2001;
styleSwales,
manual 1981).(1994) or Some go to the level of the micro-structure of RA Introduce
makes good style. five full-day
"What need's (sentences) and provide a framework for a logical 1 structure between the words (Gopen the GAP
II. METHO
Describe tree", assignments. T
tothe ACA-CSA-SSSA’s
be done?" and Swan,manual 1990; (1998).
Kirman,In1992). this pa-However, writing a RA is still a "monkey-puzzle
Experimental individually a
especially
per, the conventions if you are
for writing an RA a non-native
have been English speakerand (further referred to as L2). What
Hengl, T. and Gould, M., 2002. Rules of thumb for 2 Methods
writing Thematerials
research articles. Scientific set-up course, organized ann
writing
makes a good paper and which rules of thumb are the most importantthfor these as a whole gro
extended to the level of the macro, meso and micro- period from March 8 until April 26thstanda
order): 2002.
researchers?
elements of the paper. five
The full-day
Scientific classes.
writing This course,gave general enoughproblt
MOVE 3: manual (1998). What used to be short guides forassignments.
writing a RAThe hasclasses
been extended to the in a
Describe
Following this question, we tried to formulate some ruleorganized the of thumbs for easier writing
annually for
were
ITC
organised
(or Introduction, M
Introduce leveltoofsaymeso and micro-elements of rules
the paper. Various authors haveduringinvestigated the
better publishing) of RAs. Theseexperimental individually
gathered from and
discussions discussed the
the most importan
Objective
your work Various authors have investi-
set-up
principles of
principles
"Scientific of
writing creating
for a good
non-native title (Ackles,
English 1996),
speakers" aswriting
PhD
a
course,whole a
but good
students,group.
also abstract
was held
The
come or introduction
between
following
from our topics were
Give"What's
the been countries (L2
done" and
purpose and personal
gated the principles
(McPhee, 2001; Swales,
experiences
of creating
1981).
with scientific
a Some go
writing. Thetomainthe level
order): 8ofand
idea standard
March was the micro-structure
toAprilstructure
summarize ormain
26 in 2002. of RA
elements Bri
of andiff
R
academic
(sentences) and provide a framework
"What need'sconclusions from these discussions and bring them all together
good title (Ackles, 1996), writing for a logical structure between the words (Gopen GA
main
There were ninegeneral students,in a form
problems
who of with
followed a paper.
fivereadability
full- organized and by co
to be done?"
objective and Swan, 1990; Kirman, 1992). However, writing a RA is still a "monkey-puzzle tree",
a good abstract or introduction Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussio
Michael Goul
especially if you are a non-native dayEnglish
classes. This gave enough
speaker (further time toExplain
referred to used
do homework asand L2).publishing
What
(McPhee, 2001; Swales, 1981).
principles of submitting
techniques some graphsa
makes a good paper and which rules
II. METHODOLOGY of thumb
and numerous assignments are the
countries in(L2) most
between important
and classes. The
four continents,for these whichtow
transferred
Introduce Some go to the level researchers?
of the micro-structure of the
classes were organized academic in such differences
a way that(Prince the par- et al., 1999). T
the GAP MOVE 3:
Theproviding
Scientific writing course, organized annually for ITC PhD students, was held in
RA (sentences), guidelinesth for structure th
ticipants worked organized
in rule
groups by Ian Cressie
or individually (Cressie, 2002), w
and
Introduce
period from March
Following 8 until we
this question, Apriltried26 to 2002.
formulateThere were
some nine of students,
thumbs who
for followed
easier writing (or
Bring the and style (Gopen and Swan, 1990; Turk and gave
Kirk- enough Explain used
Michael Gould,home-works
documentation consultant an
your work
five full-day classes.
better to say publishing) of RAs.This discussed time
These the to
rulesmostdo
some
numerous
gathered
important
graphs from discussions
issues,
and first among
flow
and the Obj
during manually
diagrams
GAP assignments. The classes techniques Focus of
man,
Give1989;
Describe
the Kirman, 1992). However,
"Scientific writing forwere
writing anorganised
RA
non-native in a wayspeakers"
English
themselves
that participants
and then with course,
theto
worked
but
whole
in groups
also
group. come or
from our
Experimental individually and discussed the most important issues, transferred first among a manuscript
themselves and form.
then the study
ispurpose
set-upa bit likeand personal
climbing experiences
a monkey-puzzle with scientific writing. The main idea was to summarize main
tree, especially
main as conclusions
a whole group. fromThethese
following topics were
discussions and bringdiscussed
theminallmore togetherdetailin(ina form
chronological
of a paper.
if you are a non-native English speaker (further re- The following topics were discussed in detail (in
order): standard structure or elements of an RA, macro, meso and micro levels of a RA,
objective
Objective general
ferred to as L2). problems
What makes with
a good paperreadability
and can and communication,
chronological functions
order): the standard and content
structure or el-of
Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion section, writing successful abstracts and
we offer guidelines to young researchers? II. METHODOLOGY
ements of an RA, macro, meso and micro levels of
principles of submitting and publishing a RA. The participants were from eight
Objective an RA,wasgeneral problems com- Establish
countries (L2) and four continents, which a ground forwith readability
discussion of and
cultural-
The Scientific writing course, organized annually for ITC PhD students, was held in
With this motivation,
academicwedifferences
tried to formulate
(Prince
th
some
et al., 1999).th The working
munication, theThere material
functions and and facilities
content were an author's
of the Intro-
period
organized from
by (andMarch 8
Ian publishing) until
Cressie (Cressie, April 26 2002. were nine students, who followed
'voice'
rules of thumb for writing RAs. 2002), while most of the classes were lead by
five full-day classes. This gave enough
duction, time
Methods, to do
Results numerous
and
Michael Gould, documentation consultant and advisory editor. Participants generated Discussion home-works
sections, and
Explain
These used
were gathered
Describe during The
assignments. discussions
classes the organised in a way that participants worked in groups or Obje
inwere
techniques some graphs and flow diagrams manually writing successful
(Fig. 1), abstracts
which we andthen
tips for submitting
modified and
Experimental
course “Scientificindividually
writingtofor
transferred and discussed
non-native
a manuscript the most important issues, first among themselves and then the s
English
form.
set-up an RA for publication in a journal. Fig. 1. Phot
as aalso
speakers”, but they whole group.
reflect The following
our personal expe- topics were discussed in more detail (in chronological
order): standard structure or elements of an RA, macro, meso and micro levels of a RA,
Focus of rience of scientific writing. The idea behind this The participants were from eight countries (L2) and
general problems with readability and communication, functions and content of
the study Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion section, writing successful abstracts and
Object of principles of submitting and publishing a RA. The participants were from eight
countries (L2) and four continents, which was a ground for discussion of cultural- Esta
45 Fig. 1. Photo from the Scientific writing class at ITC. Disc
the study
academic differences (Prince et al., 1999). The working material and facilities were an a
organized by Ian Cressie (Cressie, 2002), while most of the classes were lead by 'voic 2
Establish Explain used
Michael Gould, documentation consultant and advisory editor. Participants generated
an author's techniques some graphs and flow diagrams manually (Fig. 1), which we then modified and
manual (1998). What used to be short guides for writing a RA has been extended to the
level of meso and micro-elements of the paper. Various authors have investigated the
principles of creating a good title (Ackles, 1996), writing a good abstract or introduction
"What's been
done" and
(McPhee,
manual 2001;
(1998). Swales,
What used to1981). Some
be short go for
guides to the levela RA
writing of the
has micro-structure
been extended toofthe RA Bring the
"What need's (sentences)
level of meso and
and provide a framework
micro-elements of for
the a logical
paper. structure
Various between
authors have the words (Gopen
investigated the GAP
and Swan,
to be done?" principles of 1990; Kirman,
creating a good1992). However,
title (Ackles, writing
1996), a RAa is
writing stillabstract
good a "monkey-puzzle tree",
or introduction
"What's been
done" and
especially
(McPhee, if
2001; you are
Swales, a non-native
1981). SomeEnglish
go to speaker
the level (further
of the referred to as
micro-structure L2).
of What
RA Introduce
"What need's makes
(sentences) a good
and paper
provide aand which
framework rules
for a of thumb
logical are
structure the most
between important
the words for these the GAP
(Gopen
to be done?" researchers?
and Swan, 1990; Kirman, 1992). However, writing a RA is still a "monkey-puzzle tree",
MOVE 3: especially if you are a non-native English speaker (further referred to as L2). What
Introduce makesFollowing
a good this paper
question,
andwe tried to
which formulate
rules of thumb somearerulethe
of thumbs for easier for
most important writing
these(or
better to say publishing) of RAs. These rules gathered from discussions during the Objective
your work researchers?
Give
MOVE 3: the "Scientific writing for non-native English speakers" course, but also come from our
purpose
Introduce and personal this
Following experiences
question,with scientific
we tried writing.
to formulate someTherule
main idea was
of thumbs fortoeasier
summarize
writing main
(or
main
your work conclusions
better to say from these
publishing) discussions
of RAs. and
These bring
rules them all
gathered together
from in a form
discussions of a paper.
during the Objective
objective
Give the "Scientific writing for non-native English speakers" course, but also come from our
purpose and personal experiences with scientific writing. The main idea was to summarize main
main conclusions from these discussionsII. and METHODOLOGY
bring them all together in a form of a paper.
objective
The Scientific writing course, organized annually for ITC PhD students, was held in
period from March 8th until April II. 26
th
2002. There were nine students, who followed
METHODOLOGY
five full-day classes. This gave enough time to do numerous home-works and
Describe assignments.
The Scientific The classes
writing wereorganized
course, organisedannually
in a wayfor thatITC
participants workedwas
PhD students, held inor Object of
in groups
th th
Experimental period individually and discussed
from March the most
8 until April 26 important
2002. There issues,
werefirst
nine among themselves
students, and then the study
who followed
set-up Fig. 1. Photo from the Scientific writing class at ITC. Discussion about the “Discussion” section.
as afull-day
five whole group.
classes.TheThisfollowing
gave topics
enough were discussed
time to do innumerous
more detail (in chronological
home-works and
Describe order): standard
assignments. structure
The classes or elements
were organisedofinana RA, way macro, meso and worked
that participants micro levels or Focus of
of a RA,
in groups
Rules of thumb for writing research
four articles. general
Experimental individually
continents,
problems with readability
and discussed the most important
which provided a good basis for dis-
and communication,
issues, first among functions
themselves and thenofthe study
and content
set-up
asIntroduction,
a whole group. Methods, Results and
The following topicsDiscussion
prepared by Ian Cressie. A typical exercise was, forand
were section,
discussed in writing
more successful
detail (in abstracts
chronological
cussing cultural-academic
principles
order): differences
of structure
standard (Prince
submitting andet al.,
or elementspublishing
of an RA, a RA.
macro, The mesoparticipants
and microwerelevelsfrom eight
of a RA,
the course is that1999). the studentsgeneralshould
countrieslearn from
(L2) and
problems the
with real examples
fourreadability
continents,and example:
which a short RA is given
was a groundfunctions
communication, to students
for discussion who haveof Establish
of cultural-
and content
mistakes. In most of the cases, participants
academic
Introduction, were analysing
differences
Methods, (Prince and
Results etandal., 1999).
Discussion
to The working
section,
write an abstract,writing material theand
successful
respecting were an author's
facilitiescon-
abstracts
appropriate and
s work. In other cases, participants organized
principles were
The material
making
ofbysubmitting
Ian comments
andCressie and(Cressie,
facilities
on ventions.
publishing
were 2002),
a RA.while Themost of the classes
participants were were eight by 'voice'
from lead
y Ian Cressie. Typical exercise was, for
Michael example:
Gould, a short RAconsultant
documentation is and advisory editor. Participants generatedEstablish
Explain the countries (L2) and four continents, which was a ground for discussion of cultural-
have to write a missing methodologyabstract organized
somerespecting
academic graphs by
the Ian
and
differencesrules Cressie
flow
(Prince 2002,
anddiagrams
functions
et manually
al., 1999). The(Fig.
working1), which
materialweand then wereandan author's
modified
facilities
Most of the rules mentioned in this
transferred
organized bytoIan
while most ofa the
manuscript
Cressie form.
classes (Cressie,
were led 2002), while most of the classes were lead by 'voice'
An RA is
Explain
Michael Gould, documentation consultant and advisory
used Gould, documentation consultant and
by Michael
editor.
article were Participants
agreed by the generated
major-
like a cook-
ntioned in this techniques
article were agreed some by the majority
graphs and flow of diagrams
participants. manually (Fig. 1),itywhich we then modified
of participants. We have also and
book!
sults of previousadvisory editor.
investigations The
and participants
inquiries of generated
journal
transferred to a manuscript form. some
editors to
Be specific used the results of previous inves-
usions. Nevertheless, graphssome of the
and flow statements
diagrams and principles
manually reflect and provide
(Fig. 1), which
pinions and should not be confused with the cited literature. The all the tigations and inquiries by journal
we then modified and transferred to a manuscript
given here apply primarily to application-based sciences and RAs necessary
editors to support general conclu-
on in such journals. form. details
sions. Nevertheless, some of the
The basic concept of the course is that the students statements and principles reflect personal views and
III. RESULTS
should learn from real examples and their own mis- opinions and should not be confused with the cited
takes. In most cases, participants were analysing literature. The listed rules and tips given here ap-
yle
and correcting each other’s work. In other cases, ply primarily to application-based sciences and RAs
ded in number of article sections (futher reffered to as RAS) and
participants
icipants agreed that the mainwere making
article sections comments
that areoninevitable
examples in intended for publication in such journals.
are, in this order: Title, Authors,Fig.Abstract, Introduction
1. Photo from the Scientific writing(I),
class at ITC. Discussion about the "Discussion" section.
esults (R), Conclusions and Discussion (D) and References. These
RA. Additional listed RAS's were: Author-paper documentation, 46
edgements, Abbreviations and Appendices. The RAEs listed were: 2
Fig. 1. Photo from the Scientific writing class at ITC. Discussion about the "Discussion" section.
s, maps, diagrams, sketches etc.), equations, citations and footnotes
RAEs can come in different places in the RA, however tables and
al in Results section and equations and citations in Methodology 2
these RAS's and RAEs have their function and required style and
support general conclusions. Nevertheless, some of the stateme
The basic concept of the course is that the students should personal learnviews from the andreal examples
opinions and should not be confused with
and on their own mistakes. In most of the cases, participants listed rules were
andM.,tips analysing
given and
here for apply primarily to application
correcting each-other's work. In other cases, participants Hengl, T. and Gould,
were 2002. Rules of thumbon writing research articles.
intended formaking
publication comments in such journals.
examples prepared by Ian Cressie. Typical exercise was, for example: a short RA is
given to students who have to write a missing abstract respecting the rules and functions
3 Results The basic concept of the course is that the students should lea
of an abstract. III. likeRESULTS
and on their own mistakes. In most RA is of the
a cases, particip
correcting
(2)the
Coherent each-other's
development work. of the In topic
otherincases,
cook-book! para- participants w
Most of 3.1 RA structure
the rules mentioned and style
in this article were agreed by majority of participants.
examples
RAinquiries
structure prepared by Ian Cressie. Be specific
Typical exercise was, fo
We have also used results of previous investigations and graphs (old ofand stylenew
journal
before editors to
information)
given to students who have to write and provide abstract respecti
a missing
support general
A RA wasconclusions. Nevertheless,
first divided into a num- some of theAstatements
RA wasoffirstand principles
divided incorrect reflect
number allof article sections (futher
of(3) Use
an abstract. grammatically sentences
personalber views and opinions and
of sections (futher referred to
should not be
Provide a confused
elementswith the
(RAE). cited literature.
Participants The
agreed that the main article secti
necessary
(4) An ability to make effective claims at the right
listed rules and tips given here apply primarily to application-based
any modern sciences
journal and
are, inRAs this order:
as RAS) and elements (RAE). The summary Most levelof the rules mentioned in this article Title,
detail Authors,
were agreed by thA
intended for publication in such journals. of results Methodology (M), Results (R), Conclusions and Discussion (D
We have also used results of previous investigations and inqu
participants agreed that the main are theClear
(5) core body
organization of RA. Additional
of sections listedand
of a paper, RAS'sofwere: Auth
support general conclusions. Nevertheless, some the statem
article sections that are required Keywords,
(6) Placing
personal Acknowledgements,
views theirandwork in a wider
opinions andAbbreviations
context not beand
should (espe- Appendice
confused wit
III. RESULTS tables, figures (graphs, maps, diagrams, sketches etc.), equation
in any modern journal are, in this order: Title, listed cially rules relevant
and tipsforgiven authors here apply primarily
in developing coun- to application
and comments.
intended for The RAEs
publication in can
such come in different places in the
journals.
Authors, Abstract, Introduction (I), Methodology figurestries) are more usual in Results section and equations and
RA structure and style
(M), Results (R), Conclusions and Discussion (D) and Introduction. All these RAS's and RAEs have their functi
A RA was first divided in number of article sectionsshould (futher form reffered to ofasold
a coherent RAS) and and
unity. The functions is of main RAS'
References. These are the core of an RA. Addi- The misplacement new information
elementsand (RAE). Participants agreed that the main article thumb sections
area given that are
infor inevitable
Table 2. in III. RESULTS
tional listed RAS’s not just problem non-native speakers, it is also
mary any modern journal are,were:
in Author-paper
this order: documenta-
Title, Authors, Abstract, Introduction (I),
Methodology (M), Results (R), Conclusions and DiscussionRAthestructure
No.
(D)1 problem
and andinstyle
References.American professional writing
These
ts tion, Keywords, Acknowledgements, Abbreviations Participants agreed that some RA, even with good data and in
are the core body of RA. Additional listed RAS's
and Appendices. The RAEs listed were: tables, fig- rejected
were: Author-paper
(Gopen and
if the Swan,
style documentation,
1990; Germano,
and format of 2001).
the of The are
paper par-not tailored for
A RA was first divided in number article sections (futher
Keywords, Acknowledgements, Abbreviations and Appendices. with the The
results RAEs of listed were:
investigations among 116 editors
ures (graphs, maps, diagrams, sketches Give
Compare
etc.), equa- ticipants analysed a flawed
elements (RAE). Participants agreed that the main paper by an unknown article(Gosd
sect
tables, figures (graphs, maps, diagrams, sketches etc.), identified
equations,following citations and most footnotes
frequent causes to reject an L2 autho
summary any modern journal are, in this order: Title, Authors, A
and comments. The RAEs
tions, citations can come
and footnotes results
andincomments.
different places author and decided, after some discussion, that they
in the RA, of however tables and
development
Methodology (M), Results (R), Conclusions and Discussion (g
the topic in paragraphs and incorrect use of
figures are more usual in Results section results and equations would reject the publication.
and citations
participants in Methodology
are the coreanalysed body of an RA.exemplary
Additionalflawed listed paper
RAS'sby unknow
were: Aut
and Introduction.
The RAEs All can these
come in RAS's andplaces
different RAEsinhave theirreject
the RA. function
it after andsome required style and
discussion. The list of reasons for rejection
Keywords, Acknowledgements, Abbreviations and Appendice
should form a coherent
tables andunity.
figuresThe are functions
more usual of main 3.2 RAS's and discussed rules of
However, in the tables,RA sub-structure
figures (graphs, maps, diagrams, sketches etc.), equatio
thumb are given in Table 2.
Results section and equations and citations in the and comments. The RAEs
Table 1. Most important reasonscan comeofin
for rejection different places in the
a RA.
figures are
The participants more Reason
Aspect usualdiscovered
also in Results section and equations and
Methods
Participants agreedsection and Introduction.
that some RA, even with All of these
good data and interesting results,for rejection
will be
and
that Introduction.
Topic All these
irrelevant RAS's
topic Focus:
or topicand ofRAEs have only
local interest their functi
rejected RAS’s
if the style and format
and RAEs have theirof the paperand
function arerequired
not tailored forallthe RAS’s can
audience. beThisseparated
agrees
should Newness
form a coherent papers offers unity.
nothingTheput
new more
functions of main RAS
with thestyleresults of investigations among 116 editors into (Gosden,
subsections 1992;topic, Fig.clear 1),sign-
who
pare and should form a coherent whole. The func- thumb are Focus given usingin Table objectives
2. and focus on are not connected
conclusions
identified following most frequent causes to reject an L2 posts, author:
Methodologicalunclear text,
unclear incoherent
and
the misleading whatargumentation;
ts tions of the main RAS’s are given in Table 1.
which can improve way
development of the topic in paragraphs and incorrect use of grammar. In addition, steps weak methodology the orshould
results be
Participants
the argument agreed
Styleis unclear,
builtthatupunfocused
some
in anRA, even with good data and i
participants analysed an exemplary flawed paper by unknown author and decided to and incoherent text
emphasized
The participants agreed that
rejected
RA.Data
ifQuality
the style andidentified
flawed formatinsignificant
design; of the paper are not
sample tailored
number; for
prelimina
reject it after some discussion. The some
list of reasons for rejection Thecan subsections
be seen inweTable 1.
with the results of investigations among 116 editors (Gos
RAs, even with good data and in- Compare were: research topic most and definitions, research
identified following frequent causes to ob-
reject an L2 autho
Table 1. Most important reasons for rejection of a RA.results
teresting results, will be rejected if development
jectives (questions), of themethodological
topic in paragraphs techniques, andex-incorrect use of
Aspect Reason for rejection
the style and format of the paper participants analysed an exemplary
perimental set-up, object of the study (e.g. study flawed paper by unknow
Topic irrelevant topic or topic of local interest only reject it after some discussion. The list of reasons for rejection
are not tailored
Newness papers to thenothing
offers needs new
of a particular au- area), main discoveries (analysed data), answers 3 to
FocusThis
dience. topic, objectives
confirms and conclusions
the results of Gosdenare(1992,
not connected
research questions, explanation of the conclusions
Methodological unclear and misleading argumentation; Table 1. Most important reasons for rejection of a RA.
Fig.1) who asked over 100 journal editors
steps weak methodology or results what they and further research and implications.
Aspect Reason for rejection
Style were
thought unclear, unfocused
the most and incoherent
important textnon-
issues for Topic irrelevant topic or topic of local interest only
Data Quality flawed design; insignificant sample number; preliminary
The main findings
Newness
RAS’s areonly
papers offers
listed in nothing new show-
a flow chart,
English authors who want to get published. These
Focus topic, objectives and conclusions are not connected
ing the main relations between the different sections
were, in order of priority: Methodological unclear and misleading argumentation;
(Fig. 2). Fig.steps weak
3 shows themethodology
substructure or of
results
Introduc-
Style unclear, unfocused and incoherent text
(1) Clear, logical linking of sentences tion Data
and Quality
Discussionflawed
as thedesign;
most important
insignificantRAS’s.
sample number; prelimin
3
47
3
Table 1
Research Article Sections (RAS), main functions, preferred style and related rules of thumb.
RAS Main functions Preferred style Rules of thumb
• avoid complex grammar

• indicates content and • short and simple words (7- • make it catchy!
main discoveries 10) • avoid redundancy (“An investiga-
Title • attracts the reader’s at- • purposive (targets a spe- tion of... ”, “The analysis of... ”,
tention cific audience) “Effect of... ”, “Influence of... ”,
“New method...”)
• past (perfect) tense and

• avoid introducing the topic
• reflects the main ’story’ of passive voice(!) • explain: what was done, what was
the RA • short and concise sen-
Abstract found and what are the main con-
• calls attention but avoids tences
• no citations, tables, equa- clusions
extra explanations • bring summary ’numbers’
tions, graphs etc.
• introduces the topic and • present tense for referring

defines the terminology to established knowledge • use state-of-the-art references
• relates to existing research or past tense for literature • follow logical moves
Introduction • indicated the focus of the review • define your terminology to avoid
paper and research objec- • extensive overview of lit- confusion
tives erature
• mention everything you did that

can make importance to the re-
sults
• provides enough detail for • past tense • don’t cover your traces (“some
competent researchers to • correct and internation- data was ignored ”)
ally recognised style and • establish an author’s voice (“we
Methodology repeat the experiment decided to ignore this data”)
• who, what, when, where, format (units, variables,
• if a technique is widely known, re-
how and why? materials etc.)
fer to it by its name (don’t re-
explain it)
• use simple(st) example to explain
complex methodology
• present summary data related to

• gives summary results in
the RA objectives and not all re-
graphics and numbers • past tense
• compares different ‘treat- • use tables and graphs and search results
Results • call attention to the most signifi-
ments’ other illustrations
• gives quantified proofs cant findings
• make a clear distinction between
(statistical tests)
your work and that of others
• answers research ques- • do not recapitulate results but

tions/objectives • simple or present tense make statements
Conclusions • explains discrepancies and (past tense if it is related • make strong statements (avoid “It
and Dis- unexpected findings to results) may be concluded... ” style)
cussion • states importance of dis- • allows scientific specula- • do not hide unexpected results —
coveries and future impli- tion (if necessary) they can be the most important
cations ones
• provide a list of related lit-

• always cite the most accessible ref-
erature and sources of in- • depends on journal but
authors/editors, year and erences
References formation • cite primary source rather than re-
• support the ideas in the title must be included
view papers
paper
48
INTRODUCTION
TITLE
TOPIC AND DEFINITIONS
FOCUS (THE GAP) AUTHOR(S)

OBJECTIVES
ABSTRACT
METHODOLOGY
TECHNIQUES KEY WORDS
EXPERIMENTAL SET-UP
ABBREVIATIONS
OBJECT OF STUDY
RESULTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
MAIN DISCOVERIES
SUMMARY COMPARISONS
REFERENCES
DISCUSSION &
CONCLUSIONS APPENDIX
ANSWERS
EXPLANATIONS
FURTHER IMPLICATIONS
Fig. 2. Flow diagram: research article sections (shaded) and subsections, and their main relations.
IV. CONCLUSIONS AND DISCUSS
4 Conclusions and discussion
The RA must have a well-defined structure and
What is the purpose of a RA and what makes it a good one, an
serve
good as aAre
RA? kindthere
of cook book,
rules forsoeasier
that others
writing?can If
re-the main functio
What is the purpose of an RA
Answer
new knowledge
produce on athe
and repeat research topic,
experiments then a in
described good
it. paper is the o
and what makes it a good one,
the research focused, well
There are someargued andcan
rules that uses
make language
the writingthat
anddoes not have
and who decides that it is a good question meaning. However, it is not only the message that is importa
publishing of RAs easier. Here, we summarise some
RA? Are there rules for easier well-defined structure and function in serve like a cook-b
Provide which should
reproduce and always
repeat be kept in mind
explained by an inexpe-
experiments.
writing? If the main function of
summary There areresearcher
rienced some rules that2).
(Table canWemake the
put all of writing
these to- and publishing
an RA is to transfer new knowl- conclusions summarised some 'golden' rules that should always be in the m
gether to make a list of some 40 logical steps, which
edge on a research topic, then a researcher (Table 3). We put all these together to make a fina
can be found at the end of this article.
good paper is one that is clear, coherent, focused, steps, which can be find in the Appendix.
well argued and uses language that does not have
Table 3. Selected golden rules for easier publishing.
any ambiguity. However, it is not only the message Although it was assumed in the past that ‘thicker’
NAME GOLDEN RULE
that is important. articles with a wider range of vocabulary are
TAKE A READER'S VIEW Write for your audience not for yoursel
Direct your RA but keep a clear focus i
49TELL A STORY results that relate to it.
BE YOURSELF Write like you speak and then revise an
MAKE IT SIMPLE Use simple(st) examples to explain com

Use concrete words and strong verbs, a
INTRODUCTION DISCUSSION
ANSWER RESEARCH
INTRODUCE THE TOPIC
QUESTIONS
Hengl, T. and Gould, M., 2002. Rules of thumb for writing research a
RELATE TO CURRENT SUPPORT AND DEFEND

KNOWLEDGE ANSWERS WITH RESULTS IV. CONCLUSIONS
What is the purpose of a RA and what makes

EXPLAIN:
good RA? Are there rules for easier writing? I
INDICATE THE GAP - Conflicting results
new knowledge on a research topic, then a go
Answer
- Unexpected findings
focused, well argued and uses language that
research
- Discrepancies withHowever,
meaning. other it is not only the messag
questions
research
well-defined structure and function in serv
INTRODUCE YOUR WORK
Give reproduce and repeat explained experiments.
summary
STATE LIMITATIONS
There are some rules that can make the writin
conclusions
OF THE STUDY some 'golden' rules that should a
summarised
STATE RESEARCH researcher (Table 3). We put all these togeth
QUESTIONS AND steps, which can be find in the Appendix.
OBJECTIVES STATE IMPORTANCE
OF FINDINGS
Table 3. Selected golden rules for easier publishing.
NAME GOLDEN RULE

ESTABLISH NEWNESS
TAKE A READER'S VIEW Write for your aud
Direct your RA bu
TELL A STORY
results that relate t
ANNOUNCE FURTHER
RESEARCH
BE YOURSELF Write like you spe
MAKE IT SIMPLE Use simple(st) exa

Fig. 3. Flow diagram: logical framework for RA sub-sections of Introduction and Discussion agreed by most of theUse concrete word
MAKE IT CONCRETE
participants. than three words),
Avoid redundancy
MAKE IT SHORT
techniques and ter
preferable, most editors (and readers) prefer sim-
can catch readers’ attention and will be easily re-
ple, clear and coherent writing (KISS — Keep It TAKE RESPONSIBILITY Make a clear distin
membered (e.g.: T.Y. Li and J. Yorke named their
Short and Simple), rather than a fancy or complex, MAKE STRONG
chaos: “The period three means"We concluded... "
famous paper on STATEMENTS
pseudo-scientific style. Funkhouser and Maccoby
chaos”). Some sections simply require more skillConsider uncertain
BE SELF-CRITICAL
(1971) showed that information gain is especially acknowledge the w
and are more important.
enhanced by the use of examples, i.e. it helps a lot
to use parallels from everyday life, historical points,
Although, it was assumed that the 'thicker' a
It is estimated that of all the
preferable in the editors hands, the editors (
etc. Some sections, such as the Introduction and Unexpected published journal writing,
RAs in rather
the
findings
clear and coherent than a fancy
Discussion, must intrigue readers, and be a tractor Funkhouser and 5%
world, less than Maccoby (1971) showed
are read in
of their interest. For example, an interesting title enhanced by the “use of examples",
detail. However, more than 50% i.e. it hel
such as everyday life parallels, historical poin
such as Introduction and Discussion, have to
50 should therefore not be over-simplified. Fo
readers' attention and will be easily remember
famous paper on chaos: "The period three m
skill and are more important. It is approximat
the world, only less than 5% are read in detail
read and so the quality of an abstracts is
Table 2
Selected golden rules for easier publishing.
NAME GOLDEN RULE
TAKE A READER’S VIEW Write for your audience not for yourself.
Direct your RA but keep a clear focus in the paper and present only results
TELL A STORY
that relate to it.
BE YOURSELF Write like you speak and then revise and polish.
MAKE IT SIMPLE Use simple(st) examples to explain complex methodology.
Use concrete words and strong verbs, avoid noun clusters (more than three
MAKE IT CONCRETE
words), abstract and ambiguous words.
Avoid redundancy, repetition and over-explanation of familiar techniques

MAKE IT SHORT
and terminology.
TAKE RESPONSIBILITY Make a clear distinction between your work and that of others.
MAKE STRONG STATEMENTS ”We concluded... ” instead of ”It may be concluded... ”
EMPHASIZE Learn to use little words in a big way.
Consider the uncertainty of conclusions and their implications and ac-

BE SELF-CRITICAL
knowledge the work of others. Hengl, T. and Gould, M., 2002. Rules of thumb for writing research a
NEVER STOP EDITING The key to writing well is extensive editing.
of abstracts are read and so the quality of an ab- ‘moves’ as in chess (Fig. 2 & 3).
The sub-structure of an Introduction was first
stract is much more important (Gordon, 1983).
The"four
moremoves". These
structured latter on
and precise a become thre
Therefore, the abstract should present the ‘story’ of Research-Space) that are: establish a researc
Establish paper is, the greater the chance that
the RA in miniature and should make sense stand-
newness
and occupy the niche (Swales and Feak, 1994
it especially
will get published. Each of the RA of the Introduc
the meso-structure
alone.
some logical
elements flowitsoffunction
has to fulfil 'moves'in(Fig. 2 & 3). T
The sub-structure of an Introduction was first de-
paper, the easier it will get published. Each o
order to achieve this goal. The importance of fol-
order to achieve this goal.
scribed by Swales (1981) with his “four moves”. lowing a logical structure is nicely illustrated by
These later on become three, the so-called CaRS Gopen and SwanHowever, this isneed
(1990): “People notsignposts
the wholeto story. A RA h
Explain dis-
model (Create-A-Research-Space), which are: es- understand what to be novel
you’re and of high
communicating. Firstinterest.
estab- Finally, one
crepancies minds: a good article is not only an article tha
tablish a research territory, establish a research lish the context based on what they know. Then move
the reaction it causes that makes the differenc
niche and occupy the niche (Swales and Feak, towards the new isfacts
readyou
andwant to (Publish
cited convey. Begin-
or Perish!). In some
1994). The participants in the course concluded ning with excitingby the
new editors, i.e.
information journal.
and ending Unfortunately, s
with
rd
that especially the meso-structure of the Introduc- (maybe
something we already 1/3leaves
know of all cases). Editors are often b
us disappointed
academic level, gender... nation. These probl
tion and Discussion should follow a logical flow of and spoils the flow.”
and ethics (Rossiter, 2001) were not discuss
attention.
51
The searching, input and formatting of refere
Further the help of so called "information manage
research addition, the role of companies involved in 's
and Scientific Information (ISI), will increase. I
implications guidelines for writing a RA (templates?). The
However, this is not the whole story. A RA has to Acknowledgements

target a specific audience/Journal, has to be novel The sub-structure of an Introduction was first described by Sw
"four moves". These latter on become three, the so-called
and of high interest. Finally, one thing should be We would like to thank Ian Cressie for arranging the
Research-Space) that are: establish a research "territory", est
Establish
uppermost in researchers’ minds: a good article is and occupy the nicheare
courses at ITC, which of greatand
(Swales importance to L2 In this case, p
Feak, 1994).
newness
not only an article that has been published in a top especially the We
PhD students. meso-structure of the
also thank former ITCIntroduction
PhD stu- and Discu
journal — it is the reaction it causes that makes the
some logical flow of 'moves' (Fig. 2 & 3). The more structu
dent Jose L.C. Santos and Dr. David G. Rossiter
paper, the easier it will get published. Each of RA elements h
difference. for reading
order the text
to achieve andgoal.
this giving their valuable sugges-
tions.
Therefore, a good article is not However, this is not the whole story. A RA has to aim at spec
Hengl, T. and
just one that is well written. AGould, M., Explain
2002. Rules of dis-
thumb towriting
for be novel
research and of high interest. Finally, one thing should be
articles.
crepancies
References
good article is one that is read minds: a good article is not only an article that has been publis
the reaction it causes that makes the difference. Therefore, a g
Ackles, N., 1996. Naming a paper, ESL Center, Univer-
and cited. In some cases, even a
is read and cited (Publish or Perish!). In some cases, even a go
sity of Washington, Washington.
good paper will get rejected. Unfortunately, some- by the editors, i.e. journal. Unfortunately, sometimes the r
The sub-structure of an Introduction was firstrddescribed
ASA-CSA-SSSA, by Swales (1981)
1998. Publications Handbook with andso called
times the reasons for this can be subjective (maybe (maybe 1/3 of all cases). Editors are often biased, they pref
"four moves". These latter on become three,
level,the
Style Manual.
academic so-called
ASA-CSA-SSSA,
gender... CaRS
pp. 145.model (Create-A-
nation. These problems and issues
in around a third of all cases). Editors are
Research-Space) that are: establishoften bi- a research
Council of "territory",
Biology Editors establish
(CBE) a research
(Editor), 1994. Sci- "niche"
Establish and ethics (Rossiter, 2001) were not discussed in this articl
ased,
newnessthey prefer and
one occupy
or anotherthe niche
approach, (Swales
academic and Feak, 1994). In this case, participants concluded
entific style and format. Cambridge University Press,
attention. that
especially the meso-structure
level, gender. . . nation. These problems and issues
of the Introduction
Cambridge, pp. 825. and Discussion RAS should follow
some logical flow of 'moves' (Fig. The 2 & 3).
searching,
Cressie,
The more
I., 2002.input
Writing
structured
and and of
& formatting
more
Editing Course,
exact is has
references,
Lecture
the been l
such as fraud, plagiarism
paper, the andeasier
ethics it(Rossiter,
will get2001) published. Each of RA elements has to fulfil its function in
Further the notes
helpforofITC sostudents.
called Enschede,
"information
pp. 120.management tools" (E
are not discussed order
here,tobut
achieve this goal.
they certainly need at-
addition, the role of companies involved in 'sorting' and 'filte
research Day, R.A. (Editor), 1994. How to write and publish a
tention. and Scientific
scientific Information (ISI),
paper. Oryx Pr., willpp.increase.
Phoenix, 223. In future, we ca
However, this is notimplications
the whole story. A RA for
guidelines haswriting
to aim aatRAspecific audience/Journal,
(templates?). The RA willhasalso pro
Explain dis- to be novel and of high interest. Finally, Funkhouser,
one G. R. and
thing Maccoby,
should be N., 1971. Communi-
uppermost in researchers'
Searching, inputting and formatting references (animations, sound recordings), which will improveA com GOO
crepancies minds: a good article is not only an cating Specialized
article that has Science
been Information
published in to
a a Lay
top Au-
journal - it is ARTIC
has been much improved lately with the help of readers/users and authors. These innovations will inevitably
the reaction it causes that makes thumb.the dience. The Journal
difference. of Communication,
Therefore, a good article is the one that THE O
21:58.
so-called “information management
is read and tools” or
cited (Publish (web-
Perish!). In some
Germano, W.,cases,
2001. even
Gettinga good paper will
It Published: get rejected THAT
A Guide
by thelibraries,
applications, on-line editors,reference
i.e. journal. Unfortunately,
manage- for Scholars sometimes
and AnyonetheElsereasons be subjective READ
can Serious
Serious about
rd
(maybe 1/3 of all cases). Editors
ment tools, etc.). In addition, the role of companies
Acknowledgements
are often
Books. The biased, theyofprefer
University Chicagoone or other
Press, approach, CITED
Chicago,
academic level, gender... nation. WeThese
would
pp. problems andIanissues
like to thank
192. such
Cressie as fraud,
for their course plagiarism
and materials, which
involved in sorting
andand filtering,
ethics will become
(Rossiter, 2001)more
werePhD
notstudents.
discussed in this
We also thankarticle but they
PhD student certainly
Jose L.C. need
Santos and Dr. David
Gopen, G.D. and Swan, J.A., 1990. The Science of Sci-
important. attention. and giving us suggestions.
entific Writing. American Scientist, 78:550–558.
Gordon, M., 1983. Running a refeering system. Primary
The searching,
In the input
future, we and formatting
can expect more of references, has been lately largely improved by
Communications Research Centre, Leicester.
Further the help of so called "information management tools" (Endnote, ProCite
structured guidelines for writ- Gosden, H., 1992. Research Writing andV.
etc.). In
REFERENCES
NNSs: From
research addition, the role of companies involved in 'sorting' and 'filtering', such as Institute for
ing an RA (perhaps even tem- the Editors. Journal of Second Language Writing,
and Scientific Information (ISI), willAckles, increase. In future,
N., 1996. Naming awe canESL
paper, expect
Center,more structured
University of Washington
implications guidelines for writing
plates?). The RA will aalso
RAprob- 1(2):123–139.
ASA-CSA-SSSA,
(templates?). The RA1998.willPublications
also probablyHandbook andmultimedia
support Style Manual. http://w
(animations,
ably support sound recordings),
multimedia which145will
Hofstede,
(anima- Council
pp. 1996.
G.J., Cultures
improve and Organizations,between
communication Soft- the
of Biology Editors (CBE) (Editor), 1994. Scientific style and
readers/users and authors. These innovationsware of the will
Mind:inevitably
Interculturalrequire
Press, Cambridge, 825 pp. some
Cooperation new
and its rules of
tions, sound recordings), which will improve com-
thumb. Importance
Cressie, I., 2002.for Survival.
Writing McGraw-Hill,
& Editing New York,
Course, Lecture notes for ITC student
munication between authors and readers/users. Day, R.A. (Editor), 1994. How to write and publish a scientific paper. Ory
pp. 279.
These innovations will inevitably require some new Funkhouser,
Kirman,
G. R. and Maccoby, N., 1971. Communicating Specialized
J., 1992. Good style: writing for science and
Acknowledgements Audience. The Journal of Communication, 21: 58.
rules of thumb. technology. Spon press,
J.A.,London, pp. Science
221.
We would like to thank Ian Cressie forGopen, G.D. and
their course and Swan,
materials, 1990. are
which The of Scientific
of high importance forWriting.
L2 Am
Gordon,
PhD students. We also thank PhD student M., Santos
Jose L.C. 1983. Running a refeering
and Dr. David system.for
G. Rossiter Primary
readingCommunications
the text
and giving us suggestions. Gosden, H., 1992. Research Writing and NNSs: From the Editors. Journa
52 1(2): 123-139.
V. REFERENCES 7
Ackles, N., 1996. Naming a paper, ESL Center, University of Washington, Washington.
McPhee, L., 2001. Teaching the Research Article Intro-
duction, First EATAW Conference: Teaching Aca-
demic Writing Across Europe, Groningen.
O’Conner, M. and Woodford, F.P., 1976. Writing scien-
tific papers in English. Elsevier, Amsterdam, pp. 108.
Prince, A., Blicblau, A.S. and Soesatyo, B., 1999.
Implicit actions and explicit outcomes: cultural-
academic interactions in writing journal research arti-
cles, AARE-NZARE. Swinburne University of Tech-
nology, pp. 8.
Rossiter, D.G., 2001. Preparation for MSc Thesis Re-
search. Lecture notes, ITC, Enschede, Netherlands
http://www.itc.nl/personal/rossiter/, pp. 28.
Swales, J., 1981. Aspects of Article Introductions. ESP
Research Report No.1, University of Aston, Aston,
UK.
Swales, J.M. and Feak, C., 1994. Academic Writing for
Graduate Students. Ann Arbor, the University of
Michigan Press.
Trelease, S.F., 1958. How to write scientific and techni-
cal papers. Williams and Wilkens, Baltimore, pp. 185.
Turk, C. and Kirkman, J., 1989. Effective writing: im-
proving scientific, technical and business communi-
cation. Spon press, London, pp. 277.
53
VI. APPENDIX
STEP 1 Draft a working title Put it all

STEP 2 Introduce the topic and define terminology together:
STEP 3 Emphasize why the topic is important
MAKE STEP 4 Relate to current knowledge: what's already been done writing an RA in
DRAFT STEP 5 Indicate the gap: what needs to be done? 40 STEPS!
STEP 6 Pose research questions
STEP 7 State your overall purpose and objectives
STEP 8 List methodological steps
STEP 9 Explain the theory behind the methodology used
STEP 10 Describe the experimental set-up
STEP 11 Describe the technical details
STEP 12 Provide summary results
STEP 13 Compare different results
STEP 14 Focus on main discoveries
STEP 15 Answer the research question (conclusions)
STEP 16 Support and defend answers
STEP 17 Explain conflicting results, unexpected findings and discrepancies with other
research
STEP 18 State the limitations of the study
STEP 19 State the importance of your findings
STEP 20 Establish newness
STEP 21 Announce further research
STEP 22 ABSTRACT: what was done, what was found and what the main conclusions are
STEP 23 Is the title clear and does it reflect the content and main findings?
REVISE STEP 24 Are key terms clear and familiar?
STEP 25 Are the objectives clear and relevant to the audience?
STEP 26 Are all variables, techniques and materials listed, explained and linked to existing
knowledge - are the results reproducible?
STEP 27 Are all results and comparisons relevant to the stated objectives?
STEP 28 Are some statements and findings repeated in the text, tables of figures?
STEP 29 Do the main conclusions reflect the questions posed?
STEP 30 Will the main findings be acceptable to the scientific community?
STEP 31 Is the text coherent, clear and focused on a specific problem/topic?
STEP 32 Does the abstract make sense standalone (does it reflect the main story)?
STEP 33 Are tenses used appropriately (including the active and passive voice)?
STEP 34 Are all equations mathematically correct and explained in the text?
POLISH STEP 35 Are all abbreviations explained?
STEP 36 Reconsider (avoid) using words such as "very", "better", "may", "appears", "more",
"convinced", "perfect", "impression" in the text.
STEP 37 Are all abbreviations, measurement units, variables and techniques internationally
recognized (IS)?
STEP 38 Are all figures/tables relevant and of good quality?
STEP 39 Are all figures, tables and equations listed and mentioned in the text?
STEP 40 Are all references relevant, up to date and accessible?
Fig. 4. The 40 steps to write an RA.

9
54
EUR 22191 EN – THE UNOFFICIAL GUIDE FOR AUTHORS (OR HOW TO PRODUCE RESEARCH
ARTICLES WORTH CITING)
T. HENGL & M. GOULD
2006 – 54 PP. – 14.8 CM X 21.0 CM
This guide offers pragmatic tips on how to prepare a research article --- starting from a one-page
concept paper, via the first draft, to the final version. In addition, it addresses deeper aspects of
preparing and publishing research articles as well as some of the limitations and frustrations that are
inherent in current editorial systems such as hyperproduction, phoney co-authors and poor reviews.
Free (digital) copies of these materials can be obtained directly from the European Commission
websites. Printouts can be ordered by contacting the authors.
MISSION OF THE JRC
The mission of the JRC is to provide scientific and technical support for the conception,
development, implementation and monitoring of EU policies. As a service of the European
Commission, the JRC functions as a reference centre of science and technology for the Union.
Close to the policy-making process, it serves the common interest of the Member States,
while being independent of special interests, whether private or national.
EUR 22191 EN
Language: EN
Catalogue number: LB-NA-22191-EN-C
ISBN-10: 92-79-01703-9
ISSN: 1018-5593

The Unofficial Guide For Authors: (Or How To Produce Research

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Unofficial Guide For Authors: (Or How To Produce Research

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

The unofficial guide

2006 EUR 22191 EN

Illustrations by Josip Vranjković (jvranjkovic@inet.hr), Zagreb, Croatia.

© European Communities, 2006

Dr. Tomislav Hengl

MAIL: JRC TP 280, Via E. Fermi 1, I-21020 Ispra (VA), Italy

Action leader (MOSES)

Tomislav Hengl and Mike Gould

T. Hengl and M. Gould

In Ispra, March 2006.

1.1 Science and what lies beneath

“First principles, Clarice. Simplicity. Read Marcus Aurelius. Of each

1.1.1 A brief guide to science

What is science? — The most compact definition of science is that it is a col-

logically-structured way, again giving much more emphasis to arguments

1.1.2 The purpose of a research article

Important point 1 The purpose of a research paper is to communicate new,

Although researchers also communicate their ideas through conferences, meetings

1.1.3 Types of research articles

Proving-the-known papers — Many papers are routinely well-written, based on

distinguish leading scientists11 from run-of-the-mill ones. In many cases, the

1.1.4 Types of journals

1.2 What’s eating science?

“I think it is important to distinguish fraud – a definite intent to deceive

In 2005, three MIT students submitted an abstract entitled “Rooter: a methodol-

 Ludicrous pressure to publish

 A lack of evaluation of reviewers

1.2.1 Ludicrous pressure to publish

 Lobbying and self-publishing — Many editors, members of editorial boards and

 Phoney co-authors — In many cases, a person listed as a co-author does not

Phoney co-authorship is a problem that has many negative side-effects, although

If I don't like your

1. field/laboratory data collection, and/or

2. data processing and statistical analysis, and/or

3. writing and editing of the paper.

1.2.2 A lack of evaluation of reviewers

1.2.3 Fashionable pliability

should never be more important than content.

1.2.4 Possible solutions

We all know that problems such as hyperproduction, phoney co-authors, self-publication,

archives are all interoperable. However, establishing institutional archives has

The UK Government Select Committee Report on Science Publishing22 has said:

2.1 From ideas to first draft

Important point 5 Early drafts of a manuscript may be publishable and

1-PAGE It is novel and

Figure 2.1: Types of publications in relation to investment of time/resources and

2.1.1 The one-page concept paper

 What do you want to ‘sell’ with this paper?

 Is the topic really3 novel?

 Who is it intended for (research groups)?

 What will be its strong aspects?

 In which form do you want to publish it?

Important point 6 The most important step in starting a paper is to produce

2.1.2 Rethink the results and repeat the experiment

2.1.3 Investigate your audience

2.1.4 Write it up — now that’s easy!

IMRaD structure (Introduction, Method, Results, and Discussion). This provides a

Important point 7 Clarity of writing follows clarity of thought. So first think

 The purpose statement — what you set out to show.

 The answer to the research question — what you concluded.

Important point 8 A well-written article is one in which target readers are

2.1.5 Analyze the article sentence by sentence

 Compress the sentence by reducing unnecessary or redundant words. Instead

Ludicrous pressure to publish

A lack of evaluation of reviewers

Lobbying and self-publishing — Many editors, members of editorial boards and

Phoney co-authors — In many cases, a person listed as a co-author does not

What do you want to ‘sell’ with this paper?

Is the topic really3 novel?

Who is it intended for (research groups)?

What will be its strong aspects?

In which form do you want to publish it?

The purpose statement — what you set out to show.

The answer to the research question — what you concluded.

Compress the sentence by reducing unnecessary or redundant words. Instead

Active or passive? — Note that it may be necessary to use a passive verb to

Color or colour? — Use either UK or USA spelling, consistently. Follow the

To measure or to make a measurement of? — Wherever possible use verbs,

NGO or ngo? — Abbreviations must be capitalized. If they can be made

Europe or europe? — Names of newspapers, periodicals and organizations,

Hyphenation or hy-phe-na-ti-on? — Hyphenation should always break at sylla-

A small number of or a few? — Avoid using long-winded expression: always

The core paper itself (15 pages of text typically).

Technical notes or supplementary materials in which data collection, analysis

A website where all supplementary materials/datasets can be found and ac-