Are you planning to submit a research paper to a journal? You may get a faster review and a better response by paying attention to the following:

  1. Read the journal's "Instruction to authors" carefully. What is the word limit? Which reference style should be used? How many tables are allowed? Does the journal follow British English or US English?
  2. Do not use unnecessarily extra decimal values with each number (e.g., p = 0.03245)
  3. Request your coauthors to have a close look at your final draft. Are there any inadvertent errors in punctuation or any omission of words?
  4. Ensure that the expansions of all abbreviations are included at their first occurrence and that only the abbreviations are used subsequently.
  5. If the journal follows blind peer review, remove as much identifying information as possible from the manuscript (e.g., name of the institution in the methodology section, name of the ethical review board which approved the study, names of colleagues in the acknowledgment section).
  6. In the footnotes of tables, provide the expansions of the abbreviations used in the table.
  7. Remove pejorative words (e.g., diabetic, schizophrenic, elderly).