Interlude: Formatting, Abstracts, and Community Reviews
Do you grumble when you need to format a manuscript to meet journal guidelines?
I've formatted a lot of manuscripts for journals, and I'll admit that I don't always find the process fun.
Sometimes the process is easy, such as when journals have the philosophy of "your paper, your way." In other words, the journal allows you to submit the manuscript in (mostly) whatever format you'd like, but you don't have to go through the rigmarole of full formatting unless the manuscript gets accepted.
Other times, the journal guidelines have very specific requirements, such as using midline decimal points in all the numbers. These changes can be incredibly tedious and time-consuming.
And if the manuscript gets rejected, you have to do it all over again for the next journal you will submit to. This process can waste time, energy, and money.
But what if we created a good middle ground? What if all journals allowed us to submit a paper that fits some universal guidelines? And then we'd only have to go through the formatting rigamarole if the paper is accepted?
That's exactly what the author in this Nature article suggests:
"...the authors recommend a “golden-middle” solution that would allow researchers to submit manuscripts without following specific formatting demands, but instead abiding by minimal structural requirements such as total word count."
I think this suggestion is a great solution to save researchers time and energy.
What do you think?
Onto the round-up...
💌 Round-up
💻 From My Desk
How to Write a Great Abstract for Your Manuscript
The abstract is the first (and sometimes only) part of your paper that people will read. To write a great abstract, you need to write an overview that covers the main story and a few essential details of the work so that your readers get a clear summary of your paper.
📆 Upcoming
Find Your Flow: Connect Ideas to Guide Readers Through Your Writing – October 28, 2023
I'm thrilled to be invited to speak at the upcoming American Medical Writers Association conference in Baltimore, MD. I'll be speaking about how to synthesize your writing to create a smooth flow that guides readers through your writing with ease. Registration for the conference just opened, and you can get the early bird rates until the end of June.
👓 Reading
Abstracts matter more than you think – and writing a good one is hard
"A good abstract can make or break your paper. It is the first thing that readers, editors and reviewers see. And it might be your only chance to communicate your findings to a wider audience. So investing time in writing a clear and concise abstract is a must."
Comparing scientific abstracts generated by ChatGPT to real abstracts with detectors and blinded human reviewers
"In this study, we found that both humans and AI output detectors were able to identify a portion of abstracts generated by ChatGPT, but neither were perfect discriminators... We anticipate that this technology could be used in both an ethical and unethical way....to entirely falsify research...to decrease the burden of writing and formatting... [and] to improve equity."
Community Members as Reviewers of Medical Journal Manuscripts
"The researchers concluded that, with training, supervision, and compensation, community members can review manuscripts submitted to medical journals and provide useful feedback to editors. They recommended that medical journals broaden their understanding of who can be an expert in the scientific review process to include trained community members, because they can provide valuable and complementary feedback to scientific reviews."
📝 Challenge
Do you support the idea of a "golden-middle" solution to formatting manuscripts for submission to academic journals? Head over to Change.org to sign a petition that supports the movement.
Thank you so much for reading.
Warmly,
Crystal
