Those of you who regularly follow us will know that we feel very strongly about reducing barriers to scientific publishing. Manuscript preparation (author) guidelines vary wildly between different journals, from the sublime (see Cancer Medicine’s guidelines here, which only demand ‘a clear, generic and readable layout’) to the ridiculous (PLOS One being a notable culprit). We had considered naming the best and shaming the worst but decided against it - there are many sensible reasons for prescriptive manuscript preparation, not least to raise scientific standards (such as with guideline-driven statistical or clinical trial reporting) and improve accountability and transparency (such as full reporting of conflicts of interest or ethical statements). Not all journals have the editorial budgets they would like, and it is perhaps inevitable that some of the editorial burden is passed on to authors. Some are unnecessarily onerous, but we’ll leave that for another day.

However, complex author instructions remain a barrier, particularly if English is not your first language. Even well-seasoned scientists will have their papers returned from editorial offices from time to time for technical reasons. We therefore thought that, instead of complaining, we could be more solution-focussed and do something positive. That is why we have started to prepare a collection of free MS Word templates to help authors prepare their manuscripts for their target journal. We know that Thomson Reuters provide similar templates on their Endnote website, but these are very basic and many have not been updated for several years.

Our templates are journal specific and aim to contain all the required manuscript information under the correct section headings. Any additional information, such as conflicts of interest statements, are pre-filled at the correct point in the document. We have included example references (formatted using Endnote) in each file and provided links to Endnote style files - and a reminder that the wonderful Mendeley is a great free alternative for citation management. Additional web links are embedded in the templates where we believe them to be useful. These templates are free to use and share, but not for commercial purposes please.

This is a start and not a finish and if there is a template you would like to see, please just contact us using the request form - we will try to get that made as quickly as possible and post it for all to share. If there are errors or omissions, please just let us know. If you have a template you would like to share, you can upload it and let us know using the same form.

We hope that you find these useful - please spread the word via the usual social media channels (Facebook and LinkedIn) if you do or click here to tweet - our hashtag for this is #simplifyscience






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Tags: Nextgenediting, Templates, PLOS One, Publishing, #simplifyscience, Manuscript editing, Endnote, Mendeley, free resources

There are a seemingly endless number of hurdles one has to jump over in order to get your scientific or medical manuscript published. One of the most frustrating can be conforming to journal style. This usually means wading through pages of author instructions, re-writing and re-structuring the paper to meet strict ‘in-house’ requirements, formatting figures, and changing the reference style. While some of this burden used to be shouldered by the journal itself (hence justifying the exorbitant publishing fees), there seems to be a shift to ‘passing the buck’ to the author/scientist/general dog’s body (see here). This is epitomised by the editorial policy at PLOS One, where the copyediting is the responsibility of the author in its entirety.

So is all this editing worth it?

Well, a Cochrane review on the subject suggests the answer is ‘yes’. You can read the whole document here, but it is a dry and slightly laborious read so we’ll summarise it for you:

- peer review and journal editing improve the ‘readability’ of manuscripts
- detailed author instructions improve a paper
- structured abstracts can improve a paper
- technical editing improves the accuracy of references

The magnitude of benefit of ‘technical editing’ (i.e. those steps that occur from acceptance through to publication) are relatively small, mind you. This comes as no surprise to us. In our experience that isn’t where most authors’ manuscripts fall short of excellent. That is not why they are failing to get accepted. Technical flaws are easy to fix (and we can do it for you, see here).

No, it is those elements which are slightly harder to quantify which make or break a paper (particularly in higher impact or general journals). Are the hypothesis and aims clearly stated? Is the most significant result presented with clarity, or is it obfuscated by unnecessary detail? Is there unnecessary use of confusing jargon? Is there repetition both within and between sections? Is the discussion overly long and is this due to over-interpretation of results (usually a problem in short descriptive clinical papers)?

That is why Nextgenediting offers more than just copyediting. Copyediting is just the basics, as far as we’re concerned. Our concept is that we should firstly understand your science (by using expert editors), and only then will we be able to perform the type of structural and conceptual changes which are required to perfect your work. Sometimes that’ll be collaborative (you know the most about your work), but that’s we’re here to read and re-read until we’ve sculpted your words into something better than they were before.

So yes, technical editing is worth it, but be aware you will get so much more from our services. We know you won’t be disappointed.






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Tags: Manuscript editing, Technical Editing, PLOS One