Successful publication in international neurology and epilepsy journals: a journal editor’s perspective

No amount of clever writing can disguise a badly conceived and executed study but there are many ways of disguising a good study by presenting it badly. My talk aims to allow the audience to become better and better informed scientific writers. After an introduction reflecting upon the motivations for writing a scientific paper, this talk will tackle the topic of successful scientific writing from three different angles: 1) How journal editors think, 2) How to write a good manuscript, and 3) How to choose the best journal. In part 1) I will discuss the metrics journal editors will consider when they decide whether to accept or reject a submission. In part 2) I will highlight the importance of being clear about the reasons for publishing the paper, its key message and intended audience. Writers need to consider how they can best communicate their intended message – will it be more effective to write a single complex paper or several simpler ones Before putting pen to paper, it is a good idea to look at articles on similar topics in potential target journals to get a better idea of the journal style and to check that the planned paper would be a good fit for a particular journal. Most medical journals currently only allow relatively short papers. This means that the narrative usually has to be fairly simple. This typically means telling readers what you are going to say in the introduction and methods, saying it in the results and re-iterating what you have just said in the discussion section. The order of the different sections in published papers is not usually the best order to write in. Abstracts and figures are of particular interest to superficial readers and therefore deserve particular attention. In part 3) I will consider the importance of different modes of publication (eg. gold open access ),metrics such as research recognition in social media and journal ownership that may influence authors’ choice of their target journal.