Choice of journal and manuscript submission. Peer-review.

Choice of journal

A correct choice of journal for publication of article is very important.

Not less important the correct submission of manuscript.

If you make a mistake regard to one or an-other, then you can delay the publication of the manuscript for long or it will just get lost.

On behalf of journal the answers are given and the final decision on publication of articles’ manuscripts is made by the editor-in-chief who is an authoritative scientist, exactly he ¾does¿ the journal.

One or several technical editors help him.

You can look for the journal in the biblio-graphic data-base of scientific literature.

Science direct

http://www.sciencedirect.com Elsevier

http://www.elsevier.com Scopus

http://info.scopus.com Thomson

webofknowledge.com

A good idea – is to look through the journal’s issue for the last decade and convince that it publishes articles on your specialty.

No matter how broad the research interests area of a journal is, still in fact it is usually somewhat narrower than that stated in the Statement, and it is connected with the specialty range of editor’s interests, publisher and most influential members of the Editorial Board. You quickly make sure that the journal has "favorite" topics, and even authors. Try to follow the main flow of articles in the journal, but your publication should remain to be original!

Choice of journal and manuscript submission. Peer-review.

Materials and Methods. Results. Results representation. Discussion. Acknowledgments. References.

Title. List of authors. Abstract. Key words. Introduction.

List of authors

A modern scientist, besides seldom exception, does not work alone. And it means that the most part of research has more than one author.

For the first view, writing of the author’s list represents the most simple part of the article. And it happens that way. But not always.

Questions about who should be included in the list of authors and in what order to place the names become the sources of serious controversies not seldom, and even to the cases that colleagues become enemies. A general rule, whom and in what order to list, does not exist.

Until the recent past there was (and still now strong) the general tradition to include in the list of authors the head of the laboratory (professor, manager of research group) regardless whether he or she participated in the research or not. In this case his or her surname is placed in the in the end of the list.

Gradually to be the last in the list of authors became prestigious. Now a days the reprevails the tendency to consider the first one in the list to be the “elder” author.

As a result the “important” author usually pretends on either the first or the last place in the list, but not on a place in the middle. In several fields of science, for example, in mathematics and physics, names of authors are placed in alphabetic order.

The tendency to increase the number of publications’ authors is not less noticeable, what is often caused by inclusion in the number of authors the all employers of a laboratory, and even those, who provided only technical support, and also by expansion of the amount of research, carried out in collaboration of several laboratories. As a result the average number of authors of articles increases.

In accordance with the principles of scientific ethics the authors of scientific publication are those and only those who made real contribution in to the research, and are responsible for the content of the manuscript, and also took part in its preparation. Let us consider the following situation, which will help us to understand which participation in the research the author can take.

Suppose that ascientist «A» planned research, the central part of which is a series of experiments. The scientist «A» tells to a technical assistant «B» how to carry out the experiments.

The experiments were successful, and the researcher «A» prepared a manuscript of an article. In this case the article has only one author.

There are acknowledgements to the assistant in the article. Further let us admit that the experiments were not successful. The assistant «B» suggests to the scientist «A» to make some changes in the regulations of experiments.

The researcher «A» agrees to try, and the experiments are successful. In this case the article should have two authors, the first one – is the researcher «A».

Further suppose that after changing of the regulation of the experiments, they were carried out successfully, but the researcher «A» understood, that despite the success of the experiments, the ends do not meet. For example, a growth of the culture in changed conditions points out to pathogenicity of this strain, and this conflict to literary data.

The researcher «A» discusses this conflict with ascientist «C», a specialist on pathogenic microorganisms, and asks him to check the pathogenicity of the strain, used in the experiment.

The scientist «C» tests fastly the strain for pathogenicity with help of standard procedure, which is used by all medical microbiologists and confirms the pathogenicity of the strain.

To the manuscript of the article several important sentences are added and the articleis published, but it still has two authors («A» and «B»), to the scientist «C» the acknowledgements are expressed.

If the scientist «C» was interested in this strain, and continue his participation in research, carried out a series of additional specially planned experiments, and this as a result led to a conclusion that the strain is a pathogenic one for not only mice, but also for men, causing seldom diseases, the reason of which remains unknown for long time, and to the manuscript of the article the two new tables were added, the parts Results and Discussion were rewritten again, then the article should have three authors, at this it is possible, that the name of the scientist «C» – is on the second place.

The amount of variants is enough great, but in the base there is ethics of relationship. Theoretically, the order of names in the list of authors of the article should not influence on index of scientific citation, although this requires a practical test.

After names of article’s authors the refollows a line, where places of work, addresses, and places of investigation and experiment carried out are listed, and also an author for correspondence (corresponding author). This is exactly technical work, and best of all just follow that what you see in the journal.

Abstract

The next part of an article – is a brief presentation of its content. It is called heading abstract, resume, summary. Abstract – is a brief presentation of article’s content.

Abstract It takes the second place after the title on the readability. Its function – to direct more exactly the potential readers relatively to the content of the publication and to interest them so much that they have the desire to read the entire text. The abstract is a mini-version of the article, that is it should contain all its parts, but in a very shorten form.

If the abstract is written well, then with help of it one can fastly and exactly get to know how the content of the article connects with your work, what will help to make a decision about necessity of reading the entire article. Usually the abstract contains no more than 250 words, is organized as one paragraph and there can be written only that what is in the main text.

The abstract should briefly describe: objectives of research; methods; results; important conclusions.

There are often used the Past Indefinite in the abstract. References to literary sources, as a rule, are not admitted. If the abstract is too long, then, it is more likely, that it contains too many details or ... you just forgot to count the words (signs).

The abstract is not the place for long detailed explanations of the methodology, history of question, discussions on thematic of prospects of further research. In addition, if the maximal number of words is 250, and you wrote only 95, then, it is more likely, that the abstract reflects the content of the article too slightly.

In addition, it is worth to remember, that the content of the abstract should be balanced. It is bad, if you use 200 words from 250 for description of the work urgency, its objectives and problems and only 50 words for description of its all other parts. Never include in the abstract the information or conclusions, which are not contained in the article itself.

Key words

Nowadays the key words are the mandatory and obligatory element of a publication in any peer-review scientific journal. The key words can be called a search image of a scientific article.

By value and meaning the set of key words is close to annotation (abstract), plan or synopsis, since it also represents the document with minimal specification, but the set of key words is deprived of syntactic structure. In all bibliographic data-bases the search of articles by key words is possible.

Key words If you want that your article was found by interested readers, then do not limit the time for writing of the list of key words, which should reflect the basic items, achievements, results, points of interest.

The objective of the key words is to increase the probability of finding of your article when searching in the bibliometric and full text data-bases of scientific literature. And this means that the key words should differ from that combination of words which are the title of the article.

The key words should add, extend and rephrase the title of the article, but remains specific on content. They should cover those important and specific aspects of your investigation which are not reflected in the title of the article.

In addition, it is possible to include in the number of key words the synonyms or words close by meaning to the words composing the title.

Introduction

The article begins with Introduction, where there are contained the information which allows the reader to understand and estimate the results of the investigation presented without additional address to other literary sources. In addition, there should be a substantiation of the necessity and urgency of the investigation.

The information in the Introduction should be organized on the principle: from general to specific. The introduction consists of four mandatory subsections:

1. A description of the problem with which the investigation is connected or establishment of the scientific context.

2. A review of literature connected with the investigation.

3. A description of research gaps of the problem or that what was not done yet.

4. A formulation of the objectives of investigation and perhaps the problems (stating the purpose).

It is good if you include in the introduction of the article the two subsections: evaluating of the importance of study and short description of the structure of the publication – outlining the structure of the paper. It is easy to see that the first subsection has the most general character. The most specific information is contained in the fourth subsection.

In the first subsection there is a representation of which wider problem the investigation presented is a part. It is not possible to give the ready recipe how to explain of which more general problem your work is a part.

Read as possible as many articles on your thematic. Look how authors of these articles describe the scientific context. The actuality of this scientific context in explicit or non-explicit form will define the actuality of your investigation.

If you do not formulate the problem clearly, then a reader does not have an interest to solve it. If readers, not understanding the problem, try to read the article till the end, then even the super solution of the problem does not make the impression.

In this aspect the writing of scientific article can be equalized to the writing of articles for usual journal or newspaper, where it is firstly necessary to get the attention of readers in order to have it read.