Category Archives: Manuscript Editing

Choosing the Right Topic for Your Scientific Manuscript

Over the past 50 years, there has been a prolific increase in the number of published scientific journals and manuscripts globally. Available abstracts of scientific meetings and papers are a great source of assimilating information for publishing manuscripts, however, less than half of these abstracts are ever published as articles in scientific journals.

There are a number of reasons for a failed manuscript including lack of research time, negative research results, and delay in completion of research projects. Additionally, choosing the right topic for your manuscript can increase the chances of getting published.

You can choose the right scientific topic for your manuscript based on the following points:

  • The type of manuscript.Manuscript type generally falls in the following categories:
  • Full articles, or completed piece of research.
  • Review papers, which provides your perspective on a current topic.
  • Letters, which are a shorter version of the full articles, and are used for quick communication of new scientific advances.

When working on a manuscript, evaluate your work and determine which of these categories do it fall under.

  • Ensure that your manuscript topic is publishable.
    Question your scientific hypothesis as follows and examine the answers:
  • Is my hypothesis hard and interesting?
  • Will I face numerous challenges in my research work?
  • Is my work related to a current topic?
  • Do I have any solutions for this difficult problem?If the answers are yes, then you are set for writing a publishable manuscript.
  • Choose the right scientific journal.Do not try to write a manuscript aimed at publishing them in multiple scientific journals. Select one or two journals of your choice, which are the right platform for advancing your scientific idea. Study the recent publications of the target journals to know the type of article topics that they accept. As rejection rates of popular scientific journals are high, wait for the response from the editorial team before sending your manuscript to another.
  • Start with the research databases.You can start by looking for topics of interest in at least a few credible research databases. Avoid databases that only contain scientific papers, published more than 10 years back. Keep a note of published research papers and journals that can added as references and citations in your manuscript.

In conclusion, you must be able to cherish your manuscript topic first, irrespective of whether it gets published or not.

Making The Manuscript Editing Process Smooth

Manuscript editing, at times, proves to be a challenging task. However, following certain guidelines could definitely convert it into a simpler task. The only thing to learn here is to self-evaluate your work. You should know how to revise what you have scripted. No matter, if you have written fiction or non-fiction, poetry or literature, you should know how to evaluate your own writing. The process includes multiple task-specific processes which are as following:

1. Get Into Reader Mood From Writer Mood

The first and the foremost step is to read the entire manuscript without changing anything. Now, start making notes on key corrections. At this stage, what you need to do is to shift your mood from writer mode to readers. Now start reading it from cover page to conclusion.

2. Feel Fresh While Taking a Break to Evaluate Your Manuscript

Before making a great start to the process of manuscript editing, take a break and make your brain free from all sorts of tensions Now, keep yourself away from your computer. This is the time when you can think of some other topic on which you want to write. Make sure that you feel fresh by writing on another project. Now, you can start underlining the phrases which you want to rewrite and here you can manipulate your manuscript. Also, if you have not written a synopsis, you can do it now as it is better to be late than never. You can start it before revising your work. After reading the manuscript with a free mind, if you realise that its not what you had wanted to write, you can figure out how to bring the real meaning in the finished product.

3. Let The Speech Go Smooth

Put all your attention on speech. Emphasise on nouns, adverbs, adjectives and verbs. See if you can use more compelling action words. Use adjectives and adverbs in a balanced way.

4. Frame Proper Sentences

Making simple and short sentences will always make your manuscript reader-friendly. Putting right punctuations in your sentence can always help the reader to understand the facts more easily.

5. Avoid Distorting Sentences

Try to avoid using tough and several italicized words. Also avoid putting too many exclamation points. Your sentence might look distorted with all such words.