Brad Hall

In a previous post, we discussed how important it is to format references before submission to a peer-reviewed journal. Each journal has a specific reference style that needs to be followed. If not, your paper will likely be rejected.

When preparing research publications, abstracts are often overlooked. This is bad practice because along with your title, it provides the first impression of your research. If your abstract is for a research article, then readers will often decide from it whether or not to read your paper. A well-written abstract can be the difference between conference acceptance and rejection.

Before submitting your article for peer review, it is important to make sure that the reference style of the journal is followed. Each journal will have their own preferred style for the in-text citations and the reference list. Failure to follow the journal reference style could result in immediate rejection by the editor.

We have all had to sit through terrible PowerPoint presentations. The conference speaker reads off of their slides, in a monotone voice, and puts everyone to sleep. As a researcher, you have exciting findings to showcase, and putting your audience to sleep is not the best way to gain recognition. Unfortunately, there is no formal education on creating an effective PowerPoint presentation (or speaking in front of colleagues). By following this guide, you can improve your presentations and impress your audience.

If you want your research paper published, then it is important to resist the urge to dismiss the reviewer comments. As researchers, we all have to address and respond to each comment.This can be a daunting task, even for seasoned researchers. There is also, unfortunately, no formal training on the do’s and don’ts of responding to reviewer comments. In this post, we offer tips and best practices that can help lower the rounds of revisions and get your work published fast.

Research Publication Writing

Endnote is another excellent resource to manage references for research articles. It has all the same bibliography and reference usability described in our earlier post about Mendeley, but it also has some powerful extra features. Endnote is free if you use the web-version, but it is severely limited compared to the paid version. We will only talk about the paid version in this article.

Research article writing is a skill and, like any other skill, needs to be practiced and honed. No matter how elegant we think our prose, there is always room for improvement. But you may wonder: why do I need to improve my writing – I write perfectly well? 

While most citations in a scholarly article refer to already published research or engage with theoretical materials, occasionally you will find it necessary to discuss magazine articles or reviews, online works, and other kinds of non-scholarly or non-academic sources. In part, engaging with these types of materials illustrates the continued relevancy of your research in the public realm. If you are discussing representations of war in literature, for example, it may be productive to think about reviews of such representations in contemporary popular culture. Connecting with public and popular media situates your research the “real world” and adds immediacy to your piece.

How do you summarize arguments for academic articles such as a literature review? Clearly, any argument you write should speak to other, previously published texts. You are in a conversation with your field and will want to engage with other scholarly works, theoretical pieces, or bodies of research. Your article’s engagement with these secondary sources will help to bolster your argument and form a basis for your discussion. However, you want to work with these earlier sources in an intelligent and sophisticated way.