Publishing Support

The purpose of scientific writing is to transmit information, therefore it is important that your writing is clear, concise, and convincing. A clear, well-written paper is more likely to be accepted. The following are some tips to improve your writing's clarity:

• Stick to one idea per sentence and see if very long sentences can be split
• Put the most important words or phrases near the beginning of the sentence
• Use the active voice where appropriate but use the passive voice when you want to stress the object
• Use simple everyday words for simple everyday things
• Cut out unnecessary words
• Avoid redundancy
• Use topic sentences to introduce paragraphs

Source: Dixon, J., Alder, L., & Fraser, J. (2016). How To Publish in Biomedicine: 500 Tips for Success (3rd ed.). CRC Press. 

How carefully your title and abstract is written can significantly impact your work's discoverability in modern search engines and databases. To improve the odds of your work being easily discovered by your intended audience consider the following tips from BMJ Author Hub:

• Think as if you were searching for your article – What key phrases would you use to search for your own article? Make a list of terms and test them to see if they retrieve articles similar to yours in databases like PubMed
• Pick a clear and descriptive title: Include the main key phrase(s) you have identified, and remember that your title should have meaning outside of the context of the journal
• Include your key phrases in the abstract: Abstracts are one of the most important elements in the process of discovery, they provide search engines with the data they need to find your article and rank it in the search results page. Remember that search engines can detect abuse too! Avoid too much repetition and just focus on 3 main key phrases
• Use plain English and avoid jargon – keep in mind that discovery often happens by serendipity and your article might be of interest to researchers in other fields or countries. Make sure they understand it!
• Keep your writing natural – Google will un-index your article if you go overboard on repetition of keywords. Just write naturally for your audience
• As an author, be identifiable with an ORCID ID

Source: Writing for online visibility. (2023). BMJ Author Hub. Retrieved March 28, 2023, 

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

Many scientific papers use the IMRaD structure. IMRaD is an acronym for Introduction, Materials/Methods, Results and Discussion.  The Introduction section is a brief one explaining the WHY of your paper.  It includes discussing what is the problem, what is not known, and what is the objective of the paper.  The next section, Materials/Methods, is a brief one explaining HOW the study was completed and describing the methodology used. The Results of the study are shared. The Discussion section is a large section that contains answers to these questions: WHAT did you find? What does it mean? What is next? What are the possible implications for the future of this study?  A conclusion is reached.

Source: Nair, P. K. R., & Nair, V. D. (2014). Organization of a Research Paper: The IMRAD Format. In P. K. R. Nair & V. D. Nair (Eds.), Scientific Writing and Communication in Agriculture and Natural Resources (pp. 13–25). Springer International Publishing.