Blog
Everything around the manuscript: cover letters, submission checklists, ORCID and metadata hygiene, author contributions, data statements. The paperwork rarely improves a paper, but it regularly sinks one. These are short, specific guides you use the week you submit.
SUBMISSION KIT
Continuous line numbers, the right line spacing, and an editable source file are three small rules that decide whether your manuscript reaches a reviewer or bounces back first.
SUBMISSION KIT
Keywords feed indexing and reviewer matching, and the journal fixes the count. Here is how to pick terms that earn their slot and how to test them.
SUBMISSION KIT
Editors scan an ethics statement for three facts: who approved the study, under what number, and how people consented. Copy-ready wording for every study design.
SUBMISSION KIT
PLOS ONE bans funding text from the manuscript file while ICMJE-style journals put it on the title page. What a complete funding statement includes, the no-funding wording, and where yours actually goes.
SUBMISSION KIT
The statement most authors write last, written properly: templates for deposited data, restricted human-subjects data, and code, and why on-request wording is losing acceptance at major publishers.
SUBMISSION KIT
The suggested reviewer box tests how well you know your field. Pick active researchers with no ties to your author group, and treat the opposed field with restraint.
SUBMISSION KIT
Title and short title caps are enforced fields, not suggestions. A field-by-field walk through the title page, from PLOS ONE's 250-character title cap to the corresponding author line and the counts journals ask for.
SUBMISSION KIT
Journals now ask you to map every author to named CRediT roles. What each of the 14 roles covers, how two authors share one role honestly, and worked statements for teams of two, four, and six.
SUBMISSION KIT
Three spellings of one name means three scattered publication records. A free identifier ends the scatter, and setup takes about ten minutes before your first submission.
SUBMISSION KIT
First submissions bounce for missing pieces, not weak science. Here is every file, statement, and field a submission system will ask for, from the title page to the data availability statement.
SUBMISSION KIT
Assume the editor gives your letter one fast read. Four sentences carry it: what the paper is, what it found, why this journal, and what you declare.