General Writing Tips

Author Toolkit Homepage
General Writing Tips
Peer Review for Authors
Publishing & Editorial Issues
Ethics for Authors
Other Resources

Here are a collection of useful tips, on the general structure, formatting and writing of research articles.

• Publishing Addiction Science: a Guide for the Perplexed
A free to download ebook that provides a comprehensive guide to publishing in scholarly journals, authored by an international group of addiction journal editors that addresses many universal skills, and provides knowledgeable advice applicable to all fields of research publishing.  The book discusses how to write research articles and systematic reviews, choose a journal, respond to reviewers’ reports, become a reviewer, and resolve the often difficult authorship, ethical and citation issues that arise in addiction science publishing.

What to think about before you begin your research?
BioMed Central has published a useful series of ‘How to get published’ blog posts.

Free/low cost resources for graduate students (or anyone else) – a crowdsourced GoogleDoc containing web resources for every aspect of research and academic publishing.

How to prepare a Micro-article
A useful template for creating a “micro-arfticle”, that scientists can use to identify their principal results for presentation during workshops, conferences and other events.

Key writing tips
A brief presentation of key writing tips describing the development of a typical data-based research article from the planning stage to the completion of the final draft. It emphasizes scientific writing techniques, the structure of a scientific article and effective methods of scientific communication.

How to write a scientific paper for peer-reviewed journals
This module describes the development of a typical data-based research article from the planning stage to the completion of the final draft. It emphasizes scientific writing techniques, the structure of a scientific article and effective methods of scientific communication.

Essay writing guide for students
An OnlineSchools.org course which aims to help students succeed with college-level writing assignments. It outlines how to brainstorm, draft, and revise papers, as well as covering common grammatical errors and offering a list of other valuable web resources.

How to write a review article
A brief presentation from Prof. Eric Lichtfouse which provides 7 step-by-step guidelines to writing a review article or a book chapter, including a method to build an abstract, and general writing advice.

How to make your paper more accessible through self-archiving
An Editage blog post, providing concise description of the benefits and principles of self-archiving in repositories or on personal servers.

How to make your research open access? For free and legally.
An infographic, hosted on Figshare, that illustrates how to achieve 100% Open Access for all your articles, free and legally.

How to write and publish a study protocol
A free, online course from the BMJ, which will give participants a thorugh understanding of the different meanings of the term “protocol”, advice on communicating the value of planned research, the characteristics of a good research question and match it to appropriate study designs, and many other important elements.

How to prepare audioslides: sharing your research story for greater impact
A guide to creating Elsevier’s AudioSlides, as a great way to give readers your own perspective on the research you have done.

How to check if sex and gender are properly reported in a paper
Sex and Gender Questions was published by the EASE Gender Policy Committee to encourage authors of scientific articles to check whether sex and gender are properly reported in their manuscript.

Top tips for writing effective press releases
A page of resources from Research to Action to help researchers and communicators write the most effective press releases to help communcate research, findings, project information and more.

Writing Science in English
Matthew Stevens’ 2021 book follows on from Subtleties of Scientific Style for editors, aimed towards Japanese science writers, though it has relevance to any auhtors, particularly those for whom English is a second language. As well as being a valuable resource for writing techniques and style, this book features more illustrations and diagrams on scientific figures, along with a history of English.