PURPOSE A stepwise process for planning, writing, and submitting a research manuscript to a peer-reviewed journal is described. SUMMARY The research project and writing-related activities should be conducted concurrently along a clear timeline developed with input from all members of the writing team. Issues of conformance to standards of scholarly publishing (e.g., ordering of the author lis...

The journal article incubator approach to teaching writing skills to researchers and academics involves a series of engaging and inclusive workshops in which best practice writing, reviewing and rewriting skills are modelled by the presenters and practiced by the participants. This paper describes the design and operation of two incubator workshops conducted recently in Australia and South Afri...

Background: In articles reporting randomized controlled trials, professional medical writing support is associated with increased adherence to Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT). We set out to determine whether professional medical writing support was also associated with improved adherence to CONSORT for Abstracts. Methods: Using data from a previously published cross-section...

Despite the role writing plays in learning a foreign language, many students do not show much interest in taking an active part in writing classes (Myint, 1997). Thus different activities have been proposed to motivate students to write one of which is dialogue journal writing, and the present work tries to investigate the possible effect(s) of such activity on writing ability of a group of Eng...

Good scientific writing requires good science and good writing. Unfortunately, the last time most of us were asked to think about the mechanics of writing was in grade school. As a result, many of us have forgotten the rules of grammar, the weakness of the passive voice, and the need for topic sentences and transitional phrases in the construction of a paragraph. In addition, few of us have bee...

Reflection is widely accepted as a learning tool and is considered integral to professional practice. Journal writing is advocated in facilitating reflection, yet little is written about how to assess reflection in journals. The purpose of this study was to develop and test a method of assessing the elements of reflection in journals and to determine whether, and to what level, reflection occur...

merely lead to vagueness, ambiguity, or nonsense. For example, “Cohesiveness is the thread-forming ability of mucus under the influence of large amplitude deformation,” probably means, “Cohesiveness refers to mucus forming threads when mucus is stretched.” This practice is clearly becoming more common in medical writing. Reviewers should be encouraged to review manuscripts not only for scientif...