6 tips for beginners to compose a research manuscript
Reviewers are your primary target audience
I know this frustrated feeling when you receive an email from a long-awaited journal by saying “We are sorry, your paper is not accepted due to …blah.. blah.. blah…”. When your sweat and sleepless nights of your research were not accepted in your expected journal; makes you more depressed, time loss, etc. Reviewers are your primary target audience and they do not have all day for reviewing your manuscript. Reviewers' first glance in accepting your manuscript is by reading your abstract. So, we need to understand, the abstract plays a major role in gaining attention to read the rest of your paper. You need to follow the KISS (Keep it Short and Simple) principle in writing the abstract. Be simple, clear, and precise about presenting your research work in 250 to 350 words of abstract.
If you are a beginner in writing the manuscript then it would be a bit perplexing by fitting the years of research work in 15pages (approximately). But it is possible that you can articulate the contents just by following 6 tips;
1. Plan and organize the contents
Before you start, the below factors you must consider;
- Clear your thoughts: Please relax and clear your mind — then ask these simple questions before you start writing your manuscript,
The above figure helps you to understand — What you must do?
- Journals: Check the journals you wish to publish the manuscript. The points you need to look over in journals are indexing, impact factor, journal frequency (Bi-Monthly, Monthly, etc.), Article Processing Charge (APC), etc.
- Layout: Please make sure to write a layout of the overall research contents before jumping directly to manuscript writing. Please find the below template for your reference,
The above template may change for different research study papers. An abstract is the essence of your research manuscript. So, write your abstract at last.
- Pages: Set the minimum and maximum pages for each topic. This helps you to understand, where to stop? and how much more need to do?
2. Highlight the contributions of your research
Please don't give more suspense to the readers about your research contributions. Try to list and brief your contributions/proposed model in the introduction section itself.
3. Recent works of literature
It is necessary to give up-to-date information about the recent works of literature to the readers. Most of the research guides recommend the last 5 years of literature. This prevents “Once again inventing the electric bulb” — means avoiding the repetition in identifying the same problems. You need to provide up-to-date information about your research domain to the readers.
4. Research Analysis Report
You should know to choose tabular report and chart visualization wisely for your research manuscript. If you want to display the exploration/summary of your data then don't represent it in tabular form instead, use data exploratory visualization methods such as scatter plot, contour, Heat map, cluster chart, etc. If you want to display the experimental results then use the tabular form, bar chart, line chart, etc. Figure and table captions must be inserted properly below and above respectively.
5. Conclusion of your research
You are at the final stage of your manuscript writing, in this section summarize your research work such as challenges, proposed method strategy, and the comparative analysis report. Please mention the accuracy of the proposed method at the conclusion and write what did you conclude from this research study?. Finally, let the readers know about the limitations and future research work direction. This helps the budding researchers to understand the research gap and limitations in the research domain.
6. Technical writing
Please do use simple words instead of trying fantasy and complex words
To avoid plagiarism- we should not change word by word using alternative synonyms with existing literature work, instead, read the whole paragraph and understand the essence then start writing your manuscript.
The few free grammar check online tools are listed below for your reference
- Grammarly online- https://www.grammarly.com/grammar-check
- Ginger- https://www.gingersoftware.com/grammarcheck
- Language tool- https://languagetool.org/
- Zoho Writer- https://www.zoho.com/writer/free-grammar-checker.html
- Scribens- https://www.scribens.com/
The above tools help you to finish your research, assignment, or technical report writing on time.
Finally!
I hope the above tips might help you to articulate your great research work. If you find this useful then hit the like button and share it with your peers. Please share your thoughts in the comments section. See you all in my next post.
