Do's and don'ts for prospective authors

A prospective author should remember that publication is a competition. It is not enough for your manuscript to be "acceptable", "good", or "correct". It must be better than its competitors, and, especially, it must be interesting, original, and scientifically stringent to do well.

Style is also important, however. Your manuscript must be concisely written, the language must be good, and the "Instructions for Authors" must be adhered to. Otherwise your possibilities for acceptance are reduced. Especially repetitive work and insignificant topics have little chance for acceptance, even if the study meets the formal requirements of well done research.

Moreover, because of space limitations and a heavy supply of manuscripts, the rejection rate of the Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health continues to be close to 70%. Therefore, our quality competition is exceptionally tough.

Specific matters to remember for original articles

  1. The instructions for authors must be followed. Manuscripts not adhering to the instructions will be returned for revision without review.
     
  2. With few exceptions, original manuscripts should not exceed the recommended length of 7 printed pages (about 21 typed pages, double-spaced and in 12-point font, tables and figures included). Printing is expensive, and, for the Journal, postage doubles when an issue exceeds 80 pages. You can understand then that there is little room for flexibility.

    True, you can pay for the printing of excess pages, but that does not eliminate the problem. Long articles reduce the Journal's possibilities to accept other high-quality contributions because of its 80-page restriction. We would like to publish as many good studies as possible, not only a few lengthy ones. (And, who reads overly long articles anyway?) Therefore, in our competition, short and concise manuscripts have a definite advantage.

    However, in some cases, the nature of the study—say, a large epidemiologic investigation—makes it impossible to restrict the length to 7 printed pages. Under such circumstances, you should negotiate with the editor-in-chief. Remember, however, that verbosity or the obsession to report every minor detail is no argument for exceeding the recommended length. Moreover, "minor" scientific issues have a poor chance if the reporting is too lengthy and detailed. Nevertheless, the "Materials and Methods" section must be written in such detail that another expert would be able to replicate the study.

    Reviews are another exception to the 7-page rule. Remember, however, that the other rules for publication apply, such as high quality, originality, high level of interest, conciseness, and good use of the English language.
     
  3. "Salami" publication and duplicate publication are never acceptable. Don't try!

    Earlier publication in the form of an abstract, for example, for a conference, and also earlier publication in a "minor language", on the contrary, are acceptable. In such cases, however, you should inform the editors upon submittal.
     
  4. Serial titles, meaning manuscripts with the same primary title and subtitles numbered in sequence (1, 2, 3, etc), can be accepted only rarely. There is too great a risk, for example, of the second in the series being accepted while the first was not. Or that the third would appear long before the first, which had been submitted to another journal.
     
  5. We require good English! Nonnative speakers of English must consult a native English speaker. Lingually hopeless manuscripts will be rejected straightaway (eg, when the language is so poor that one cannot be sure of what the authors really mean). Although our technical editor is a native English speaker, we do not have the capacity for extensive language correction, only for "linguistic polishing" of fundamentally well-written manuscripts.

Efficient ways of increasing your chances of becoming rejected

  1. Write a lengthy report. Authors do this all too often. The following check list will help you to "stick to the subject". If the answer is "yes" to any of the questions, it is time to consider some rewriting.
    • Have I introduced too many different objectives into my study and tried to meet them all?
    • Is my introduction too wordy or not to the point or both?
    • Have I failed to distinguish the main results from spin-offs?
    • Are there too many irrelevant details?
    • Are there still too many unreduced data?
    • Have I repeated the same results in the text, tables and figures?
    • Are there any unnecessary tables?
    • Have I made the discussion too detailed, not to the point or too speculative, is it rather unorganized, does it merely repeat results, are some points left "hanging in the air", etc?
    • Is the Introduction repeated in the Discussion?
    • Are my references irrelevant or unlimited in number?
    • Have I been too verbose (eg, "When scrutinizing the measurements thoroughly it was accidentally found that...") or does the text lack conciseness?

     

  2. Present the objectives of the report in an unclear manner. The study hypothesis should be clearly formulated, and it should be apparent in the objectives presented in the report. Remember, objectives are abstract in science, for example ". . . to determine whether exposure to zz causes cancer in man . . ." rather than "to measure the vital capacity of 345 exposed workers . . ."In addition, remember that the objectives presented in the abstract should be congruent with those in the report proper. In our experience they are sometimes not!
     
  3. Confuse what belongs in the Material and Methods section with what belongs in the Results. Properties of the material (eg, smoking habits, number of person-years, age distribution, response rate, differences between the research group and the reference group in terms of basic properties, etc) belong in the Materials and Methods section and not in the Results. Possible differences must never be tested for statistical significance!!! They are potential confounders and do not address any study hypothesis. Potential confounding is not a matter for significance testing. Hence: Never test for potential confounding! (For reference, see all major textbooks in epidemiology.) Even the results should be expressed as the point estimate and its confidence interval instead of as P-values whenever the study is nonexperimental. The rate ratio or odds ratio describes the magnitude of effect, the confidence interval the precision of the estimate. The expression "statistically significant" should be avoided at all costs. If avoiding P-values is not feasible (eg, some experiments), exact P-values instead of the conventional "P<..." should be given. (See Kenneth Rothman's editorial: "The confounded P-value", Epidemiology 1998;9:7-8.) Do not construct tables with one, two or three asterisks denoting P<0.05, P< 0.01, and P<0.001!
     
  4. Omit important details from the Materials and Methods section.
     
  5. Combine elements of the Discussion with the Results (ie, a result is first given and then discussed straightaway).
     
  6. Introduce results for the first time in the Discussion or even give them only in the Abstract.
     
  7. Give your own, earlier published results once again in the Results section (rather in the Discussion where they belong).
     
  8. Repeat the results in place of the Discussion. The Discussion should not simply be a repeat of the results with perhaps some minor comments added. It should instead ponder how the objectives defined in the Introduction are met. Beware of the cliché "Further research is needed".
     
  9. Refer to the literature in an unbalanced manner (especially in favor of the author's views).

Minor matters for attention

  1. The title of the study should not be a statement, such as "Vaccinations are the cause of the increasing frequency of allergies". (Some journals accept this, but we do not! There are many good reasons for this.) Nor should the title contain any acronyms at all. Make your title a straightforward one that adequately describes the contents of the paper in the fewest possible words—without a subtitle.
     
  2. The abstract should be structured. Nonadherence to this rule shows that you have not read the Instructions for Authors. The abstract should not contain references and unexplained abbreviations. (Note! The abstract of a review should be narrative!)
     
  3. Do not forget to add key terms, and remember that they should differ from the terms appearing in the title. Key terms are supposed to be extra aids for the reader and abstracting services, and a repetition of the title is no help.
     
  4. Do not give too many decimals in the results. Three significant numbers are enough. The decimal "point" is a point (full stop, period) and not a "comma" (nonnative English speakers, beware!). Use SI units and be consistent.
     
  5. Keep your use of abbreviations to a minimum and be sure to write out the full term the first time it is used. This is particularly important for our journal since it is multidisciplinary.
     
  6. Use the "Vancouver style" (published as "Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals") for references. Some of the worst offenses follow:
    • All references cited must be listed, and all listed references must be cited. Check that the references in the list indeed refer to the correct statement in the text.
    • Be sure that the spelling of German, French, Swedish, Finnish and other names is correct. Incorrectly spelled names insult the person cited and place him/her in the wrong place in citation indexes. Check also the spelling of geographic names (eg, it is Cincinnati, not Cincinatti, and Helsinki, not Helsinski.)
    • An English translation of titles in foreign languages must be included in the reference list. Foreign language references are often wrongly spelled, check this.
    • Avoid referring to reports that are not readily available. A congress abstract is very rarely an appropriate reference.
    • If you refer to a chapter in a book, give also the page number.

     

  7. Check the spelling and eliminate typing errors. Your word processing program has a spell check, use this! But also remember that it is not perfect; "led" and "lead" are both spelled correctly but have altogether different meanings.
     
  8. Always state from what source you have received funding.
     
  9. Think carefully about the construction of your tables. See that they read down instead of across and that they contain enough information to be self-explanatory. They should not duplicate the data given in the text. We also require that you leave no blank spaces in tables, and you can use the following symbols to avoid them: - for "magnitude nil", 0 or 0.0 for "number less than half the unit employed", · for "category not applicable", and ·· for "data not available".
     
  10. Check your figures carefully for misspellings and other inaccuracies (eg, use of proper abbreviations of SI units). Problems with poor figures can definitely lead to a delay in publication because they must be returned to the author if any corrections are necessary. Remember too that figures should be large enough to permit reduction at the time of publication and they should have been drawn to the same proportions.

    Remember, even small things count when the editor's desk is full and the staff's workload is extensive. An important argument for accepting/rejecting can then be little/much work for the editorial office.