Editorial
Ten Simple Rules for Getting Published
Philip E. Bourne
T
he student council (http://www.iscbsc.org/) of the InternationalSociety for ComputationalBiology asked me to present mythoughts on getting published in thefield of computational biology at theIntelligent Systems in MolecularBiology conference held in Detroit inlate June of 2005. Close to 200 brightyoung souls (and a few not so young)crammed into a small room for whatproved to be a wonderful interchangeamong a group of whom approximatelyone-half had yet to publish their firstpaper. The advice I gave that day I havemodified and present as ten rules forgetting published.
Rule 1: Read many papers, and learnfrom both the good and the badwork of others.
It is never too early to become acritic. Journal clubs, where you critiquea paper as a group, are excellent forhaving this kind of dialogue. Reading atleast two papers a day in detail (not justin your area of research) and thinkingabout their quality will also help. Beingwell read has another potential majorbenefit—it facilitates a more objectiveview of one’s own work. It is too easyafter many late nights spent in front of a computer screen and/or laboratorybench to convince yourself that yourwork is the best invention since slicedbread. More than likely it is not, andyour mentor is prone to falling into thesame trap, hence rule 2.
Rule 2: The more objective you canbe about your work, the better thatwork will ultimately become.
Alas, some scientists will never beobjective about their own work, andwill never make the best scientists—learn objectivity early, the editors andreviewers have.
Rule 3: Good editors and reviewerswill be objective about your work.
The quality of the editorial board isan early indicator of the reviewprocess. Look at the masthead of the journal in which you plan to publish.Outstanding editors demand and getoutstanding reviews. Put your energyinto improving the quality of themanuscript
before submission
. Ideally,the reviews will improve your paper.But they will not get to impartingthat advice if there are fundamentalflaws.
Rule 4: If you do not write well in theEnglish language, take lessons early;it will be invaluable later.
This is not just about grammar, butmore importantly comprehension. Thebest papers are those in which complexideas are expressed in a way that thosewho are less than immersed in the fieldcan understand. Have you noticed thatthe most renowned scientists often givethe most logical and simply stated yetstimulating lectures? This extends totheir written work as well. Note thatwriting clearly is valuable, even if yourultimate career does not hinge onproducing good scientific papers inEnglish language journals. Submittedpapers that are not clearly written ingood English, unless the science is trulyoutstanding, are often rejected or atbest slow to publish since they requireextensive copyediting.
Rule 5: Learn to live with rejection.
A failure to be objective can makerejection harder to take, and you willbe rejected. Scientific careers are full of rejection, even for the best scientists.The correct response to a paper beingrejected or requiring major revision isto listen to the reviewers and respondin an objective, not subjective, manner.Reviews reflect how your paper is being judged—learn to live with it. If reviewers are unanimous about thepoor quality of the paper, move on—invirtually all cases, they are right. If theyrequest a major revision, do it andaddress every point they raise both inyour cover letter and through obviousrevisions to the text. Multiple rounds of revision are painful for all thoseconcerned and slow the publishingprocess.
Rule 6: The ingredients of goodscience are obvious—novelty of research topic, comprehensivecoverage of the relevant literature,good data, good analysis includingstrong statistical support, and athought-provoking discussion. Theingredients of good sciencereporting are obvious—goodorganization, the appropriate use of tables and figures, the right length,writing to the intended audience—do not ignore the obvious.
Be objective about these ingredientswhen you review the first draft, and donot rely on your mentor. Get a candidopinion by having the paper read bycolleagues without a vested interest inthe work, including those not directlyinvolved in the topic area.
Rule 7: Start writing the paper theday you have the idea of whatquestions to pursue.
Some would argue that this placestoo much emphasis on publishing, butit could also be argued that it helpsdefine scope and facilitates hypothesis-driven science. The temptation of novice authors is to try to includeeverything they know in a paper. Yourthesis is/was your kitchen sink. Yourpapers should be concise, and impart asmuch information as possible in theleast number of words. Be familiar withthe guide to authors and follow it, theeditors and reviewers do. Maintain agood bibliographic database as you go,and read the papers in it.
Citation: Bourne PE (2005) Ten simple rules forgetting published. PLoS Comput Biol 1(5): e57.Copyright:
Ó
2005 Philip E. Bourne. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of theCreative Commons Attribution License, whichpermits unrestricted use, distribution, andreproduction in any medium, provided the originalauthor and source are properly credited.DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.0010057Philip E. Bourne is Editor-in-Chief of
PLoSComputational Biology
. E-mail: bourne@sdsc.edu
PLoS Computational Biology | www.ploscompbiol.org October 2005 | Volume 1 | Issue 5 | e570341
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