How to Write and Illustrate a Scientific Paper

Björn Gustavii has been teaching courses in scientific writing for doctoral (PhD) students in medicine for over twenty-five years. He brings his personal experience to this book, both from writing more than 100 of his own research papers and from his work as a journal editor.

This compact and easy-to-read book contains essential advice on how to take a manuscript from planning right through to publication. It will help both first-time writers and more experienced authors to present their results more effectively. While retaining the easy-to-read and well-structured approach of previous editions, the third edition of this essential guide has been expanded to include comprehensive advice on drawing graphs, and information about Open Access publishing. Illustrations are discussed in detail, with examples of poor illustrations taken from real papers in top-ranked journals, redrawn for comparison. Such before-and-after examples are also provided to demonstrate good and bad writing styles. The reader is offered practical advice - from how to present a paper and where to submit the manuscript, through to responding to reviewers' comments and correcting the proofs - all developed through the author's extensive teaching experience and his many years spent working as a journal editor.

The third edition of this compact, easy-to-read book contains essential advice on how to take a manuscript from planning right through to publication. Detailing examples of good versus bad practice, this user-friendly volume shows both first-time writers and more experienced authors how to write, illustrate and prepare a scientific paper.

Preface to the third edition; Acknowledgements; 1. Basic rules of writing; 2. Comments on scientific writing; 3. Drafting the manuscript; 4. Choosing a journal; 5. How to begin; 6. Figure captions (legends); 7. Preparing a graph; 8. Graph combination; 9. Drawings; 10. How to design a table; 11. Title; 12. Authors; 13. Abstract; 14. Introduction; 15. Methods; 16. Results; 17. Discussion; 18. Acknowledgements; 19. References; 20. PhD and other doctoral theses; 21. Letters and case reports; 22. Numbers; 23. Abbreviations; 24. How to present statistical results; 25. Typing; 26. Dealing with editors and referees; 27. Correcting proofs; 28. Authors' responsibility; Literature needed on your desk; Further reading; Literature cited; Index.