flynn099

This morning I gave a talk, " Getting Your Manuscript Published: What Reviewers and Editors Want? " to a group of 40 graduate students. The talk was organized by the Institute of Postgraduate Studies (IPS), Universiti Sains Malaysia as part of the Professional and Personal Development Programme. The programme aims to increase students’ knowledge, soft skills, ability and credibility in order to develop them to compete and progress both academically and in the future workplace. This talk is actually the fourth one this month on a theme of writing scientific publication (my previous talks can be found in my previous article). Briefly, I covered these topics: Duties of editors, reviewers, and authors What is “peer review” and its brief history Objectives & process of peer review What editors & reviewers are looking for? Surviving the peer review process The presentation can be viewed and download from Slideshare (link below). Getting Your Manuscript Published: What Revi...

As promised, I have uploaded the second part of my presentation on the theme of publishing scientific paper. The first was posted in my earlier article ( here ). The title of the second presentation is "How to Write a World Class Paper". Yes, writing a paper that reports novel idea that would advance the frontier of knowledge. A well written article cannot make up for poor research whereas a badly written article can diminish good research! The rule of thumb is actually quite simple: clarity and brevity . Watch the presentation to learn more... Choose one of the links below: How to Write a World Class Paper (on Vimeo) How to Write a World Class Paper (on YouTube) Note of acknowledgement: The content of this presentation was modified and ‘repackaged’ from the original presentation by Wendy Hurp (Elsevier). I would like to acknowledge and thank Wendy for giving the permission to share the material with the world.

Publish or perish OR publish and flourish? Getting your paper published especially in the premier/reputable journals is not an easy task. Most of the so-called high ranking international journals have more than 50% rejection rate. There's always something new to learn everyday about scientific writing. Resources to help authors to write and communicate their research in a presentable or publishable from are always available. For example, American Chemical Society (ACS) Publications has launched the Publishing Your Research 101 video series to assist authors and reviewers in understanding and improving their experience with the processes of writing, submitting, editing, and reviewing manuscripts. The first episode in the series is an interview with Professor George M. Whitesides from Harvard University who has published nearly 600 papers with ACS Publications, and over 1100 articles overall, and has served on the advisory boards of numerous peer-reviewed journals. When asked how ...

I was invited recently by the School of Physics ( Universiti Sains Malaysia ) to give a talk on strategies to publish scientific paper in peer-reviewed journals (the focus was on indexed international journals). It was well attended by graduate students and a number of academic staff. The talk was given in two parts—in the first part I emphasized on the reasons why scientists or researchers must publish their work in indexed journals to disseminate their findings to a wider audience. I hope I have managed to convince the audience (particularly graduate students) the importance of writing and publishing good, quality paper. The second part of the talk focused on strategies, tips, and 'tricks of the trade' of getting the paper (manuscript) accepted by the Chief Editor. If I may summarize very briefly, writing a scientific paper is always very challenging—it's not an easy task, even for experienced scientist. However, I have made it very clear (hopefully) that writing a paper ...

I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow – Woodrow Wilson . Embarking on a new research project is very much like getting into unknown or unfamiliar territory. Therefore, the first thing you need to do is to carry out a proper and thorough background research. This will help you to become more familiar with your topic and introduce you to any other research which will be of benefit to you when you begin your own project. To do that efficiently, you need a plan. If you plunge into any available sources on your topic, you risk losing yourself in an endless trail of books and articles! What is “literature”? It can be defined as a collection of all the scholarly writings on a topic (Fink, 1998). To put it simply, literature is about telling a story, sort of an interconnected chain story where each writer starts with a partial story created previously by others and expand on it…the existing literature is the story so far…So, doing a literature review is basically...

I presented this topic recently in a Postgraduate Colloquium organised by the School of Management, Universiti Sains Malaysia (Penang, Malaysia). The participants were largely new graduate students but there were also some senior students. Briefly I covered the common issues, elements, roles, and stages of development associated with supervision along with practical strategies for nurturing rewarding relationships with graduate students. Supervision of graduate students is a challenging journey that the supervisor (advisor) and the student embark on together. It includes not only academic guidance, but also prolonged nurturing of the student's personal, scholarly, and professional development. From my perspective as a supervisor, the experience of supervising graduate students is doubtless very challenging but also very rewarding. Watching a fresh graduate become an independent scholar, plan the project, execute the plan with care and thoughtfulness, write up the results and presen...