You’re finally in a writing rhythm, and you’ve carefully crafted and edited your manuscript to perfection. But it surpasses the peer-reviewed journal’s word limit. In many cases, if a submitted manuscript is just one word over the maximum allowed, the paper is...

Last week we enjoyed a favourite blog post from the past on Creating Figures for Your Manuscript. It seems appropriate to review the corresponding post on Figure Legends this week.  I hope you’ll find this information helpful.  According to my Twitter feed, a number...

One of my most popular blog posts is this early one on Creating Figures for Your Manuscript. I’ve been told again and again how useful this information is. So I thought it was time to re-post it. Enjoy!   “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Perhaps. A good...

You’ve submitted your manuscript, and the decision was “revise and resubmit” – the journal has requested “major” revisions. Sometimes the reviewers’ comments are a single page of relatively positive comments that can be addressed fairly easily, along with one or two...

You’ve submitted your manuscript and have been anxiously following along with the peer-review process. “Under review.” “Reviewer comments received.” “Editorial decision.” Here we go – what will they say?  The best case scenario is “Accept” with no revisions, but...

Reviewer comments are the most fundamental component of the peer-review process for publishing scientific manuscripts. They are also the most anxiety-laden, occasionally joyful, hopefully constructive, but often disheartening, painful, and sometimes cruel and...