Cell Stress Society International |
Advice from the Editor: |
This section only has two goals. One is to state the purpose of the study and the second goal is to provide sufficient information from the published literature to allow the reader to follow the new work presented. I also like to clearly state how the present work goes beyond the published literature. It should be brief, one or two double-spaced pages. Resist the temptation to present results and discuss them in the introduction. You have sections in which to do that well.
These items all share two characteristics: First, they are often thrown together as an afterthought almost, and second, they are the source of terms used to cross-reference and index your published paper in databases. In the case of articles that are not open access, that is, not freely available to the public immediately, these three items are still freely available and serve to advertise your article. An interesting title or abstract may determine whether or not a reader bothers to buy your article on-line or search it out at a library website.
One of the best products of the computer age is bibliographic software. Start making your library using EndNote, RefManager, or whatever you prefer, the day you start working in the laboratory. Major word processing programs like Word have plug-ins that allow writers to create in-text citations and a reference list as they write the manuscript. Virtually all journal styles, and there are many hundreds of them, are now available as small files as part of the major bibliographic software packages. They also make it easy to download citations for journal sites and on-line databases directly into your custom library.
Mention colleagues who provided key reagents and helped in various ways such as reading and commenting on the manuscript. List and thank the granting agencies. No need to thank mentor and co-authors.
Verb tense. Refer to previously published studies and results in the present tense. Refer to work not yet published in the past tense, including the new work in the manuscript you are writing.
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