Now Write This
Manuscript essentials
Staring at a blank screen, trying to write the first line of your manuscript, can be intimidating. Don’t let it be. See it as the next step in your research and publication journey. Remember, your manuscript began as “a good idea at the time,” then became “a hypothesis to test” or “a question to answer,”,developed into a study protocol, generated real data and results, and is now ready to become a publication manuscript. Call it knowledge management, information flow, or the path from idea to impact. Your job now is to write the next step in a story that already has a good beginning.
The title is the first thing a reader—or their AI assistant—looks for when searching the cloud for references they would use when writing their own manuscripts. Start with the title of your study plan. Rewrite it as a short, informative title. Include your key finding. The article title will likely be shorter and more concise than your original working title. Use key words you would search for online when writing your paper. Don’t write the Abstract until the article is complete. I’ll explain why later. Don’t write the Abstract until the article is finished. I’ll tell you why later.
What about the Introduction? Don't make the Introduction longer than it needs to be. It's not a general review of the literature. It is a “hook” that includes just enough information to make the reader think, “OK, I know why they did it, and now I’m interested in how they did it and what they found .” Just give the context or background of the work; summarize what is already known. Then do the same for your rationale by mentioning data that you believe is missing and would be nice to have. End by stating the study objective. This may surprise you, but there is no need to say anything about what you found out. That’s for the results section, or why it’s important. That’s for the discussion section.
If you are having trouble with the Introduction, save that for later. You may find it easier to start with the Materials and Methods – the section where you write about the study design, patients and methods, experimental procedures, and your statistical plan –which clearly describes what you did and why you did it that way. It includes enough information to allow others to repeat the work. By the way, there is no need to give details of methods that have been previously published. Just reference those publications and include a brief description of the modifications you made. Follow the target journal’s guidelines for naming equipment and reagent manufacturers and suppliers. Pay careful attention to the description of the statistical analysis. Think of statistics as a streetlight at night and yourself leaning against it–for both illumination and for support.
The Results? Describe them clearly and in the same order as your methods. Be concise. Do not discuss the significance of the results. Do not cite the results that other investigators have reported. Save that for the Discussion. Design the tables, graphs, and figures carefully for the clearest way to convey your intended meaning. Remember, it’s all about how words, pictures, and numbers work together. The text is there to tell the reader what to look for in the figures, pictures, and tables, not to repeat details .
The Discussion is the place to interpret your results and tell the significance of your findings. Keep in mind the interests of the target journal’s readers. Begin by summarizing the key findings. Then compare your results to those reported in similar studies. Remember that you are reporting original research and not writing a review paper. Keep the references to the essential ones and avoid extensive discussion of the published literature beyond the scope of your results. Mention the strengths and limitations of your study and be sure to say what your results add to what was already known. Mention unanswered questions and future research, especially if those are questions that you are planning to address in your own research. Add a sentence or two giving your conclusions, make them echo but not repeat the key findings.
Write the Abstract after you and your coauthors are satisfied with the manuscript. It should highlight the key points of the article, including the objective, methods, and results, giving just enough detail to cover the “essentials”. It needs to attract a reader’s attention strongly enough to inspire them to read the full text. The wording of the title, and abstract and the choice of key words are what Internet search engines and AI apps will use to find your article. Writing the Abstract and Title last helps ensure that both are consistent with the main body of the manuscript. You can ask your AI assistant to use the text of your manuscript to write these. Writefull (https://www.writefull.com) has been trained with academic publications. Finally, choose some relevant keywords,. The best ones are not also used in the tile. Use some of the MeSH keywords that PubMed uses.
Done? Take a last look at the author guidelines to be sure you have included what the editors wants to see in the sections of submitted papers. Go to the submission website, upload your files, and get them off your desktop.