Submitting articles

A key point when publishing in journals is to familiarise yourself with the formal requirements for manuscript submission. These requirements are found in the author guidelines, or instructions to authors, commonly found on the journal's website. 
 
The formal requirements include both content and layout, in addition to the technical requirements for submitting a manuscript. You will also find information about the journal's open access policy. Your funding source or employer may have specific requirements for open access. You need to consider co-authorship and copyright to ensure that your rights as an author are not violated. You will also need to address any conflicts of interest concerning the work you are publishing. When your manuscript has been accepted for publication, you will sign a contract confirming the copyright issues of the publication. 
 
Most publishers require that the article has not been submitted elsewhere and that it is an original work. 

Cover letter: When submitting a manuscript to a journal, it is common to include a cover letter to the editor. The letter contains information about your submission. Common points to address are:

• Are you publishing several works from the same material? Or have parts of the work been published previously?
• Are there any conflicts of interest?
• If you have co-authors, have all of them had the opportunity to read and approve the manuscript?
• Did you use artificial intelligence in your research and writing process, and if so – to what extent and in what ways?
• As a corresponding author, you will need to give your name and the address of your institution.

Some of these issues, for instance declarations about conflict of interests and AI use, may also be addressed in the submission system itself as separate questions. If so, you might not need to specify them in your cover letter. Note furthermore that it varies from publisher to publisher how extensively AI use should be declared. Some require declaration and/or documentation of any use; others of substantial use.

Manuscript file: The requirements for the file format, including text, figures and tables, will vary between journals and editors. You must pay attention to such details as page numbers and double spacing. Some journals have different formatting rules for different types of articles. Most journals have a web-based, electronic submission system.

Anonymization: The file that you submit for peer review must be truly anonymized. This includes not only deleting your name on the first page or elsewhere, but also that you do not reveal yourself through your references, metadata or any other information, be it about your affiliation, membership in PhD programs, research groups and so on.

If you have published before and need to refer to your previous work, you may for instance write (Author, 2020) in your text and add the same reference, without any other identifiers, to the reference list. You then replace it with the full reference after acceptance.

Some journals would like to receive both an anonymized version of your text and a version with your name and affiliation, alternatively a separate title page or a Cover letter (see above). Check carefully the journal's Instruction for authors.

Data accessibility: Sometimes it is essential for readers to have access to the data behind an article. There are several options as to how and where to store the data in order to make them accessible. Some research disciplines have large data archives, and you will be expected to deposit your data there. The journal itself may provide storage space for the data as a supplement to the article, or your institution may provide a service for data archiving. In relation to this, many journals require a data availability statement, which should clearly tell the reader how and where the data underlying the article is available, and under which terms they are accessible.

Publishing contract: For each accepted submission, you will sign a contract with the publisher. Each publisher has its own specific regulations on issues of copyright, reuse and accessibility. Important matters to consider before signing a publishing contract are

• copyright and ownership of the work
• self-archiving
• open access or subscription-based access

You will also need to make sure the contract does not violate any terms your employer or research funder has stipulated for publishing your research.

Note that academic institutions often have right retention policies that enable open access publication (green Open Access) in spite of the regulations of self-archiving that publishers may have.

A manuscript submitted to a peer-reviewed journal will first be considered by the editor. Your article might be rejected already at this stage (‘desk rejection’), whether due to quality issues or to a mismatch between the journal’s profile and the study you have written. Always read carefully a journal’s ‘Aims and Scope’ in order to ensure that it is a journal that fits your article.

If the editor decides to proceed with your article, it will be sent to a number of anonymous referees (normally two or three) chosen by the journal editors. These referees are researchers working in the general field of the journal and are often experts in the same field as yourself. The referees and editors will screen the manuscript and ask questions such as:

• Does the study have an original scholarly or scientific message?
• Do the message, content and topic fit the scope of the journal?
• Does the work make a useful and interesting contribution to the research field?
• Is the work focused and presented in a logical manner, so that the reader will understand the authors’ conclusions?
• Is the language clear?
• Does the manuscript follow the journal’s instructions to authors for instance in terms of length and citation style?

The outcome of the peer review may be:

• acceptance of the manuscript without revisions
• acceptance with minor or major revisions
• an invitation to submit again after substantial revisions (‘reject and resubmit’)
• rejection of the manuscript

The referees will often provide useful comments on the work, with suggestions for further improvement of the manuscript. Use these comments to improve the manuscript for any re-submission. Include a letter to the editors where you specify how you have responded in your revision to the reviewers’ suggestions.

Once your manuscript has been accepted for publication, you will receive a manuscript proof that you have to read carefully, to check that there are no printing or layout errors.

Some publishers offer a pre-print publication possibility, where your full-text article is published on the journal website prior to the final version. Alternatively and even more commonly, you may use online disciplinary or regional pre-print archives such as arXiv.org (an archive for electronic pre-prints of scientific papers mainly in mathematics, physics and astronomy).

Most publishers today do not consider pre-prints publications and will therefore accept your article for ‘proper’ publication even though there exists a pre-print version of it. Discussions and reviews of manuscripts in pre-print have added an extra level to the peer-review process, as more revised versions of a manuscript are now openly available. 

Here are some common pro arguments for pre-prints: 

• Increased transparency of the publishing process 
• Quicker dissemination of research results while the potentially slow peer review process is going on 
• Additional peer review in terms of informal feedback 

The cons include the following:  

• You make openly available a text that has not been peer reviewed and that might be rejected later.  
• When a pre-print version is available, your submission is not fully anonymized. 

Browman, H.I. (n.d.) Applying organized skepticism to preprints. University of Tromsø. Accessed 15 December 2024 at https://septentrio.uit.no/index.php/SCS/article/view/4866/4908

Derntl, M. (2014). Basics of research paper writing and publishing. International Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning, 6(2), 105-123. https://doi.org/10.1504/IJTEL.2014.066856