Writing an Academic Paper for the Purpose of Publication

Writing a scientific article is a daunting task but needs to be accomplished to be considered for publication in appropriate journals. A scientific experiment or project is not considered complete unless the outcome is disseminated to the fraternity. The entire work conducted by the researcher has to be written as a scientific document keeping in mind the heterogeneity of readers and the range of journals which consider submission of manuscripts for the purpose of publication. The purpose of publication is not only for getting promotions, evidence build up and peer recognition but also as a measure of work done by competent people in relevant field. The process of article writing should begin from the conceptualisation of the scientific experiment. Penning down a manuscript does not follow the same order in which an article is read. Scientific articles follow the Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion (IMRaD) format when printed and read, whereas while preparing the manuscript the order is different. The methods are written first since it is the actual work done by a researcher and should be most easy to write. The findings / observations can be written next for the results section. The discussion section interprets the results, puts forward the work of similar research and ends with the conclusions and limitations. The introduction, abstract and title are the last to be written since by then most of the manuscript is well articulated. Selection of journals, acknowledgement, conflict of interest, plagiarism, referencing style and letter to editors are the other aspects of preparation of manuscript. KEY WORDS Publication, Article Writing