Curriculum – Authoring Academy

Everything you need to know

Our curriculum covers everything you need to know in order to increase your chances of publication success. Everything is kept as simple and efficient as possible, with the sole purpose of getting your manuscript accepted for publication!

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Get the language right

Learn everything you need to know
about words, sentences, paragraphs, grammar, and writing.

Sentences

When you are constructing a sentence you are placing individual words together in a certain order. Now that is logical and should be easy to do. What you might not be aware of is that the order of the words has an influence on their meaning. It is subtle, but it is important in aiding […]

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Paragraphs

Paragraphs are so important to your writing. Think of them as scenes in a movie. Like the scene where the lovers first meet, or the scene where they get married. Separate scenes and separate paragraphs. A paragraph is a discrete section of your completed story.

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Grammar

Grammar can be defined as the structure and system of a language, and is usually considered to consist of syntax and morphology. Syntax deals with the construction of phrases and sentences, whilst morphology with the internal structure of words. But, let’s keep it simple and go through the points that will matter to your article […]

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Writing

In this section we are going to show you how to put all your knowledge about language into action when you are writing. When writing there are a few phases and we’ll be explaining them one by one.

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Redundancy

Redundancy is part of wordiness. Redundancy means that you are explaining more than needed, whilst verbosity means that you use more words than needed.

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Noun clusters

Noun clusters are long strings of nouns whereby one noun modifies the other noun. They are common in political debates, where they are used to put an opponent to sleep. In science they are an example of lazy writing. We will show you how to avoid them.

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Verbosity

Verbosity is part of wordiness. Redundancy means that you are explaining more than needed, whilst verbosity means that you use more words than needed.

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Words

Words are the foundation of any story you want to publish. They are the essence of what you want to tell. In scientific writing those words should be as few as possible (so you can read efficiently), simple (so that as many readers as possible an understand them). And, above all, those words should be […]

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Active / passive

In the past, it was expected that along with using third-person point of view throughout a manuscript, a passive voice should be used by the writer. However, times have changed. More and more publishers and journals are preferring the active voice today.

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Point of view

When you are writing in English, or many other languages, it is possible to use different points of view. I can tell that ‘somebody’ has performed a specific task, OR I can write that you conducted an experiment. These different points of view are referred to as the ‘person’. You can write in first-, second-, […]

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Tenses

Tenses confuse a lot of ESL authors. However, once you have memorized the rules and used them a few times, they becomes pretty simple. So simple that you will use the correct tense without even having to think about it.

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Continuity

Think of continuity as the glue with which you stick your story together. Or like bridges or connectors between individual building blocks. Your reader will thank you if you use this collection of relatively simple ‘writing tricks’. There are three basic ways you can add continuity: Linking sentences, using key terms and by using transition […]

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Word order

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Punctuation

Something as small as a comma can significantly influence the understanding of your writing. Believe me. You can compare punctuation with street signs that signal you to stop, go slow, pay attention, and so forth. Using punctuation, like the comma here you can control the rhythm of your writing, helping the reader to understand your […]

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Sentence length

Keeping sentences short and simple is important, especially in academic writing.

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Get the manuscript right

Ensure that your manuscript is
structured properly so you will increase your chances of getting accepted for publication.

Reproducibility

The reproducibility of results is one of the cornerstones of scientific communication. Try to describe your experiments so that another researcher can reproduce them.

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Structure of discussion

In the discussion, you start with specifics and then broaden your scope as you continue.

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Statistical data

Result sections can become flawed if statistical information is not placed in context.

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Supplementary data

If your methods are complex then summarize them in the main text and include the detailed description in a supplementary file.

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IMRaD

IMRaD is an acronym for the Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion.

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Types of abstracts

Broadly speaking, there are three types of abstracts. You can have: 1) informative, 2) structured, and 3) descriptive abstracts.

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How to summarize

As you want to summarize, you should write the abstract after you have finished your manuscript.

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References

We use references to build upon the science of others. We use the references to acknowledge the work of scientists before us.

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Acknowledgements

Academic articles tend to have an additional, small, section that is quite important. The Acknowledgements aid in providing validity of the research you conducted.

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Discussion

In the discussion you go beyond data and facts and apply an interpretation of your results. Using this interpretation you form a conclusion.

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Results

Results are the product of your experiments or observations and form the basis for your interpretation and conclusion. The core of the results section is that you not only present your data but add the results which you also interpret.

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Methods

Many people find this section of a manuscript the easiest to write. This is probably because it is very clear what to write about.

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Introduction

The introduction is the real start of the article; the abstract, which is placed first in the article is, in essence, a separate entity. There are a few schools of thought as to what an introduction should be about. We strongly feel that the introduction is about context.

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Abstract

If you want people to read your published article you have to overcome a few hurdles. The Abstract is often the last hurdle you have to overcome.

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Title

The title of your manuscript is probably the single-most crucial component when trying to get your research read.

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Structure

Each section in a scientific manuscript answers a question. If you ask the right question, then answering becomes easy. Put all the answers in the right order and you have a manuscript.

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Get the submission right

Fly through the submission process with ease.

Creative commons

Creative Commons licenses give everyone from individual creators to large institutions a standardized way to grant the public permission to use their creative work under copyright law.

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Citation analysis

Citation analysis is the examination of the frequency, patterns, and graphs of citations in documents.

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Unintentional plagiarism

Unintentional plagiarism is the accidental appropriation of the ideas and materials of others due to a lack of understanding of the conventions of citation and documentation.

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Cost of publishing

How much will it cost to get your manuscript published and who will pay for it: the author or the reader?

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Conflict of interest

A conflict of interest arises when the way a researcher sees the world could influence his or her work.

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Authorship

There are rules about who can be defined as an author to a scientific publication and who can not be.

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Duplicate submissions

The practice of submitting the same study to two journals or publishing more or less the same study in two journals.

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Plagiarism

Plagiarism is the practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own.

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Scopus

Scopus is Elsevier’s abstract and citation database launched in 2004, and is the main competitor to the Web of Science.

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Impact Factor

The impact factor (IF) is a measure of the frequency with which the average article in a journal has been cited in a particular year.

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Predatory publishers

Predatory publishers are those publishers who charge a fee for the publication of material without providing the publication services an author would expect such as peer review and editing.

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Journal selection

Selecting the right journal to submit your manuscript to is an important task as it will save you a lot of time and quite likely aggravation if you get it right.

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Bibliometrics

Bibliometrics is the use of statistical methods to analyse books, articles and other publications.

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Permissions

If you want to use parts of a publication that is published under copyright, you have to seek permission from the publisher.

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Copyright

Copyright is a legal right that gives its owner the exclusive permission to make copies of a creative work, usually for a limited period.

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Open Access

In Open Access a publication can be read digitally by anyone, at no further cost.

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Ethics

Unethical publishing behavious is often not intentional, but it is unfair nevertheless.

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