Author: Ángel Hernando Gómez – Translation: Erika-Lucia Gonzalez-Carrion
There is never a single reason for an article to be accepted (or not accepted) for publication in a scientific journal, the reality is that for this to happen, several reasons must be concatenated, among which are these eight.
One of the reasons for publication is that the manuscript deals with some emerging theme, a grain of knowledge which does not have to be new, but must be novel, so the central theme of the manuscript has to be valuable and relevant, that is, be of interest to the international scientific community. A recommendation would be to respond to a call from the journal, following the theme that it proposes.
In parallel to this first reason, we must have in mind that the article presented must be original, that is, novel so that the editors find it interesting and that it contributes something new to the field of study that justifies its publication in the journal. The relevance of the subject is one of the aspects considered by the editorial teams (and the reviewers) of the journals.
A third reason would abound in the importance of metadata (title, abstract and keywords). These have to be correctly selected and written, adjusted to the number of characters (title), length in number of words (summary and keywords) indicated by the journal (which usually follow the characteristics of the speciality in which they move) and above all, that appear clearly in the abstract the reason and objective of the research, the methodology used, the most outstanding results that have been obtained, as well as the main conclusions.
The fourth reason would focus on the need for the manuscript to be correctly structured and written, so that it contains all the elements necessary for it to be considered scientific writing and these are correctly developed without repetition of ideas or lack of elements. The article must be correctly written, it must be emphasized that the scientific writing must be: precise, clear and brief, and that the ideas must be presented in an orderly, concise and fluid way, so that “sophisticated” and difficult language is avoided (needless to say, there should be no grammatical errors) and sufficient argumentation ability is demonstrated. Here we cannot forget the need for tables and figures to be correctly made, as well as their numbering and legend which have to be to adjusted, if indicated, to the maximum number allowed by the journal.
The fifth reason focuses on highlighting the importance that the references are relevant, they must come from a deep review in the appropriate databases (SCOPUS, WOS), all the important ones of the subject matter covered in the article must be there, so that no relevant one is omitted nor any one that is not relevant is incorporated, and be updated so that the manuscript that is presented is in the «state of the art» of knowledge of the subject of the article, in parallel it must be given variety and richness of citations.
As a sixth reason we would highlight the importance of methodological rigor and the adequacy of research instruments. Regardless of whether there are journals that “block”, in our opinion, erroneously, qualitative (or quantitative) articles, the methodology must be perfectly founded and clearly stated in all its sections.
It is also important to keep in mind the importance attached to the elaboration of results, discussion and conclusions. The results obtained in the investigation (what was found?), Must be correctly exposed, as well as the advances that have occurred. In the same way the Discussion (what meaning does what I found?) And the Conclusions (recapitulate on the findings that are considered most important of the work for the future of the research on the topic treated), our recommendation would go in the line of running away of the so often confused discussion of the results with the conclusions.
The eighth and last reason would abound in a series of «plus criteria» such as: the fact that these are research articles, that these investigations are international, that the articles present the results of research projects that have been subsidized for attending competitive calls, the flight from inbreeding trying to co-author with researchers not only from our university but from other universities in our country or outside of it.
Lastly, and although it is not one of the eight reasons that we have presented, keep in mind that, if you want to publish, do not forget a reason that we have already mentioned in other posts: exhaustively comply with the rules for authors indicated in the journal in which we intend to publish our article.
