Advice to Authors of Research Papers

 I have  my name in more than 100 papers and I have also reviewed more than 100 papers for various journals. Several of my papers (including the ones written in the recent days) have seen several journal before they got accepted. I have  papers accepted by editors even when the referee rejected them. I have papers rejected by editors even though  the referees were asking us to revise the manuscript. 

I have several years of experience as an editor of Bulletin of the Malaysian Mathematical Sciences Society (BMMSS). I have more than 50 papers published jointly with the Editor-in-Chief of BMMSS. We are now in the process of writing yet another paper. Initial draft was prepared by my former PhD scholar and I edited it couple of time. Once I was happy with it, then it was sent to EIC of BMMSS. He has rewritten the paper several time and we have  reworked many times. He has edited 13 times before it was submitted to a journal. Every letters in the paper was scrutinized by him and several typographical errors and  mistakes were corrected by us. Every paper with him gave us such an experience.    

If you are reading this line now, you must be convinced that I am also a right person for giving advice. But I never want you to follow these advice.  This is not an essay on how to write but I will write some thing whenever I experience something that I should share with you all. 

Choice of type-setting software:

• Use LaTeX to typeset your paper. MS Word submissions are not acceptable for many editors. 

• Use the class file  (elsarticle for Elsevier, svjour3 for Springer) provided/suggested by the journal. Follow the typesetting instruction carefully. If you don't follow, the paper will be returned by the editorial assistant (and not by editors/editor-in-chief).

• In case you got a paper back from a journal and you have prepared using the class file of that particular journal, change the class to amsart/amsproc or to the class file of the journal where you plan to submit. 

Journal's Instruction for Authors:

• Read the instruction for authors carefully. I have papers bounced back for several reasons. One such reason was that the author names were not written in alphabetical order. The other reason was that I have not written my full name. 

• If a journal ask you to suggest referees,  suggest potential referees who know the subject of your paper very well. Not to suggest your recent collaborators and never your scholars/supervisor(s). Not from the same place as yours. If the journal want you to suggest five referees, choose from five different continents! 

• Read carefully the instructions for authors and follow it line by line. 

• Before you submit to a journal, look at some of the papers they published recently to get some idea.

• Some journals ask PDF to be submitted initially. Some journal ask for TeX  file to be submitted (so that it is easy to check  if any references are not cited in the main text and unused equation numbers etc). 

Preparing the manuscript:

• The first page should contain title, author name(s), abstract, 2020 AMS Classification codes, Key words and phrases. It can also contained dedication and short acknowledgement. 

• Avoid starting the abstract by "In the present paper, ...." or "In the present investigation,....". No big equations, no definition, no theorem statements. Explain your work for  a nonspecialist (editor who may handle your paper).

• Make sure that you always provide 2020 AMS Subjection classification codes. This will help the editorial office/editor in chief to give the paper to appropriate area/associate editor. You know where to get these numbers. If you don't know, google it. 

• Keywords and phrases are also equally important.  It will help in identifying the referees using the database of the referees  the journal may have. 

• Do not start a paragraph with an equation. 

• Do not start a section or subsection with a definition/lemma/theorem. Start with some story! 

• You may have a paper rejected by one or more journal. Some of them might have rejected it after a revision. You might have acknowledged the referee in the revised version. If you submit this revised version to another  journal, make sure that you delete the acknowledgement to the referees.  If you keep it, the editor will know that it was a paper rejected by another journal. He may also reject it.  Never write an acknowledgement to the referee in the first version! 

• Number an equation only if you are going to refer it elsewhere. Otherwise don't number an equation. Similarly, cite every reference in the main text. You can use \usepackage{refcheck} to find out references that are not cited. Package description reads:  'The package checks references in a document, looking for numbered but unlabelled equations, for labels which are not used in the text, for unused bibliography references. It can also display label names in text near corresponding numbers of equations and/or bibliography references. '

• Date of posting your article in arxiv.org can also give some idea to the editors.  So better to post when you are ready to submit. 

• Too many citation to papers in poor quality journal will lead to rejection. "Not of sufficient quality for consideration of publication" will be the reply from the editor. 

• Cite all relevant recent references from the literature. It will show that your research is of current interest. A referee once wrote "word war II problem" for one of my paper in ANN. Citing recent references will help editor  in choosing referees for your paper. He can find their address/email from the paper you cite. 

• Use MRef to typeset your references and MRLookup to find one. 

Symbols and Notations

• Use the standard notations as used in the literature on your subject. Using a different notations and symbols to avoid detection by plagiarism checking software is not acceptable. Some definition, theorems etc are to written as such. Editors will understand that.  

• Use \langle, \rangle for inner product and sequences (and use of <, > is definite not acceptable). Use \| for norm (and dont use || for it).