Journal article preparation
Academic integrity
This guidance supports planning and revision of your own work. It does not offer ghostwriting, invented sources, or a guarantee that a journal will publish a manuscript.
Choose a journal whose recent articles speak to the same kind of reader and the same kind of study. Read the aims, the length, and three current papers. Then outline yours to match the argument those readers expect, without pretending your evidence is larger than it is. An abstract should be writable from the finished paper. If it is not, the paper is not finished.
Cover letters are short and factual: what the manuscript does, why this journal, and what has not been published elsewhere. They are not advertisements. Co-authors, if any, should have agreed the text. Do not add a name to impress an editor.
A practical sequence
- Select a journal from its current articles.
- Build the outline from the finished findings, not from a hoped-for abstract.
- Format citations in the journal's required style.
- Write a factual cover letter and confirm every author's contribution.
Examples
- If the journal publishes 6,000-word empirical reports, do not send a 12,000-word essay and ask the editor to imagine a shorter one.
