Background: Knowing the best way of structuring your paper when writing it, and the most appropriate journal to send it to, really helps in getting your paper accepted. Also understanding how editors and publishers think and what they expect, and knowing how the peer review process works, is invaluable insight into the publishing process.

Results: After attending this free 2 to 2.5 hour workshop, one in the Elsevier Researcher Academy on Campus workshop series, participants will have a clear idea of the steps needed to be taken before starting to write a paper. They will also be able to plan writing manuscripts using the logical step sequence – not the sequence in which the paper will be read. Authors are also made aware of what aspects of their papers Editors, Reviewers, and Publishers look at critically, and to ensure that in taking care of these areas, their papers are much more likely to be accepted. Dealing with referees’ comments and the art of polite rebuttal are also described such that these can be used to improve the submitted paper suitably. Sensitive areas such as publishing ethics, plagiarism, duplicate publishing, etc are also clearly explained such that participants have a clear understanding of what their responsibilities are, what is allowed, and what is not permitted.

Conclusions: These insights into the publishing process will enable the participants to be more confident as an author in the world of science publishing, and so should help them get their papers published more easily.

Information about the speaker: Anthony Newman, who is making the presentation today, is a Senior Publisher with Elsevier, and is based in Amsterdam. Currently responsible for fifteen laboratory medicine and biochemistry journals, he joined Elsevier over 30 years ago and has been Publisher for the last 20+ years. Before then he was the marketing communications manager for the biochemistry journals of Elsevier.  By training he is a polymer chemist and was active in industry before leaving London and moving to Amsterdam in 1987 to join Elsevier.