Research publishing : where to publish

Submission process

• No manuscript is ready for publication upon submission. Language editing, proofreading, typesetting, adding graphics, converting the file into statndard formats and creating metadata are required. They are time-consuming and costly, but also require special expertise. 
• Do not submit your manuscript prematurely.
• Follow publisher's Instructions to Authors to know all about manuscript structure and format.  
• Find author tools, for example IEE author tools. 
• Check if the publisher provides article templates (Word or LaTex).
• Check the citation and referecing style adopted by the journal.
• Many publishers require ORCIDs for all corresponding authors. 
• Turnabout time is critical as it may be several months resulting in 1 to 2 years interval until publication.

Review process

• Once you submit your paper, the editor goes through content match check and banned author check.
• If the paper is in scope, it is assigned to 2 or more reviewers.
• Reviewers send their comments back to the editor. 
• Editor makes the final decision and informs the corresponding author if the paper is : accepted, accepted for review, or refused. 
• Allow time to rework or response to reviewers comments. 

What editors and reviewers look for?

• Appropriate content in scope and level.
• Clearly written original material.
• Valid method and rationale.
• Original results.
• Illustrations, tables and graphs that support the text.
• References that are current and relevant to the subject.

Ethical publishing

Avoid plagiarism 

• Cite and separate verbatim copied material.
• Paraphrase other’s text properly, and include citation.
• Credit any ideas from other sources.
• Familiarize yourself with publisher policies.
• Submit your paper to Turnitin before any submission. Make sure while uploading your paper not to submit your paper to Turnitin repository (see image below) to avoid any similarity with later submissions by yourself or by the potential publisher of your paper. Know more about Turnitin. 
  
   

Author must submit original work that:

• Has not appeared elsewhere for publication.
• Is not under review for another publication.
• Indicates how it differs from previously published work.

Author sequence in multi authored publication

• Authors often adopt different methods of crediting contributions, because of very different traditions across countries and research fields, resulting in very different criteria that committees adopt to quantify author's contributions
• Traditionally, the first author contributes most and also receives most of the credit, whereas the position of subsequent authors is usually decided by contribution, alphabetical order, or reverse seniority.
• Following informal practices in the biomedical sciences, the last author often gets as much credit as the first author, because he or she is assumed to be the driving force, both intellectually and financially, behind the research.
• some authors  detail each author's contribution in a footnote.
• If a group of people all contributed equally they might base it on who actually did the work of physically writing the paper. In some cases, a note is added saying "equally contributing first authors". 
• The person whose grant they’re actually working under can be listed first or as the las author. Sometimes their famous name will get the paper accepted.
• Most professors allow a student’s name to be listed first if the student did the majority of the work and the professor only provided guidance. However, not all professors abide by this and will list themselves first, reasoning that they are supporting the student (academically and generally financially) and that putting their name first makes it more likely to be published/read/cited. Also, some journals will not accept articles where the first author does not hold a PhD in the field.