英文原文: Submitting your paper: final checks If
you have written your paper, critically self-evaluated it and/or asked a
colleague to evaluate it, and believe it to be as scientifically robust
and well written as possible, you are ready to submit it to your target
journal. You should by now have selected the most appropriate journal
for your paper and written a convincing cover letter to the editor.
Check that all of the instructions in the target journal’s Guide for
Authors are complied with—if any are not, then these should be addressed
before the paper is submitted or they could cause delays later on. This
includes ensuring that the manuscript and any figure files are saved in
the appropriate file format and of the requested resolution. Most
journals encourage online submission, which usually requires registering
with the target journal and setting up a submission account. This is a
step-by-step procedure in which details such as full names, departmental
addresses, highest degrees awarded and full contact information for all
authors, not just the corresponding author, are usually requested.
Following registration of an account, the submitting author will be able
to upload all relevant files, including manuscript file, cover letter,
separate figure files and any supplementary material files, to the
journal’s online submission system. Some journals request submission
by post, which requires posting the requested number of identical
printed copies of the manuscript along with an electronic copy of all
files on a CD. Frequently, each author is required to sign a declaration
agreeing to the submission to the journal of a paper bearing their
name, although some journals now verify this by e-mail. During the
submission process, there might be a requirement to pay any submission
costs, although publication costs are not usually requested until after a
manuscript is accepted. Any figures or other content that are being
reproduced or modified from previously published work will require the
appropriate permissions, and these are sometimes requested at the time
of submission. If a manuscript is accepted, the copyrights to the
manuscript will need to be transferred to the publisher; the relevant
forms for copyright transfer are sometimes made available during the
submission process. The submission process sometimes allows you to
recommend or exclude potential reviewers of your manuscript. If not, it
is usually worthwhile doing so in your cover letter. The journal editors
will try to appoint independent experts as reviewers, but will also be
aware that many fields are intensely competitive among labs. They will
also appreciate that your unpublished data needs to be treated
sensitively, and that it might not be appropriate to put that in the
hands of a competitor working on the same thing. Thus, it will help them
to know who might be a ‘friendly’ reviewer and who might be less
friendly. The editors will almost certainly not appoint only the
reviewers you suggest and exclude all those you ask to be excluded, but
they will use the information you provide to make an objective decision
about who should and who should not review your paper. In choosing
who to recommend as a potential peer reviewer, you should consider any
researchers whose hypotheses and ideas your work supports; for example,
if your work builds on previously published work, extending or
confirming the findings of that work, then the senior author(s) on such a
study would likely be a good candidate reviewer. A look through your
reference list will help you to identify such candidates, and reading
their papers closely will give you an idea of whether their thoughts are
in line with your own, or perhaps opposed to them. Ideally, recommend
senior researchers in the field who have propounded ideas that would be
supported by the findings of your study. International collaborators in
the same field also represent potential ‘friendly’ reviewers, although
if you have previously co-published work with those researchers the
journal editors might exclude them for potentially being bias. Working
out who to exclude can be more difficult, but if you know that some
other lab is working closely on the same thing, perhaps because you have
seen researchers from that lab speak or present a poster at a recent
meeting, it would be a good idea to ask the editors to exclude the
Principle Investigator of that lab as a candidate reviewer. Also ask the
editors to exclude researchers whose hypotheses or ideas are known to
run counter to those suggested in your manuscript. Of course, any
reviewers that are appointed will be asked to be completely objective in
their assessment of your manuscript. Moreover, the editors will also be
able to assess your manuscript to some degree and identify if the
points raised by the reviewers are fair or not. If completely polarized
reports (for example, one very positive and one very negative) are
received, the editors may choose to appoint additional reviewers and
delay a decision on your manuscript until they are satisfied with the
reports they receive. Ultimately, if you have designed and executed your
study well, show something novel and interesting, and written a clear
and concise manuscript complying with the instructions for authors, you
will have maximized your chances of getting over the final hurdle before
acceptance.