At this time of year, many people around the world reflect on the past 12 months and write resolutions to improve their habits and set goals for the new year to come. In honor of this tradition, we thought it would be good to consider some resolutions related to writing habits to get the new year’s publication tasks off on the right foot. The best resolutions are ones that focus on very specific aspects for improvement and have progress you can easily monitor. We think the resolutions below fit this criteria and can be useful to anyone – from beginners to experienced authors – looking to improve their writing and publishing output this year.

Use the active voice more. One of the most essential rules for academic writing, using the active voice makes your work more clear and concise. Sometimes it can feel more natural to write in the passive voice, but it unnecessarily drags out simple explanations about what was done and why. Most journals have a word limit for their articles and you want to maximize that space with key details and the implications of your findings, not unnecessary words.

Eliminate jargon. Many researchers have a bad habit of including subject-specific jargon in their manuscripts without noticing it. Unless your paper is likely only to be read by peers in your field, it is best to try and be aware when you are using terms that people in other fields may not understand. Once you’ve identified this jargon, try to replace it with simpler terms. If this isn’t possible, do your best to define or explain the term at first use so it doesn’t make reading the rest of the paper overly cumbersome.

Communicate better to your audience. For each paper or poster, think about what kind of information your specific audience wants or needs to know and tailor your writing to them. You know your study inside and out, but your readers don’t. Your manuscript must communicate the essential information needed for them to understand what you are trying to explain.

Improve your self-editing skills. When you’ve spent a lot of time on a paper it can start to become so familiar you don’t notice complicated or repetitive phrasing or even gaps in your logic. The ability to step back from your work and be critical of it can go a long way toward helping you improve your drafts before you pass it along to a journal and peer reviewers. Take a break once you think you’ve finished a draft and work on something else. When you come back to it, read it as if you were reading someone else’s study in a journal or from the perspective of a peer reviewer. What flaws do you find? Is there anything unclear in the presentation of the study and its implications?

Plan ahead. Deadlines for grants, conferences or journal submissions can often sneak up on you. Periodically throughout the year, assess the status of your ongoing studies and make realistic goals for what papers or posters can be written in time for any upcoming deadlines. Be sure to factor in time for peer review and revisions, as these can often take longer than expected. If you’re prepared in advance, you can avoid many last-minute stressors or the need to switch journals just to make your deadline.

Are there any other resolutions you’ve made for the coming year you can add to this list? What about your writing are you looking to improve?

by Amanda Hindle, Senior Editor published 2015-01-06