How to write a manuscript - · PDF fileHow to write a manuscript Get your paper accepted ... 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 Growth (%) Year ... (SPM), which provides

How to write a manuscript

Get your paper accepted

AIP Afternoon

Daniel Broaddus, PhD

Editor and Trainer, Liwen Bianji (Edanz Group China)

September 17, 2010

Presentation

� Introduction

� Section One: Preparations before writing

� Section Two: Manuscript structure

� Section Three: Tips for getting accepted

Liwen Bianji (Edanz Group China) | 2

� To share your research findings and opinions

with the international research community

� Publication success is linked to funding success

and career advancement

� Many PhD programs require candidates to

achieve a set number of peer-reviewed

publications


Why publish?

Increased competition


0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

1400

1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008

Growth (%)

Year

Journal numbers

Journal submissions

�Relative growth from 1990

� How to identify hot topics

� What do journal editors want?

� How do reviewers assess a manuscript?

� Choosing an appropriate journal


Section One Preparations before writing

Look for clues—

unexplained findings,

controversies

Read the literature,

including related

fields

Attend

international

meetings

�Greater interest = Greater competition

�Identify your advantages and use them

How to identify hot topics


Good quality science

� Positive peer review outcome

� Well designed and executed original research

� Findings of interest to the journal’s readership

� Work in an active research area (=citations!)

� Work that advances the field in some way

� Compliance with ethical regulations

� Clear, concise writing


What do journal editors want?

Reviewers About the manuscript


�Are the rationale and objectives defined?

� Is enough background given to understand the rationale?

�Could a capable researcher reproduce the experiments?

�Are the results clearly explained and in the best format?

�Are the findings described in context?

�Are the limitations discussed?

�Are the conclusions supported?

�Is the literature cited appropriate?

� Can be the difference between success and rejection

� What is the main focus of your research and who will

be interested in it?

� What are its strengths and weaknesses?

� How significant are your findings?

� Are your findings preliminary or are they sufficient to

make a story?

� How widely will your research appeal? To researchers

in the same field or to the broader scientific

community?

Journal Selection



Journal Selection what are the differences?

15.491

6.171

3.554 3.71

4.097

2.871

3.093

2.18

7.328

2000+

articles a

year

#1 in Atomic,

Molecular &

Chemical Physics

Also B, C &

Letters


� The ‘Yin’ and ‘Yang’

� Title

� Abstract

� Introduction

� Materials and Methods

� Results and

Discussion

� Display items

� References

Section Two Manuscript structure


The Yin and Yang


Introduction

Methods

Writing

Reading

Background

Title

Design

Abstract

Results and

Discussion

Journal

Selection

FeedbackPeer Review

Hook to catch

readers

Sells your

manuscript

to the editor

Relevant readers

increase citations

�Journal editors like citations

�Everybody likes citationsLiwen Bianji (Edanz Group China) | 14

The importance of your title

Poor

� Generation of few-cycle optical pulses at high-glass-

transmission wavelengths using a low-cost Er3+-

amplified carbon nanotube laser system via two-stage

broadening and compression for research and

applications in high-speed telecommunications, Part I:

System design

Good

� Generation of few-cycle optical pulses at telecom

wavelengths via a low-cost carbon nanotube laser

system


A good title

Short and easy to understand contents

Many researchers will only read the abstract so

must be able to ‘stand alone’

Must give an accurate summary of your research,

and enough information so that readers can

understand:

�What you did

�Why you did it

�What your findings are

�Why your findings are useful and important


Abstract

General rules for abstracts:

� Within the word limit

� Avoid technical jargon

� Avoid abbreviations unless necessary

� Avoid references

� Should the abstract be structured?

Always consult the target journal’s Guide for Authors to determine allowable length, style and abbreviations


Abstract

� Briefly present research question and/or hypotheses

and how they were addressed

� Give the reader enough background information to

put your work into context

� Do not write a comprehensive literature review of the

field

� Do cite reviews that readers can refer to if they want

more information

� Citations must be balanced, current, and relevant


Introduction

Recent implementations [of temporal-imaging systems] based on a four-

wave mixing (FWM) time-lens require synchronized pump and signal pulses.

The demand for ultrafast-pulse characterization and waveform-generation

techniques has driven research for high-bandwidth characterization systems.

This has led to the development of temporal-imaging and dispersion-based

techniques that exploit the space-time duality of electromagnetic fields.

This is achieved by extracting the pump and the signal from the same source

by spectral filtering. Conversely, using a separate mode-locked fiber laser

would provide the necessary bandwidth for ultrafast temporal imaging, but

would require repetition-rate locking using a feedback loop to achieve

synchronous operation. Ultimately, either of these schemes is restricted by

the types of signal that can be measured. Therefore, it is desirable to

develop a system in which high bandwidth pump pulses can be produced

on-demand via a simple external trigger.

In this paper, we propose and demonstrate a fully-triggerable temporal-

imaging system. We base our system on a time-lens-compressed

picosecond pulse source. The output of the pulsed time-lens source is then

spectrally broadened in non-zero dispersion-shifted fiber through self-phase

modulation (SPM), which provides the pulses with sufficient bandwidth for

ultrafast temporal imaging with high temporal resolution. We…


Temporal-imaging system with simple external-clock triggering

D. H. Broaddus, M. A. Foster, O. Kuzucu, A. C. Turner-Foster, K. W. Koch, M Lipson, and A. L. Gaeta

© 2010 Optical Society of America

Statement of the problem

Background

Rationale

What was done

� Clear subheadings for methods/materials

� Describe methods in the past tense

� Novel methods must be described in sufficient detail

for a capable researcher to reproduce the experiment

� Give manufacturers/suppliers and their locations

� Describe any statistical tests used

� Established methods can be referenced


Materials and methods What you did


3. Experiment

In order to create a suitable, triggerable pump pulse, we used a time-lens-compressed picosecond-pulse

source [20,21,26]. Unlike conventional ultrafast laser sources, the time-lens source derives its repetition

rate from an input RF signal rather than an oscillator cavity. This makes the source ideal for

synchronization, since the laser can be synchronized to a clock signal from any source as its input. While

it is true that this system can not be driven at an arbitrarily low repetition rate, a harmonic between 5–10

GHz that will allow for optimal operation of the system while still providing a synchronized pump pulse for

every signal pulse can be selected. At repetition rates above 10 GHz, electronic filtering can be used to

generate a suitable drive signal from the input clock. We obtained the clock signal from a…

3.2. Operation

Achieving fine resolution and long record lengths in temporal imaging systems requires sufficiently high

pump bandwidth. At the output of the time-lens source, the pulses had a bandwidth of 1 nm centered at

1546 nm. To increase the bandwidth, we added a spectral broadening stage to the pump source after the

time-lens compression stage. After passing the pulses through another EDFA, we sent them through 250

m of Corning Vascade LS+ fiber (Corning Inc., NY). The pulses underwent SPM and saw an increase in

bandwidth from 1 nm to 100 nm. We filtered a spectrally flat off-center section of the output roughly 10

nm in bandwidth at 1559 nm to serve as the pump pulse. After the broadening stage, we noted a large

amplitude noise at the output for high input intensities [27]. In order to maintain a suitable pump

output, we limited the pulse energy at the input of the Corning Vascade LS+ fiber to 2 nJ.

Materials

described

Reference

to save

space

Clear

subheadings

Detailed

information

given

Suppliers

and

locations


Materials and methods

� Often results and discussion are combined to help assemble your findings in a logical order to ‘tell a story’

� Present your findings in subsections (the same as those in your methods section)

� Present complementary evidence when possible

� Describe results in the past tense

� Refer to figures and tables in the present tense

� Discuss implications

� Do not duplicate data among figures, tables and text

� Show the results of statistical analyses in the text

� Put findings in perspective


Results and Discussion What did you find?


3. Results and discussion

We characterized our system’s single-shot performance by temporally resolving the output of a bandpass filtered mode-locked fiber laser, and by varying the delay on the signal showing 1.5-ps resolution over a record length of 220 ps. In addition, we calculate magnification factor to be 113×. Figure 7 shows a composite oscilloscope trace showing the timing of the signal pulse as it is varied over the entire record length. Figure 8 shows a blow-up of a single signal pulse demonstrating the temporal resolution of the system. Limited only by the signal repetition rate and magnification factor, the single-shot record length could easily be increased to the full 530 ps by frequency de-multiplexing the output into three channels [30]…

In addition, we characterized the small time-scale jitter over 2 µs. The experimental configuration allowed for high frame rates, which provided the ability to characterize consecutive pulses [30]. We used this ability to analyze the timing of 77 consecutive pulses from the fiber laser utilizing the sync out for the fiber laser as a timing reference. We found that the root-mean-square (RMS) value of the timing jitter was 0.27 ps over a 2-µs measurement period. The histogram in Fig. 8(b) showed the variation in pulse-to-pulse timing. The low RMS value of the jitter suggested that resolution could be further improved. We suspect that reducing phase aberrations from higher-order dispersion and the SPM broadening stage would likely yield the desired result.

Graphics used to

show data with

only brief

descriptions in

text

Present tense to

refer to table© 2010 Optical Society of America

Combined

Results and

Discussion

section

Past tense to

describe results

Results and Discussion

� Figures and tables are the best way to present your results

� Data shown in figures and tables must be easy to interpret — use separate

panels if necessary

� Avoid redundancies or duplication

� Clearly label all components

� Show trendlines, scale bars and statistical significance

� Captions must be able to ‘stand alone’: write them in the present tense

(except when describing methods)

� Comply with journal guidelines on display items


Display items Tables and figures

� Some readers will only look at the figures and their legends

Which of these is stand alone?

Liwen Bianji (Edanz Group China) (Edanz Group China) | 25

Display items Tables and figures

Fig. 1. Effective indices of As2Se3 microspheres, silicon nanowires, and silica nanowires. (a) Effective index vs. sphere diameter for fundamental TE (red) and TM (blue) modes in an As2Se3 microsphere. (b) Effective index vs. material index multiplied by cross sectional area of silicon (red) and silica (blue) waveguides.

Fig. 1. Calculated effective index.


Display items

Multi-panel: sets of

related data shown

in a single figure

Complicated data

separated into

simpler components

Axes clearly labeled

Fig. 9. The fringe period decreases with increasing separation. (a) 0.5 nm separation with movie showing phase procession between the lasers (Media 1). We believe the non-sinusoidal shape of these peaks arises from solitoneffect compression in the amplifier before the temporal imaging stage [31]. (b) 1.5 nm separation, and (c) 2.5 nm separation. (d) The phase slip between the two lasers, which are not phase-locked, washes out the fringes when averaged over multiple shots.

Clear, ‘stand

alone’ caption

� Restate key findings and their significance

� Propose future studies that might follow

on from your current study

� Give the reader a ‘take-home’ message


Conclusions

Conclusion

We demonstrated a completely triggerable temporal-imaging system. We characterized the system’s performance in both multi-shot and single-shot time-lens-based schemes.

We showed 1.4 ps resolution with 530 ps record length using time-to-frequency conversion. We demonstrated 1.5-ps resolution and 220-ps record length in a single-shot temporal magnification system. We characterized the short-term timing jitter present between our pump and signal pulses and showed it to be 0.27 ps, which corresponds to 18% of the temporal resolution.

This suggests that sub-picosecond resolution can be achieved in our system.

Finally, we illustrated the ability to perform complex waveform measurements by resolving the interference fringes between two frequency-separated laser pulses.

In addition to improving the resolution of the system, this system could be adapted to preform a combined phase and amplitude measurement. This would make the system more comparable with popular full-field characterization techniques such as FROG and SPIDER.


Restate the

question/problem

Restate main findings

Put in context of

previous work

Future research plans

Use ‘suggests’ and ‘may’


Conclusions

Your chance to acknowledge anyone who has helped with the

study:

� Individuals who’s contributions did not warrant authorship

�Any researchers that supplied materials or reagents

�Anyone who provided technical assistance

�Anyone who helped with the preparation of the manuscript

or provided a critical assessment of it

�Funding bodies

State why each individual is being acknowledged


Acknowledgments

� References make or break a paper!

� Serve as your network to past and future science

� Convey your knowledge of the field

� Give credibility to your work

� Acknowledge contributions to the field by others

� Help other researchers find your work = more

citations

� Use a reference manager like Endnote or Zotero. Makes it

easy to edit, reformat, add or remove references


References

� Seminal work in your field (Papers that started the field)

� All methods used

� Physical phenomena discussed

� Non-commercial materials used

� Conflicting works

� Outside areas � Applications!


References

�Your cover letter

�Recommending reviewers

�Language

�Good writing

�Common language problems

�Post-referee revisions

�Summary

Section Three Tips for getting accepted


General rules for cover letters:

�Address to the editor personally

�Begin by giving your manuscript title and publication type

�Give a brief background, rationale and description of results

�Explain why your findings are important and why they would be

of interest to the journal’s target audience

�Consult the journal’s Guide for Authors for cover letter

requirements (e.g., disclosures, statements, potential reviewers)

�Give corresponding author details

Your cover letter


Recommend

� Your work supports their hypotheses and ideas

� Your research builds on their work

� International collaborators in the same field

Exclude

� Researchers working on the same research question

� Your study refutes their work

� The findings in your manuscript are are opposite to their

findings or ideas

Reviewers Recommendations and exclusions


Introduction of language

screening protocols to

check submissions

� Editors don’t want to send poorly written manuscripts for

peer review

� Editors receive enough well written submissions to reject

poorly written manuscripts

Language screening


Language


Some journals are very clear regarding their English requirements,

and about what happens to manuscripts that do not meet their

standards…

Journal of Applied Physics

Language: Papers must be written in standard American English.

This is the responsibility of the author, not the editors. Papers

below the standard for the Journal will be returned to the

authors for rewriting and can be rejected for this reason alone.

Such problems may be avoided and publication expedited if the

manuscript is edited by an English-speaking colleague or a

professional editing service before the initial submission.

�Clarity

�Conciseness

�Correctness (accuracy)

Good scientific writing possesses the following three “C”s:

Key points:

�Be as brief as possible without omitting essential details

�Be as specific as possible

Scientific writing


�Tense

�Articles

�Plural or singular

�Proper nouns

�Hyphen or dash

�That/which

�Making comparisons

�Respectively

�Between or among

�Nomenclature

�Numbers

�Punctuation

�Such as/namely

�Etc.

�Asian fonts

�UK or US spelling

Language Common English problems


Use simple language: it is often clearer, more precise and

more concise than using more complex language

�Simple Sentence Structure!

�Say what you mean in as few words as possible

�Delete unnecessary words

�Avoid circular sentences, redundancies and repetition

�One sentence: one idea

Simple is best


�Only 1.5% of papers are immediately accepted without

need for any revisions

Journal editor

decision

Complete rejection

Acceptance

Rejection with major revisions

Rejection with minor revisions

Revisions Post-referee revisions


Reasons for rejection:

� Inappropriate target journal

� Poor study design

� Poor written language

� Inappropriate or incompletely explained methodology

� Inappropriate statistical tests

� Incorrect description or overstatement of results

� Lack of balance or detail in introduction and/or discussion

� Lack of novelty



�Rejection from journals is an important part of the

publication process

�It is not a negative experience

It exists to ensure that your paper is as scientifically

robust and complete as possible before joining the

‘collective knowledge’ as part of the literature



� Compliance with ethics guidelines

� Novel and interesting results

� Clear, concise, accurate writing

� Compliance with the Guide for Authors

� Significance of findings explained

� Appropriate choice of journal

Summary Checklist for acceptance

Special thanks to our organizer, Professor Ai;

and sponsors:

Documents

How to write a manuscript - · PDF fileHow to write a manuscript Get your paper accepted ... 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 Growth (%) Year ... (SPM), which provides