Basic guidelines for preparing an external publication

A journal article is a powerful tool for disseminating research. However, to get research published, read and fully understood, it is essential to present all information in a clear and structured manner to ensure that the reader can easily understand and appreciate your contributions.  Here we present some guidelines that may help PEP authors to improve the presentation of their papers.

Clarity of presentation

It is important to clearly explain and motivate the research issue and the methods of analysis used. The reader should not be distracted by less relevant information. This first step is decisive to attract the interest of the reader… and the evaluator.

Emphasizing the contribution of the paper relative to existing studies

To convince the reader of the valuable scientific contribution of the paper, authors should clearly indicate in their introduction what distinguishes their study from existing studies and how this is important in terms of scientific contributions. These contributions may be theoretical, methodological or empirical in nature. 

Structure of the paper.

An important aspect of presentation is the structuring of information into clearly defined sections. For instance, a typical structure for empirical research is the following:

1.      Introduction

2.      Theoretical framework

3.      Application and results

4.      Conclusions

5.      References

One must keep in mind that poor structure may create confusion and obscure messages. 

Writing Style

Even if the issues are relevant and important and the paper is well structured, a clear writing style is indispensable to a well presented paper. This task requires intensive effort and numerous revisions (by the authors and by colleagues if possible) in order to improve the structure of presentation of the paper, each section and each sentence.  

Support from PEP internal and external resource persons

PEP can help its researchers either through direct support from resource persons on its staff or by putting them into contact with external resource persons with specific expertise in their area of research. Whereas research conducted up until the approval of the final report must be conducted exclusively by the team itself, PEP is open to collaboration with other researchers, including researchers based in developed countries, if the team believes that this will improve their chances of publishing in a well-reputed journal. The decision is up to the members of the team itself. In all cases, PEP will continue to provide technical and scientific support to facilitate the publication based on PEP-funded research.