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Publishing a research paper in a journal or conference is an important activity within the academic community. It allows you to network with other scholars and to further refine your ideas and research. Academic journals are probably the most common place for scholars to publish their research. Find the most suitable academic journal for your topic and writing style so you can tailor your research paper easily and increase its chance of being published.
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Familiarize yourself with potential publications. It is important to be aware of the research already published and the current questions and studies in your field. Pay special attention to how other research papers are written: the format, the type of articles (quantitative studies versus qualitative ones, primary research, review of existing papers), the writing style, the subject matter, and the vocabulary.
- Read academic journals related to your field of study.
- Search online for published research papers, conference papers, and journal articles.
- Ask a colleague or professor for a suggested reading list.
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Choose the publication that best suits your research paper. Each publication has its own audience and tone of writing. Decide if your research paper would fit better in a journal that is highly technical and meant only for other scholars or a journal that is more general in nature that would appeal to a broader audience.
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Prepare your manuscript. Format your research paper so it fits the guidelines for that publication. Most journals provide a document called "Instruction to Authors" or "Author's Guide" that offers specific instructions about layout, type font, and length. This guide will also tell you how to submit your paper and will provide details of the review process.
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Ask a colleague and/or professor to review your research paper. They should edit your paper for grammar, spelling errors, typos, clarity, and conciseness. At this time, they should also verify your content. Research papers need to present an issue that is significant and relevant. They should be clearly written, easy to follow, and appropriate for the intended audience. Have two or three people review your paper, more if possible.
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Revise your paper. It is likely you will go through three or four drafts before final submission of your research paper. Make a special effort to make your paper clear, engaging, and easy to follow. This will greatly increase your chances of being published.
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Submit your article. Go back to the Author's Guide to review submission requirements. Once you are satisfied that your paper meets all of the guidelines, submit the paper through the appropriate channels. Some journals allow online submission, while others prefer a hard copy.
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Keep trying. Sometimes journals will ask you to revise your paper and resubmit. Study their critiques carefully and make the necessary changes. Do not get over-attached to your original submission. Instead, remain flexible and rework the paper in light of the feedback you received. Use all of your skills as a researcher and a writer to create a superior paper. Even if you are ultimately rejected by your "target" publication, continue to re-write your research paper and submit it to other publications.
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“ This article will help you to write and publish your research paper. For Research Scholars doing Phd it is mandatory to publish their research papers at international level academic Journals or scholarly (Peer Reviewed) journals. And Many of the students who will apply for further studies in technical courses will discover that relevant published research papers help during admission process.So here I am trying to post some guidelines that you can follow … ”
1. Preliminary
The first activity for publishing a technical paper is to figure out your technical area of interest. Make sure the you had carried out enough studies on basics of that topic. Then you have you to update yourself with the ongoing technical happenings in your chosen field. You can do this by
(1) Reading and googling a lot of technical papers. There are a lot of journals and IEEE papers floating around in net.
(2) Go to one or more conferences, listen carefully to the best talks, and find out what people are thinking about.
Once you are done with the above mentioned steps, then you are eligible for writing a paper.
2. Read existing Papers
Read everything that might be relevant gives you different perspective of the focus topic. But be selective too, for not getting to much deviated from you topic of interest. Getting used to simulation software is much useful for simulating your work. You can find a lot of time during the days and utilize those holidays & free days.
3. A jump start
When you first start reading up on a new field, ask your fellow researcher what the most useful journals and conference proceedings are in your field, and ask for a list of important papers that you should read. This activity will give you a jump start.
4. Crack the jargons and terms
One of among the tough nuts to crack is to understand the paper published by others. The easiest way is to is by reading it many times. The more times you read the more will be revealed to you. Keep the Internet handy so that you can crack the jargons and terms, which you may find strange.
5. Write down your studies
Write down speculations, interesting problems, possible solutions, random ideas, references to look up, notes on papers you've read, outlines of papers to write, and interesting quotes. Read back through it periodically. Keeping a journal of your research activities and ideas is very useful.
6. Bits and pieces together
Now you can identify important open problems in your research field and also you will be very much aware of what you are doing and what you have to do. The more you go, you'll notice that the bits of random thoughts start to come together and form a pattern, which may be a bright enough for a good paper.
7. Simulation softwares easies
Please don't pick overly ambitious topics; instead identify a realistic size problem. Gather the Matlab files available in the Internet that is related to your topic and simulate it for the claimed results. Please don’t expect the Mfiles readily available for a solution published in a paper. But you can make it of your own by modifying and adding. Believe me, Matlab is a very easy tool! Once you are able to get the simulated outputs of your solution, you can carry on for making a paper out of it.
8. Essence of your work
The essence of your work can be diagnosed by analyzing below listed points. We can increase the maturity of the paper by improving these.
Significance: Why was this work done? Did you solve an important problem of current interest or is it an obscure or obsolete problem?
Originality/Novelty: Is your approach novel or is it tried-and-true? Did you need to develop new tools, either analytical or physical?
Completeness: Have you tested a wide range of scenarios, or is this just a simple proof-of-concept?
Correct: Is your solution technically sound or are there errors?
Consider improving the same.
9. Anatomy of paper
Generally a paper has seven sections and a maximum of four pages. They are
(1) Abstract,
(2) Introduction,
(3) Existing techniques,
(4) Your contribution,
(5) Results and,
(6) Conclusion.
10. The procedure
As a part of your paper publication, you can start documenting the ‘existing techniques’ from the scrap journal you did during the studies. Here you have to extract what all are the techniques existing as a solution for the particular problem and the pros and cons of those.
Next, document the 'introduction' about what is the topic and what you are going to do. Better to keep it short. Follows your contribution and the simulated results.
(1) Describe the problem
(2) State your contributions
"Abstract" is one section you can work on in the last, as it has to cover the all the sections very briefly. Please note that Abstract makes the committee members to decide whether or not to read your paper. Generally four lines are sufficient for this.
(1) State the problem
(2) Say why it's an interesting problem
(3) Say what your solution achieves
(4) Say what follows from your solution
11. Section by section
The divide-and-conquer strategy works on a day-to-day level as well. Instead of writing an entire paper, focus on the goal of writing a section, or outline. Remember, every task you complete gets you closer to finishing your paper.
12. Get a pre-review
Now your paper is ready. You can ask your peers or professors to review your paper. Next is to find the right place to publish it. You can start of with national level conferences, which often gets conducted in many universities. Then once you gain a level of confidence, you can proceed to international conferences and journals.
13. Read the reviews carefully
This is really, really, really hard. Only a small proportion, 5 to 10 percent, are accepted the first time they are submitted, and usually they are only accepted subject to revision. In fact, anything aside from simply "reject," Neal-Barnett reminds, is a positive review. These include:
* Accept: "Which almost nobody gets," she says.
* Accept with revision: "Just make some minor changes."
* Revise and resubmit: "They're still interested in you!"
* Reject and resubmit: Though not as good as revise and resubmit, "they still want the paper!"
Read every criticism as a positive suggestion for something you could explain more clearly
14. Don't panic
After reading the review the first time, put it aside. Come back to it later, reading the paper closely to decide whether the criticisms were valid and how you can address them. You will often find that reviewers make criticisms that are off-target because they misinterpreted some aspect of your paper. If so, don't let it get to you -- just rewrite that part of your paper more clearly so that the same misunderstanding won't happen again.
It's frustrating to have a paper rejected because of a misunderstanding, but at least it's something you can fix. On the other hand, criticisms of the content of the paper may require more substantial revisions -- rethinking your ideas, running more tests, or redoing an analysis.
15. Rejected? Be Positive
If your paper is rejected, keep trying! Take the reviews to heart and try to rewrite the paper, addressing the reviewer's comments. "Remember, to get a lot of publications, you also will need to get lots of rejections," says Edward Diener, PhD, editor of APA's Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Personality Processes and Individual Differences.
16. Common mistakes
Wrong sequence in Figure and Table numbering
Misalignment of columns
Usage of figures from another paper without credit and permission
17. Where to publish
Generally, there are three main choices:
* National Conference: A conference is the right place for beginner scholars, since the level of scrutiny is minimal. The conferences will accept papers which details about the comparison of existing technologies, mathematically proven but practically unproven proposals, etc.
* International Conference: A conference is the good play ground for Intermediated scholars. This mostly same as National Conference but the securitization will be more.
Conferences offer rapid time-to-publish, plus you will often get feedback on your work when you present it.
Page lengths and acceptance standards vary widely from conference to conference, but generally conference papers are shorter than full journal papers.
* Journal: Journal papers are generally the Alfa and Omega of publishing papers and they are considered as more prestigious than conferences.
