This concise and readable set of editorial guidelines was first published by the European Association of Science Editors (EASE) in 2010 and is updated annually. It is freely available in more than 20 languages at http://ease.org.uk/ publications/author-guidelines. The document is aimed to help scientists worldwide in successful presentation of their research results and in correct translation of manuscripts into English. It briefly explains how to write complete, concise, and clear manuscripts, and draws attention to ethical issues: authorship criteria, plagiarism, conflict of interests, etc. Eight appendices provide examples or more detailed information on selected topics (Abstracts, Ambiguity, Cohesion, Ethics, Plurals, Simplicity, Spelling, and Text-tables). Widespread use of EASE Guidelines should increase the efficiency of international scientific communication. To make international scientific communication more efficient, research articles and other scientific publications should be COMPLETE, CONCISE, and CLEAR, as explained below.
These are generalized but not universal guidelines, intended to help authors, translators, and editors. Common sense is necessary when applying these rules, as perfection is impossible to reach. First of all: • Carefully plan and conduct your study (eg Hengl et al 2011). Do not begin drafting the whole paper until you are sure that your findings are reasonably firm and complete (O’Connor 1991), allowing you to draw reliable conclusions. • Before you start writing, preferably choose the journal to which you will submit your manuscript. Make sure that the journal’s readership corresponds to your target audience (Chipperfield et al 2010). Get a copy of the journal’s instructions to authors and plan the article to fit the journal’s preferred format in terms of overall length, number of figures required/allowed, etc. Manuscripts should be COMPLETE, ie no necessary information should be missing. Remember that information is interpreted more easily if it is placed where readers expect to find it (Gopen & Swan 1990). For example, the following information ought to be included in experimental research articles. • Title: should be unambiguous, understandable to specialists in other fields, and reflect the content of the article. Be specific, not general or vague (O’Connor 1991). If relevant, mention in the title the study period and location, the international scientific name of the studied organism or the experimental design (eg case study or randomized controlled trial). If your study included human subjects of one sex, it should be stated in the title. Information given in the title does not need to be repeated in the abstract (as they are always published jointly), although overlap is unavoidable. • List of authors, ie all people who contributed substantially to study planning, data collection or interpretation of results and wrote or critically revised the manuscript and approved its final version and agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work. Each person who meets the first criterion should be allowed to participate in the drafting and approval of the final version (ICMJE 2015). The authors listed first should be those who did most. The name order of authors should be determined before submission of the manuscript. Any changes made after submission should be approved by all authors and explained to the journal editor (Battisti et al 2015, see COPE flowcharts). Names of authors must be supplemented with their affiliations (during the study) and the present address of an author for correspondence. E-mail addresses of all authors should be provided, so that they can be contacted easily. • Abstract: briefly explain why you conducted the study (BACKGROUND), what question(s) you aimed to answer
(OBJECTIVES), how you performed the study (METHODS), what you found (RESULTS: major data, relationships), and your interpretation and main consequences of your findings (CONCLUSIONS). The abstract must reflect the content of the article, as for most readers it will be the major source of information about your study. You must use keywords within the abstract, to facilitate on-line searching for your article by those who may be interested in your results (many databases include only titles and abstracts). In a research report, the abstract should be informative, including actual results. (See Appendix: Abstracts about structured abstracts.) Only in reviews and other widescope articles, should the abstract be indicative, ie listing the major topics discussed but not giving outcomes (CSE 2014). Do not refer in the abstract to tables or figures, as abstracts are also published separately. References to the literature are also not allowed unless they are absolutely necessary (but then you need to provide detailed information in brackets: author, title, year, etc.). Make sure that all the information given in the abstract also appears in the main body of the article. • List of keywords: include all relevant scientific terms or only additional keywords that are absent from the title (if required by the editors). Keep the keywords specific. Add more general terms if your study has interdisciplinary significance (O’Connor 1991). In medical texts, use vocabulary found in the MeSH Browser. When archiving your article in repositories, etc. (Cerejo 2013), embed all keywords and other metadata in the file (eg see Inderscience 2013). DOI:10.20316/ESE.2016.42.e1 3 European Science Editing ©2016 European Association of Science Editors. Non-commercial printing allowed. November 2016; 42(4) e •
List of abbreviations (if required by the editors): define all abbreviations used in the article, except those obvious to non-specialists. • Introduction: explain why the study was needed and specify your research objectives or the question(s) you aimed to answer. Start from more general issues and gradually focus on your research question(s). • Methods: describe in detail how the study was carried out (eg study area, data collection, criteria, origin of analysed material, sample size, number of measurements, age and sex of participants or tissue/cell donors, equipment, data analysis, statistical tests, and software used). All factors that could have affected the results need to be considered. Sources of experimental materials obtained from biobanks should be mentioned with full names and identifiers, if available (Bravo et al 2015). If you cite a method described in a non-English or inaccessible publication, explain it in detail in your manuscript. Make sure that you comply with the ethical standards (eg WMA 2013) in respect of patient rights, animal testing, environmental protection, etc. • Results: present the new results of your study (usually published data should not be included in this section). All tables and figures must be mentioned in the main body of the article, and numbered in the order in which they appear in the text. Make sure that the statistical analysis is appropriate (eg Lang 2004). Data on humans, animals or any material originating from humans or animals, should be disaggregated by sex (see Heidari et al 2016). Do not fabricate or distort any data, and do not exclude any important data; similarly, do not manipulate images to make a false impression on readers. Such data manipulations may constitute scientific fraud (see COPE flowcharts). • Discussion: this section is not the place to present new results, including statistical results. Answer your research questions (stated at the end of the Introduction) and compare your main results with published data, as objectively as possible. Discuss their limitations and highlight your main findings. If your study included subjects of one sex, discuss the implications and potential to generalize your findings for both sexes. Consider any findings that run contrary to your point of view. To support your position, use only methodologically sound evidence (Roig 2011). At the end of the Discussion or in a separate section, emphasize your major conclusions and the practical significance of your study. • Acknowledgements: mention all people who contributed substantially to the study but cannot be regarded as co-authors, and acknowledge all sources of funding. The recommended form is: “This work was supported by the Medical Research Council [grant number xxxx]”. If no specific funding was provided, use the following sentence: “This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or notfor-profit sectors.” (RIN 2008). If relevant, disclose to the editors any other conflicts of interest, eg financial or personal links with the manufacturer or with an organization that has an interest in the submitted manuscript (Goozner et al 2009). If you reproduce previously published materials (eg figures), ask the copyright owners for permission and mention them in the captions or in the acknowledgements. If you were helped by a language professional (eg author’s editor or translator), a statistician, data collectors, etc., you should acknowledge their assistance for the sake of transparency (ICMJE 2015, Battisti et al 2015). It must be clear that they are not responsible for the final version of the article. You need to ensure you have the consent of all the people named in this section. (See Appendix: Ethics) • References: make sure that you have provided sources for all information extracted from other publications. In the list of references, include all data necessary to find them in a library or in the Internet. For non-English publications, give the original title (transliterated according to English rules if necessary), wherever possible followed by its translation into English in square brackets (CSE 2014). Avoid citing inaccessible, coercive and irrelevant references.
