how to write a research journal article in engineering and science

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Writing a Research Paper

Asme journals digital submission tool guidelines and information, writing a research paper or technical brief.

Only original contributions to the engineering literature are accepted for publication; work should incorporate substantial information not previously published.

Permissions

If a submission contains excerpts from other copyrighted material (including without limitation any diagrams, photographs, figures or text), it is the responsibility of the authors to acquire in writing all necessary rights from third parties to include those materials in a submission. In addition, appropriate credit for that third-party material must be included in footnotes, figure/table captions, Acknowledgements, References or Bibliography. This is part of the Terms and Conditions of the Copyright Transfer Agreement required form each author prior to publication of an accepted submission.

Resources The Office of Research Integrity has the following guide that may be a useful reference: Avoiding Plagiarism, Self-Plagiarism, and Other Questionable Writing Practices: A Guide to Ethical Writing.

Accuracy It is of the greatest importance that all technical, scientific, and mathematical information contained in the paper be checked with the utmost care.

It is ASME policy that SI units of measurement be included in all papers. When U.S. customary units are given preference, the SI equivalent should be provided in parentheses or in a supplementary table. When preference is given to SI units, the U.S. customary units should be provided in parentheses or in a supplementary table.

A research paper should not exceed 12,000 words. Beyond this amount, a mandatory excess-page charge can be assessed. These charges are described here: Publication Charges .

To estimate figures and tables:

• 1 journal page = 1000 words
• Half-journal page or a single column = 500 words
• Half-column = 250 words
• Quarter column = 125 words.

The Editor reserves the right to send papers that exceed the length limitation back to the author(s) for shortening before initiating the review process.

Elements of a Paper

The basic elements of a paper or brief are listed below in the order in which they should appear:

• author names and affiliations
• body of paper
• acknowledgments
• nomenclature
• figures and tables

Text: 9 or 10 pt. Times Roman medium (or equivalent typeface), justified, with single line spacing

The title of the paper should be concise and definitive.

Author Names and Affiliations

It is ASME policy that all those who have participated significantly in the technical aspects of a paper be recognized as co-authors or cited in the acknowledgments. Author name should consist of first name (or initial), middle initial, and last name. The author affiliation should consist of the following, as applicable, in the order noted:

• university or company (with department name or company division)
• mailing address
• city, state, zip code
• country name (other than the U.S.)
• e-mail (university or company email addresses should be used whenever possible)

An abstract (250 words maximum) should open the paper or brief. The purpose of the abstract is to give a clear indication of the objective, scope, and results so that readers may determine whether the full text will be of particular interest to them.

The text should be organized into logical parts or sections. The purpose of the paper should be stated at the beginning, followed by a description of the problem, the means of solution, and any other information necessary to properly qualify the results presented and the conclusions. The results should be presented in an orderly form, followed by the author'/s conclusions.

Headings and subheadings should appear throughout the work to divide the subject matter into logical parts and to emphasize the major elements and considerations. Parts or sections may be numbered, if desired, but paragraphs should not be numbered.

Equations should be numbered consecutively beginning with (1) to the end of the paper, including any appendices. The number should be enclosed in parentheses and set flush right in the column on the same line as the equation. It is this number that should be used when referring to equations within the text. Equations should be referenced within the text as "Eq. (x)." When the reference to an equation begins a sentence, it should be spelled out, e.g., "Equation (x)."

Formulas and equations should be created to clearly distinguish capital letters from lowercase letters. Care should be taken to avoid confusion between the lowercase "l"(el) and the numeral one, or between zero and the lowercase "o." All subscripts, superscripts, Greek letters, and other symbols should be clearly indicated.

In all mathematical expressions and analyses, any symbols (and the units in which they are measured) not previously defined in nomenclature should be explained. If the paper is highly mathematical in nature, it may be advisable to develop equations and formulas in appendices rather than in the body of the paper.

All figures (graphs, line drawings, photographs, etc.) should be numbered consecutively and have a caption consisting of the figure number and a brief title or description of the figure. This number should be used when referring to the figure in text. Figure references should be included within the text in numerical order according to their order of appearance. Figures should be referenced within the text as "Fig. 1." When the reference to a figure begins a sentence, the abbreviation "Fig." should be spelled out, e.g., "Figure 1." A separate list of figure numbers and their respective captions should be included at the end of the paper (for production purposes only). ASME accepts .tiff (.tif) or .eps file formats for figures.

• TIFF (Tag Image File Format) is for bitmap images (spatially mapped array of bits).
• EPS (Encapsulated Postscript) is for vector graphics (mathematical expressions of geometrical primitives).

Images created in Word can opened in Adobe Acrobat and saved as .tif or .eps

Figure files greater than 15MB should be checked to see if layers were merged.

All tables should be numbered consecutively and have a caption consisting of the table number and a brief title. This number should be used when referring to the table in text. Table references should be included within the text in numerical order according to their order of appearance. Tables should be inserted as part of the text as close as possible to its first reference — with the exception of those tables included at the end of the paper as an appendix. A separate list of table numbers and their respective captions should be included at the end of the paper (for production purposes only).

Video Files

Currently, the ASME Journal Tool does not accommodate the submission of video files. Authors can contact the Editor by email if they have video files. If accepted by the Editor for review, ASME will provide information for transferring the files by FTP.

Video files should augment a figure that is included in the paper since they will be included as part of the peer-review of the paper, and if accepted for publication, part of the archival version of the paper.

The following file formats can be accepted for video files:

Supplemental Material

Go to “ Supplemental Material ” for information on this.

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments may be made to individuals or institutions not mentioned elsewhere in the work who have made an important contribution.

Funding Information

Funding information provided will be placed at the end of the Acknowledgment section.

Nomenclature

Nomenclature should follow customary usage. For reference, consult American National Standards Institute (ANSI) recommendations. The nomenclature list should be in alphabetical order (capital letters first, followed by lowercase letters), followed by any Greek symbols, with subscripts and superscripts last, identified with headings.

Sample Nomenclature

• Pages must be paginated.
• Highly technical terms or phraseology must be explained and defined.
• The use of the first person and reference to individuals should be made in such a manner as to avoid personal bias.
• Company names should be mentioned only in the acknowledgments.
• All papers should be concise regardless of length.
• Long quotations should be avoided by referring to sources.
• Illustrations and tables must be kept to a practicable minimum.
• Detailed drawings, lengthy test data and calculations, and photographs not integral to the understanding of the subject, should be omitted.
• Equations should be kept to a reasonable minimum, and built-up fractions within sentences should be avoided.
• Spell out all acronyms on first use. Put the acronym in parentheses immediately after the spelled-out term.
• All lines of the initial submission must be numbered.

Within the text, references should be cited in numerical order according to their order of appearance. The numbered reference citation within text should be enclosed in brackets.

Example: It was shown by Prusa [1] that the width of the plume decreases under these conditions.

All references must include a DOI.

In the case of two citations, the numbers should be separated by a comma [1,2]. In the case of more than two references, the numbers should be separated by a dash [5-7].

Note: ASME primarily uses the Chicago Manual of Style for reference format. Authors are encouraged to seek out precise instructions via: http://www.ChicagoManualofStyle.org. ASME does not allow references to Wikipedia.

Sample References

References should be listed together at the end of the paper; footnotes should not be used for this purpose.

References should be arranged in numerical order according to the sequence of citations within the text. Each reference should include the last name of each author followed by initials.

Website Content

• [2] Wayne, John “John Cowboy Videos 2009,” YouTube video, 7:00, November 13, 2009, http://www.you tube.com/ watch?v= aBcDeFgH9yz.
• [3] “Apple Privacy Policy,” last modified February 4, 2009, accessed July 19, 2010, http://www.apple.com/intl/en/privacypolicy.html.
• [17] “WD2000: Visual Basic Macro to Assign Clipboard Text to a String Variable,” revision 1.3, Microsoft Help and Support, last modified November 23, 2006, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/212730.
• Note: If a site ceases to exist before publication, or if the information is modified or deleted, this must be included: [8] As of February 22, 2013, Sullivan was claiming on her website that … (a claim that had disappeared from her page by March 4, 2013).

Journal Articles and Papers in Serial Publications

• [3] Adams, Z., 2014, “Bending of an Infinite Beam on an Elastic Substrate,” ASME J Appl. Mech., 3, pp. 221-228.
• [9] Zhang, T. W., Khun, C., Liu, Q., and Miller, A. P., 2011, “Self-Healing Techniques,” Nature, 332(6662), pp. 888-892.

Textbooks and Monographs

• [10] Gibson, T.A., and Tucker, M. T., 2008, The Big Book of Cellular Studies, John Wiley and Sons, NY.

Chapter Within a Book

• [32] Stevens, T. T., 1999, “Stochastic Fields and Their Digital Simulation,” Stochastic Methods. T. A. Sulle, and M. Siiu, eds., Martinius Publishers, Dordrecht, Germany, pp. 22-36.

Individual Conference Papers/Papers in Compiled Proceedings/Collection of Works by Numerous Authors

• [21] Wions, T. T., and Mills, C. D., 2006, “Structural Dynamics in Parallel Manipulation,” Proceedings of the IDETC/CIE, New Orleans, LA, September 10-13, 2005, ASME Paper No. DETC2005-99532, pp. 777-798.

Theses and Technical Reports

• [1] Oligaria, T. T., Fredy, C. W., Popullo, A. Z., and Tucker, M. A., 20111, “Characterization of PKM Dynamics,” SAE Technical Paper No. 2011-02-8345, 07ATC-96.
• [25] Mollen, T., P., 2014, “Use of General Nonlinear Material in Articulated Systems,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Boston, Boston, MA.
• [27] Clinton, D., 2013, “Review of Rocket Technology,” NASA Report No. NASA RE-8842.

Books Consulted Online

• [23] Smith, John, 2014, A Dog’s Life in Berlin. Oxford University Press, New York. Doi: 10.1055/acprof.oso/97890.0394.000.

Citing ASME Journal Titles

In order to improve the accuracy of citation data collection, ASME is standardizing on the following abbreviations for the titles in the ASME Journal Program. Authors should use these abbreviations for ASME titles in their references:

Journal Statements:

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Academic Writing for Engineering Publications

A Guide for Non-native English Speakers

• © 2022
• Zhongchao Tan 0

Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

• Designed for non-native English writers who are studying and working in English-speaking countries
• Uses hundreds of examples and emphasizes essential cultural difference for non-native English writers
• Includes essentials of copyright and plagiarism, to help writers avoid challenges from readers or copyright holders

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Table of contents (17 chapters)

Front matter, introduction.

Zhongchao Tan

Academic Integrity

Organization of ideas, preparing for writing, drafting introduction, drafting methodology, drafting results and discussion, drafting conclusions, drafting other sections, engineering language skills, engineering language, phrases and words, punctuation, finalization.

• academic writing
• engineering publications
• Writing for Science and Engineering
• Writing for Engineers and Scientists
• The Craft of Science Writing

About this book

This textbook is designed for non-native English speakers who need to write scientific and engineering research articles, technical reports, engineering thesis, academic books, and other technical documents in English. The author focuses on formal academic writing in a professional language and frame. The book is written in standard English and provides useful guidelines on development of thoughts, organization of ideas, construction of paragraphs and sentences, and choices of precise words. It also pays attention to details such as visual creation, punctuation, and format. Informal writing is excluded from the scope of this practical guideline.

Authors and Affiliations

About the author.

Zhongchao Tan is a professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Waterloo. He received his BSc and MSc degrees from Tsinghua University, Beijing, and PhD Degree from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA. He was the former Associate Dean (International) of Waterloo Engineering and the founding Executive Director of Tsinghua-Waterloo Joint Research Centre for Energy and Environmental Technologies. In addition, Tan has provided dedicated services to several international professional societies including Canadian Society of Chemical Engineering and Canadian Society of Mechanical Engineering.

Bibliographic Information

Book Title : Academic Writing for Engineering Publications

Book Subtitle : A Guide for Non-native English Speakers

Authors : Zhongchao Tan

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99364-1

Publisher : Springer Cham

eBook Packages : Education , Education (R0)

Copyright Information : The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022

Hardcover ISBN : 978-3-030-99363-4 Published: 20 July 2022

Softcover ISBN : 978-3-030-99366-5 Published: 21 July 2023

eBook ISBN : 978-3-030-99364-1 Published: 19 July 2022

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : XIV, 234

Number of Illustrations : 10 b/w illustrations, 24 illustrations in colour

Topics : Engineering/Technology Education , Writing Skills , Science and Technology Studies , Media and Communication

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Writing in the Sciences and Engineering

Writing for the Sciences Workshop Videos

Writing for the Sciences Workshops : Recorded GWC workshops focusing on writing in the sciences and engineering, such as dissertation proposals, journal articles, and article-based dissertations.

Comprehensive or General Websites

Writing Guidelines for Engineering and Science Students : This Penn State website offers suggestions for writing presentations, correspondence, lab reports, grant proposals, articles, and theses/dissertations in the sciences and engineering.

Writing in the Sciences : This course, provided by Stanford University, is free to audit through Coursera. It addresses general writing strategies as well as best practices for writing a scientific manuscript.

Writing in Science : This Colorado State University website describes the various sections of scientific papers in some detail, with a focus on the “scientific voice” and examples of successful scientific writing.

Genres of Scientific Writing

Theses and dissertations.

Theses and Dissertations : This page from the Virginia Tech writing website offers a variety of “how-to” guides and templates for formatting and organizing a dissertation or thesis in the sciences.

Policies and procedures for UCLA thesis and dissertation preparation and filing : This PDF file contains all the official details about preparation and submission of a thesis or dissertation so that it will be accepted by the UCLA Library and Graduate Division. A necessary document, so read it carefully! You should also consider attending a presentation at the library early in the quarter you plan on filing, which presents much of the information in the PDF. Meeting schedule .

Dissertations : This page, from the UNC Chapel Hill Writing Center, offers suggestions for managing and successfully completing the dissertation process. It focuses more on lifestyle and psychological issues than writing tips, but these may be more of a challenge for dissertation writers than the research and writing themselves!

Lovitts, B. E., & Wert, E. L. (2008). Developing quality dissertations in the sciences: A graduate student’s guide to achieving excellence . Stylus Publishing. A concise booklet designed to define and explain expectations for dissertations in the sciences.

Journal Articles

Getting Published and Increasing Your Visibility: From “Making the Right Moves: A Practical Guide to Scientific Management for Postdocs and New Faculty” (by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Burroughs Wellcome Fund), this chapter focuses on publishing academic articles in the sciences, with a particular focus on the biomedical sciences.

How to Write a Paper in Scientific Journal Style and Format : While this site is primarily targeted towards undergraduate writers first learning the scientific writing style, it contains useful basic information about how to construct a scientific article. Developed by Greg Anderson of Bates College, it utilizes many examples to compare more and less effective ways of writing each section of the paper.

Writing and Publishing a Scientific Paper : Written by Joe Wolfe, Professor of Physics at the University of New South Wales, this webpage provides valuable advice on how to write a scientific article and get it published.

Writing and Editing for Biomedical Publications : These extensive guidelines from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors are targeted towards biomedical journals, but they contain useful information for scientific writers in other fields. The site’s particular focus on the ethics of publication makes it a valuable resource for all writers.

Writing in the Sciences : This website from the WAC Clearinghouse gives an overview of writing a scientific paper for publication.

Posters and Presentations

Rethinking the Design of Presentation Slides : In this PowerPoint presentation, Michael Alley (Penn State College of Engineering) offers suggestions for improving the impact and comprehension of scientific results presented through PowerPoint slides.

Presentation Tips : This website, by Garr Reynolds of Kansai Gaidai University’s Department of Marketing, provides tips on professional presentation, including numerous suggestions for content, slide design, and presentation style. You can also check out his blog at Presentation Zen .

Design of Scientific Posters : This page contains specific stylistic suggestions for effective poster design, as well as numerous examples of well-designed posters and downloadable PowerPoint templates for posters of various sizes.

Creating Effective Poster Presentations : This site focuses on how to design scientific posters so that they deliver the greatest impact, with specific recommendations for layout, text, images, color, etc.

Guidelines for Giving a Poster Presentation : This page, written for the American Society of Primatologists, includes suggestions for poster design but also poster presentation – how to effectively discuss your poster at a professional conference.

Grant and Fellowship Proposals

Getting Funded : From “Making the Right Moves: A Practical Guide to Scientific Management for Postdocs and New Faculty” (by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Burroughs Wellcome Fund), this chapter focuses on grant writing and offers valuable suggestions for applying for major NIH and NSF grants. The same principles apply to graduate funding opportunities from those agencies.

US National Science Foundation Guide for Proposal Writing : Helpful suggestions from the NSF for writing proposals to their grant and fellowship programs. Keep in mind that this file dates from 2004, so it should supplement the current funding cycle’s program-specific materials for NSF applicants.

Advice on Writing Proposals to the National Science Foundation : Written by Susan Finger, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, this page offers concrete suggestions for those submitting grant proposals to NSF.

U.S. National Institutes of Health Grant Writing Tutorials : The NIH is the primary funding agency for biomedical research in the US. These pages include links to various helpful NIH publications and websites dedicated to preparing successful applications to various Institutes within the NIH.

Grant Proposals (Or Give Me the Money!) : From the UNC Chapel Hill Writing Center, this handout describes the grant writing process and provides specific suggestions to improving the argument in your proposal, as well as useful examples for how to present budgets and timelines.

Lab Reports

LabWrite : This site, devoted to writing better lab reports, contains separate sections for students, lab instructors, and faculty, and offers downloadable, printable template forms and online interactive resources for improving lab reports. This site is especially useful for TAs teaching in lab courses.

Writing in Specific Scientific Fields

Biological sciences.

Review Paper for the Biological Sciences : This online guide, from Colorado State University, focuses on the parameters and challenges of writing a review paper in the biological sciences.

Engineering Sciences

Engineers on Writing : This site, from Colorado State University, includes videos of professors, academic researchers, and corporate engineers talking about how they use writing in their professional activities, with specific suggestions for writing in engineering.

Writing in Engineering : This site, from Colorado State University, contains more general guidelines for engineering writing, including field-specific suggestions for civil, mechanical, and electrical engineering.

On-Line Handbook : This guide, from the University of Toronto’s Engineering Communication Centre, focuses on report and article writing for engineers, in addition to techniques for oral presentation of engineering results.

Writing Technical Articles : This page from Columbia University offers suggestions for article writing and links to helpful writing resources.

Writing Engineering Reports : This set of online resources from Purdue's Online Writing Lab focuses on a set of civil engineering reports and uses them as the basis for numerous suggestions related to writing technical reports for engineers in industry.

IEEE Style Guide : This standard style guide (updated in 2016) is used by most engineering journals and is a necessary reference for those publishing in engineering.

English Solutions to Engineering Research Writing [PDF] : This free ebook, by Adam Turner at Hanyang University in Korea, is jam-packed with writing tips for not just engineers but grad students in all disciplines. Turner has chapters on formal email, how Google and Adobe Acrobat Reader can help you locate discipline-specific grammar and word choice, sentence structure basics, paragraph structure, and the structure and grammar of an (engineering) research article.

Health Sciences

Writing in the Health Sciences: This set of resources from the University of North Carolina contains resources related to copyright, references, and organization, as well as links to additional resources.

Handbook of Biomedical Research Writing : Written for Korean biomedical scientists writing in English, this handbook, by Jocelyn Graf, covers the different parts of a journal article (and grammatical problems common to each part), as well as clinical case reports, correspondence with journal editors, and responses to reviewers.

Writing Statistical Results

UCLA Statistical Consulting : UCLA Statistical Consulting offers a variety of services, including seminars and workshops on various statistical computing topics and walk-in statistics help.

Plagiarism in Scientific Writing

Paraphrasing, Plagiarism, and Misrepresentation in Scientific Writing : Written by Mark Eberle of the Department of Biological Sciences at Fort Hays State University, this paper discusses the continuum from plagiarism to misrepresentation and gives useful examples of correct paraphrasing that avoid both extremes.

Scientific Reference Materials

The New Oxford Dictionary for Scientific Writers and Editors : This searchable reference dictionary for scientists gives special attention to commonly accepted spellings, punctuation, and abbreviation of key scientific terms, and includes vocabulary not present in conventional dictionaries.

To report a broken link, please email us at [email protected] .

Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

Writing in Engineering

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice.

Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.

In this section

Subsections.

Preparing your manuscript

The title page should:

• present a title that includes, if appropriate, the research design
• if a collaboration group should be listed as an author, please list the Group name as an author and include the names of the individual members of the Group in the “Acknowledgements” section in accordance with the instructions below
• Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT , do not currently satisfy our authorship criteria . Notably an attribution of authorship carries with it accountability for the work, which cannot be effectively applied to LLMs. Use of an LLM should be properly documented in the Methods section (and if a Methods section is not available, in a suitable alternative part) of the manuscript
• indicate the corresponding author

The abstract should briefly summarize the aim, findings or purpose of the article. Please minimize the use of abbreviations and do not cite references in the abstract. 

Three to ten keywords representing the main content of the article.

Introduction

The Introduction section should explain the background to the study, its aims, a summary of the existing literature and why this study was necessary.

This should include the findings of the study including, if appropriate, results of statistical analysis which must be included either in the text or as tables and figures.

Discussion (can be combined in ‘Results and Discussion’ section)

For research articles this section should discuss the implications of the findings in context of existing research and highlight limitations of the study. For methodology manuscripts this section should include a discussion of any practical or operational issues involved in performing the study and any issues not covered in other sections.

Conclusions

This should state clearly the main conclusions and provide an explanation of the importance and relevance of the study to the field.

Methods/Experimental (can also be placed after Introduction)

The methods section should include:

• the aim, design and setting of the study
• the characteristics of participants or description of materials
• a clear description of all processes and methodologies employed. Generic names should generally be used. When proprietary brands are used in research, include the brand names in parentheses
• the type of statistical analysis used, including a power calculation if appropriate

studies involving human participants, data or tissue or animals must include statement on ethics approval and consent

List of abbreviations

If abbreviations are used in the text they should be defined in the text at first use, and a list of abbreviations should be provided.

Declarations

All manuscripts must contain the following sections under the heading 'Declarations':

Availability of data and materials

Competing interests, authors' contributions, acknowledgements.

• Authors' information (optional)

Please see below for details on the information to be included in these sections.

If any of the sections are not relevant to your manuscript, please include the heading and write 'Not applicable' for that section.

All manuscripts must include an ‘Availability of data and materials’ statement. Data availability statements should include information on where data supporting the results reported in the article can be found including, where applicable, hyperlinks to publicly archived datasets analysed or generated during the study. By data we mean the minimal dataset that would be necessary to interpret, replicate and build upon the findings reported in the article. We recognise it is not always possible to share research data publicly, for instance when individual privacy could be compromised, and in such instances data availability should still be stated in the manuscript along with any conditions for access.

Data availability statements can take one of the following forms (or a combination of more than one if required for multiple datasets):

• The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are available in the [NAME] repository, [PERSISTENT WEB LINK TO DATASETS]
• The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
• All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article [and its supplementary information files].
• The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are not publicly available due [REASON WHY DATA ARE NOT PUBLIC] but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
• Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.
• The data that support the findings of this study are available from [third party name] but restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for the current study, and so are not publicly available. Data are however available from the authors upon reasonable request and with permission of [third party name].
• Not applicable. If your manuscript does not contain any data, please state 'Not applicable' in this section.

More examples of template data availability statements, which include examples of openly available and restricted access datasets, are available  here .

SpringerOpen  also requires that authors cite any publicly available data on which the conclusions of the paper rely in the manuscript. Data citations should include a persistent identifier (such as a DOI) and should ideally be included in the reference list. Citations of datasets, when they appear in the reference list, should include the minimum information recommended by DataCite and follow journal style. Dataset identifiers including DOIs should be expressed as full URLs. For example:

Hao Z, AghaKouchak A, Nakhjiri N, Farahmand A. Global integrated drought monitoring and prediction system (GIDMaPS) data sets. figshare. 2014.  http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.853801

With the corresponding text in the Availability of data and materials statement:

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available in the [NAME] repository, [PERSISTENT WEB LINK TO DATASETS]. [Reference number]

If you wish to co-submit a data note describing your data to be published in BMC Research Notes , you can do so by visiting our submission portal . Data notes support open data and help authors to comply with funder policies on data sharing. Co-published data notes will be linked to the research article the data support ( example ).

All financial and non-financial competing interests must be declared in this section.

See our  editorial policies  for a full explanation of competing interests. If you are unsure whether you or any of your co-authors have a competing interest please contact the editorial office.

Please use the authors’ initials to refer to each authors' competing interests in this section.

If you do not have any competing interests, please state "The authors declare that they have no competing interests" in this section.

All sources of funding for the research reported should be declared. If the funder has a specific role in the conceptualization, design, data collection, analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript, this should be declared.

The individual contributions of authors to the manuscript should be specified in this section. Guidance and criteria for authorship can be found in our  editorial policies .

Please use initials to refer to each author's contribution in this section, for example: "FC analyzed and interpreted the patient data regarding the hematological disease and the transplant. RH performed the histological examination of the kidney, and was a major contributor in writing the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript."

Please acknowledge anyone who contributed towards the article who does not meet the criteria for authorship including anyone who provided professional writing services or materials.

Authors should obtain permission to acknowledge from all those mentioned in the Acknowledgements section.

See our  editorial policies  for a full explanation of acknowledgements and authorship criteria.

If you do not have anyone to acknowledge, please write "Not applicable" in this section.

Group authorship (for manuscripts involving a collaboration group): if you would like the names of the individual members of a collaboration Group to be searchable through their individual PubMed records, please ensure that the title of the collaboration Group is included on the title page and in the submission system and also include collaborating author names as the last paragraph of the “Acknowledgements” section. Please add authors in the format First Name, Middle initial(s) (optional), Last Name. You can add institution or country information for each author if you wish, but this should be consistent across all authors.

Authors' information

This section is optional.

You may choose to use this section to include any relevant information about the author(s) that may aid the reader's interpretation of the article, and understand the standpoint of the author(s). This may include details about the authors' qualifications, current positions they hold at institutions or societies, or any other relevant background information. Please refer to authors using their initials. Note this section should not be used to describe any competing interests.

Footnotes should be designated within the text using a superscript number. It is not allowed to use footnotes for references/citations.

Examples of the Basic Springer reference style are shown below. 

See our editorial policies for author guidance on good citation practice.

Web links and URLs: All web links and URLs, including links to the authors' own websites, should be given a reference number and included in the reference list rather than within the text of the manuscript. They should be provided in full, including both the title of the site and the URL, as well as the date the site was accessed, in the following format: The Mouse Tumor Biology Database. http://tumor.informatics.jax.org/mtbwi/index.do . Accessed 20 May 2013. If an author or group of authors can clearly be associated with a web link, such as for weblogs, then they should be included in the reference.

Example reference style:

Article within a journal

Smith J, Jones M Jr, Houghton L (1999) Future of health insurance. N Engl J Med 965:325-329.

Article by DOI (with page numbers)

Slifka MK, Whitton JL (2000) Clinical implications of dysregulated cytokine production. J Mol Med 78:74-80. doi:10.1007/s001090000086.

Article by DOI (before issue publication and with page numbers)

Slifka MK, Whitton JL (2000) Clinical implications of dysregulated cytokine production. J Mol Med. doi:10.1007/s001090000086.

Article in electronic journal by DOI (no paginated version)

Slifka MK, Whitton JL (2000) Clinical implications of dysregulated cytokine production. Dig J Mol Med. doi:10.1007/s801090000086.

Journal issue with issue editor

Smith J (ed) (1998) Rodent genes. Mod Genomics J 14(6):126-233.

Journal issue with no issue editor

Mod Genomics J (1998) Rodent genes. Mod Genomics J 14(6):126-233.

Book chapter, or an article within a book

Brown B, Aaron M (2001) The politics of nature. In: Smith J (ed) The rise of modern genomics, 3rd edn. Wiley, New York.

Complete book, authored

South J, Blass B (2001) The future of modern genomics. Blackwell, London.

Complete book, edited

Smith J, Brown B (eds) (2001) The demise of modern genomics. Blackwell, London.

Complete book, also showing a translated edition [Either edition may be listed first.]

Adorno TW (1966) Negative Dialektik. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt. English edition: Adorno TW (1973) Negative Dialectics (trans: Ashton EB). Routledge, London.

Chapter in a book in a series without volume titles

Schmidt H (1989) Testing results. In: Hutzinger O (ed) Handbook of environmental chemistry, vol 2E. Springer, Heidelberg, p 111.

Chapter in a book in a series with volume titles

Smith SE (1976) Neuromuscular blocking drugs in man. In: Zaimis E (ed) Neuromuscular junction. Handbook of experimental pharmacology, vol 42. Springer, Heidelberg, pp 593-660.

OnlineFirst chapter in a series (without a volume designation but with a DOI)

Saito, Yukio, and Hyuga, Hiroyuki. (2007) Rate equation approaches to amplification of enantiomeric excess and chiral symmetry breaking. Topics in Current Chemistry. doi:10.1007/128_2006_108.

Proceedings as a book (in a series and subseries)

Zowghi D (1996) A framework for reasoning about requirements in evolution. In: Foo N, Goebel R (eds) PRICAI'96: topics in artificial intelligence. 4th Pacific Rim conference on artificial intelligence, Cairns, August 1996. Lecture notes in computer science (Lecture notes in artificial intelligence), vol 1114. Springer, Heidelberg, p 157.

Article within conference proceedings with an editor (without a publisher)

Aaron M (1999) The future of genomics. In: Williams H (ed) Proceedings of the genomic researchers, Boston, 1999.

Article within conference proceedings without an editor (without a publisher)

Chung S-T, Morris RL (1978) Isolation and characterization of plasmid deoxyribonucleic acid from Streptomyces fradiae. In: Abstracts of the 3rd international symposium on the genetics of industrial microorganisms, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 4-9 June 1978.

Article presented at a conference

Chung S-T, Morris RL (1978) Isolation and characterization of plasmid deoxyribonucleic acid from Streptomyces fradiae. Paper presented at the 3rd international symposium on the genetics of industrial microorganisms, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 4-9 June 1978.

Norman LO (1998) Lightning rods. US Patent 4,379,752, 9 Sept 1998.

Dissertation

Trent JW (1975) Experimental acute renal failure. Dissertation, University of California.

Book with institutional author

International Anatomical Nomenclature Committee (1966) Nomina anatomica. Excerpta Medica, Amsterdam.

In press article

Major M (2007) Recent developments. In: Jones W (ed) Surgery today. Springer, Dordrecht (in press).  

Online document

Doe J (1999) Title of subordinate document. In: The dictionary of substances and their effects. Royal Society of Chemistry. Available via DIALOG. http://www.rsc.org/dose/title of subordinate document. Accessed 15 Jan 1999.

Online database

Healthwise Knowledgebase (1998) US Pharmacopeia, Rockville. http://www.healthwise.org. Accessed 21 Sept 1998.

Supplementary material/private homepage

Doe J (2000) Title of supplementary material. http://www.privatehomepage.com. Accessed 22 Feb 2000.

University site

Doe J (1999) Title of preprint. http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/mydata.html. Accessed 25 Dec 1999.

Doe J (1999) Trivial HTTP, RFC2169. ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc2169.txt. Accessed 12 Nov 1999.

Organization site

ISSN International Centre (2006) The ISSN register. http://www.issn.org. Accessed 20 Feb 2007.

General formatting information

Manuscripts must be written in concise English. For help on scientific writing, or preparing your manuscript in English, please see Springer's  Author Academy .

Quick points:

• Use double line spacing
• Include line and page numbering
• Use SI units: Please ensure that all special characters used are embedded in the text, otherwise they will be lost during conversion to PDF
• Do not use page breaks in your manuscript

File formats

The following word processor file formats are acceptable for the main manuscript document:

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• Rich text format (RTF)
• TeX/LaTeX 

Please note: editable files are required for processing in production. If your manuscript contains any non-editable files (such as PDFs) you will be required to re-submit an editable file if your manuscript is accepted.

For more information, see ' Preparing figures ' below.

Additional information for TeX/LaTeX users

You are encouraged to use the Springer Nature LaTeX template when preparing a submission. A PDF of your manuscript files will be compiled during submission using pdfLaTeX and TexLive 2021. All relevant editable source files must be uploaded during the submission process. Failing to submit these source files will cause unnecessary delays in the production process.  

Style and language

For editors and reviewers to accurately assess the work presented in your manuscript you need to ensure the English language is of sufficient quality to be understood. If you need help with writing in English you should consider:

• Getting a fast, free online grammar check .
• Visiting the English language tutorial which covers the common mistakes when writing in English.
• Asking a colleague who is proficient in English to review your manuscript for clarity.
• Using a professional language editing service where editors will improve the English to ensure that your meaning is clear and identify problems that require your review. Two such services are provided by our affiliates Nature Research Editing Service and American Journal Experts . SpringerOpen authors are entitled to a 10% discount on their first submission to either of these services. To claim 10% off English editing from Nature Research Editing Service, click here . To claim 10% off American Journal Experts, click here .

Please note that the use of a language editing service is not a requirement for publication in Journal of Engineering and Applied Science and does not imply or guarantee that the article will be selected for peer review or accepted.  为便于编辑和评审专家准确评估您稿件中陈述的研究工作，您需要确保文稿英语语言质量足以令人理解。如果您需要英文写作方面的帮助，您可以考虑：

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For all journals, SpringerOpen strongly encourages all datasets on which the conclusions of the manuscript rely to be either deposited in publicly available repositories (where available and appropriate) or presented in the main paper or additional supporting files, in machine-readable format (such as spread sheets rather than PDFs) whenever possible. Please see the list of recommended repositories in our editorial policies.

For some journals, deposition of the data on which the conclusions of the manuscript rely is an absolute requirement. Please check the Instructions for Authors for the relevant journal and article type for journal specific policies.

For all manuscripts, information about data availability should be detailed in an ‘Availability of data and materials’ section. For more information on the content of this section, please see the Declarations section of the relevant journal’s Instruction for Authors. For more information on SpringerOpen's policies on data availability, please see our editorial policies .

Formatting the 'Availability of data and materials' section of your manuscript

The following format for the 'Availability of data and materials section of your manuscript should be used:

"The dataset(s) supporting the conclusions of this article is(are) available in the [repository name] repository, [unique persistent identifier and hyperlink to dataset(s) in http:// format]."

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Information on available repositories for other types of scientific data, including clinical data, can be found in our editorial policies .

What should be cited?

Only articles, clinical trial registration records and abstracts that have been published or are in press, or are available through public e-print/preprint servers, may be cited.

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Preparing figures

When preparing figures, please follow the formatting instructions below.

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• Please note that it is the responsibility of the author(s) to obtain permission from the copyright holder to reproduce figures (or tables) that have previously been published elsewhere. In order for all figures to be open access, authors must have permission from the rights holder if they wish to include images that have been published elsewhere in non open access journals. Permission should be indicated in the figure legend, and the original source included in the reference list.

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Figures on the web:

• width of 600 pixels (standard), 1200 pixels (high resolution).

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Figures should be designed such that all information, including text, is legible at these dimensions. All lines should be wider than 0.25 pt when constrained to standard figure widths. All fonts must be embedded.

Figure file compression

Vector figures should if possible be submitted as PDF files, which are usually more compact than EPS files.

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• Conversion of images between file types (especially lossy formats such as JPEG) should be kept to a minimum to avoid degradation of quality.

If you have any questions or are experiencing a problem with figures, please contact the customer service team at [email protected] .

Preparing tables

When preparing tables, please follow the formatting instructions below.

• Tables should be numbered and cited in the text in sequence using Arabic numerals (i.e. Table 1, Table 2 etc.).
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• Larger datasets, or tables too wide for A4 or Letter landscape page can be uploaded as additional files. Please see [below] for more information.
• Tabular data provided as additional files can be uploaded as an Excel spreadsheet (.xls ) or comma separated values (.csv). Please use the standard file extensions.
• Table titles (max 15 words) should be included above the table, and legends (max 300 words) should be included underneath the table.
• Tables should not be embedded as figures or spreadsheet files, but should be formatted using ‘Table object’ function in your word processing program.
• Color and shading may not be used. Parts of the table can be highlighted using superscript, numbering, lettering, symbols or bold text, the meaning of which should be explained in a table legend.
• Commas should not be used to indicate numerical values.

If you have any questions or are experiencing a problem with tables, please contact the customer service team at [email protected] .

Preparing additional files

As the length and quantity of data is not restricted for many article types, authors can provide datasets, tables, movies, or other information as additional files.

All Additional files will be published along with the accepted article. Do not include files such as patient consent forms, certificates of language editing, or revised versions of the main manuscript document with tracked changes. Such files, if requested, should be sent by email to the journal’s editorial email address, quoting the manuscript reference number.

Results that would otherwise be indicated as "data not shown" should be included as additional files. Since many web links and URLs rapidly become broken, SpringerOpen requires that supporting data are included as additional files, or deposited in a recognized repository. Please do not link to data on a personal/departmental website. Do not include any individual participant details. The maximum file size for additional files is 20 MB each, and files will be virus-scanned on submission. Each additional file should be cited in sequence within the main body of text.

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How to write a research journal article in engineering and science 1

Writing a research article can be a daunting task, and often, writers are not certain what should be included and how the information should be conveyed. Fortunately, scientific and engineering journal articles follow an accepted format. They contain an introduction which includes a statement of the problem, a literature review, and a general outline of the paper, a methods section detailing the methods used, separate or combined results, discussion and application sections, and a final summary and conclusions section. Here, each of these elements is described in detail using examples from the published literature as illustration. Guidance is also provided with respect to style, getting started, and the revision/review process.

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This journal focuses on the nine essential steps for publication of technical article and research paper. Writing a technical article or research paper is a challenging endeavour for students, post graduates and young researchers. Publishing your first technical article or research paper requires observation on some essential guidelines. This article provides the nine fundamental guidelines for tertiary students, post graduates and young researchers for writing an effective technical article or research paper for publication. This journal covers the quintessential fundamentals including naming the objectives, title, keywords, abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion, acknowledgement, and literature cited and conclusion of the scientific or research article.

Gayatri Mohanta

Introduction, materials & methods, results, discussion, and conclusions are the core sections of a research paper. Academics can be conservative when it comes to writing styles, but writing shouldn't be boring. Competition is high for academics looking to publish their papers, so we know you're worried about how to improve your chances. Research must be solid, the paper must be logically structured, and the manuscript sections must contain the right information. Clarity depends on correct English usage, so watch out for errors with articles, prepositions, word choice, and punctuation. Even if the grammar and sentence structure are perfect, make writing more compelling by using powerful verbs and phrases. Journal articles' titles and images attract readers. A self-contained abstract describes a broader work. Abstracts are published online and in most conference proceedings. The abstract is a key part of a research paper. Potential reviewers only read the abstract when invited by an editor to assess a paper. Abstracts should concisely describe the topic, scope, purpose, results, and conclusion of the work. The abstract is indexed by search engines, so be sure it has the words a colleague researcher will use to find publications online. Make sure it's full of data and numbers to show scient ific rigour. Results should be clear and confident. Here's an overview of different journal articles on antenna simulation, embedded system design, cyber security, PI controller, IIoT (industrial internet of things), and image processing.

Tutors India

The one thing that is to consider while writing a mechanical engineering manuscript is having a logical flow in your paper that helps readers to understand the findings easily. Experts in our manuscript writing service will help to have a stream when there is a gap in your research. To write a mechanical engineering manuscript, one should know why the research is essential to carry out and should mention it. Selecting the title is the first thing to do before starting to write a journal manuscript. The title should be minimal and give all the information about the research that you are going to carry out. The abstract is the summary that says about your paper, which is a condensation of your research work. When you Order any reflective report at Tutors India, we promise you the following Plagiarism free Always on Time, Outstanding customer support, Written to Standard, Unlimited Revisions support, High-quality Subject Matter Experts. Contact: Website: www.tutorsindia.com Email: [email protected] United Kingdom: +44-1143520021 India: +91-4448137070 Whatsapp Number: +91-8754446690 Read more: https://bit.ly/2XYjA4K

Many Manuscripts get rejected because of the selection of discussion is not appropriate. The online manuscript writer helps you keep your message clear; guide you to deliver most of the information on the main text. Do not overload in every place. The Manuscript is the document that consists of information about the research that is to be published. It is the way to convey essential ideas through papers. Engineering manuscript to be published should have a unique approach and should be in a logical flow of work. It is necessary to start early writing the engineering manuscript, which will help you to find new ideas. It is tough for new researchers to concentrate both on the research and writing part, manuscript writing service helps students with various academic writing and editing service to make it simple. When you Order any reflective report at Tutors India, we promise you the following; Plagiarism free, Always on Time, Outstanding customer support, Written to Standard, Unlimited Revisions support, High-quality Subject Matter Experts. Contact: Website: www.tutorsindia.com Email: [email protected] United Kingdom: +44-1143520021 India: +91-4448137070 Whatsapp Number: +91-8754446690 Read more: https://bit.ly/3jiVx8w

طلال العمري

A primary task of a researcher is the communication of technical results to the broader scientific community. Whether in written or oral form, scientific communication is a critical step in the scientific method and is the key driver of movement within a scientific field. Therefore, the construction of a written scientific manuscript must not be taken lightly. As part of our service to the broader scientific community, we thought it may be beneficial to identify some of the common aspects of a well constructed scientific manuscript. These points are briefly discussed below. It should be noted that manuscripts that are successfully submitted to a journal for publication have three main components: (1) the overall idea, (2) the execution of the work, and (3) the presentation of the work. While each of these is critical, the guidelines presented below primarily speak to the third component, namely the presentation of the scientific work. Thus a poor idea or a poorly designed investigation can not be saved by an excellent presentation of the work, and equally an excellent idea that is well investigated can still be doomed by a poor presentation. Hopefully the concepts described below will help to minimize the latter situation.

Akhil Rashinkar

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Dalibor Luis Rios Ramirez

Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research, ISSN-2349-5162

Siva Prathap , M Kamraju , Mohd Akhter Ali

Research papers are highly recognized in scholar fraternity. In addition to that the published research work provides a big weight-age to career growth and helps to get admission in reputed universities. Research Scholars doing Ph.D it has become mandatory to publish their research papers at international level academic Journals or scholarly (Peer Reviewed) journals. And many of the students who wish to apply for further studies in technical courses will discover that relevant published research papers help during admission process.So, in this paper we will highlight and enlist the proven steps to write the research paper for peer-reviewed journals.

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Ten Simple Rules for Writing a Literature Review

Marco pautasso.

1 Centre for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology (CEFE), CNRS, Montpellier, France

2 Centre for Biodiversity Synthesis and Analysis (CESAB), FRB, Aix-en-Provence, France

Literature reviews are in great demand in most scientific fields. Their need stems from the ever-increasing output of scientific publications [1] . For example, compared to 1991, in 2008 three, eight, and forty times more papers were indexed in Web of Science on malaria, obesity, and biodiversity, respectively [2] . Given such mountains of papers, scientists cannot be expected to examine in detail every single new paper relevant to their interests [3] . Thus, it is both advantageous and necessary to rely on regular summaries of the recent literature. Although recognition for scientists mainly comes from primary research, timely literature reviews can lead to new synthetic insights and are often widely read [4] . For such summaries to be useful, however, they need to be compiled in a professional way [5] .

When starting from scratch, reviewing the literature can require a titanic amount of work. That is why researchers who have spent their career working on a certain research issue are in a perfect position to review that literature. Some graduate schools are now offering courses in reviewing the literature, given that most research students start their project by producing an overview of what has already been done on their research issue [6] . However, it is likely that most scientists have not thought in detail about how to approach and carry out a literature review.

Reviewing the literature requires the ability to juggle multiple tasks, from finding and evaluating relevant material to synthesising information from various sources, from critical thinking to paraphrasing, evaluating, and citation skills [7] . In this contribution, I share ten simple rules I learned working on about 25 literature reviews as a PhD and postdoctoral student. Ideas and insights also come from discussions with coauthors and colleagues, as well as feedback from reviewers and editors.

Rule 1: Define a Topic and Audience

How to choose which topic to review? There are so many issues in contemporary science that you could spend a lifetime of attending conferences and reading the literature just pondering what to review. On the one hand, if you take several years to choose, several other people may have had the same idea in the meantime. On the other hand, only a well-considered topic is likely to lead to a brilliant literature review [8] . The topic must at least be:

• interesting to you (ideally, you should have come across a series of recent papers related to your line of work that call for a critical summary),
• an important aspect of the field (so that many readers will be interested in the review and there will be enough material to write it), and
• a well-defined issue (otherwise you could potentially include thousands of publications, which would make the review unhelpful).

Ideas for potential reviews may come from papers providing lists of key research questions to be answered [9] , but also from serendipitous moments during desultory reading and discussions. In addition to choosing your topic, you should also select a target audience. In many cases, the topic (e.g., web services in computational biology) will automatically define an audience (e.g., computational biologists), but that same topic may also be of interest to neighbouring fields (e.g., computer science, biology, etc.).

Rule 2: Search and Re-search the Literature

After having chosen your topic and audience, start by checking the literature and downloading relevant papers. Five pieces of advice here:

• keep track of the search items you use (so that your search can be replicated [10] ),
• keep a list of papers whose pdfs you cannot access immediately (so as to retrieve them later with alternative strategies),
• use a paper management system (e.g., Mendeley, Papers, Qiqqa, Sente),
• define early in the process some criteria for exclusion of irrelevant papers (these criteria can then be described in the review to help define its scope), and
• do not just look for research papers in the area you wish to review, but also seek previous reviews.

The chances are high that someone will already have published a literature review ( Figure 1 ), if not exactly on the issue you are planning to tackle, at least on a related topic. If there are already a few or several reviews of the literature on your issue, my advice is not to give up, but to carry on with your own literature review,

The bottom-right situation (many literature reviews but few research papers) is not just a theoretical situation; it applies, for example, to the study of the impacts of climate change on plant diseases, where there appear to be more literature reviews than research studies [33] .

• discussing in your review the approaches, limitations, and conclusions of past reviews,
• trying to find a new angle that has not been covered adequately in the previous reviews, and
• incorporating new material that has inevitably accumulated since their appearance.

When searching the literature for pertinent papers and reviews, the usual rules apply:

• be thorough,
• use different keywords and database sources (e.g., DBLP, Google Scholar, ISI Proceedings, JSTOR Search, Medline, Scopus, Web of Science), and
• look at who has cited past relevant papers and book chapters.

Rule 3: Take Notes While Reading

If you read the papers first, and only afterwards start writing the review, you will need a very good memory to remember who wrote what, and what your impressions and associations were while reading each single paper. My advice is, while reading, to start writing down interesting pieces of information, insights about how to organize the review, and thoughts on what to write. This way, by the time you have read the literature you selected, you will already have a rough draft of the review.

Of course, this draft will still need much rewriting, restructuring, and rethinking to obtain a text with a coherent argument [11] , but you will have avoided the danger posed by staring at a blank document. Be careful when taking notes to use quotation marks if you are provisionally copying verbatim from the literature. It is advisable then to reformulate such quotes with your own words in the final draft. It is important to be careful in noting the references already at this stage, so as to avoid misattributions. Using referencing software from the very beginning of your endeavour will save you time.

Rule 4: Choose the Type of Review You Wish to Write

After having taken notes while reading the literature, you will have a rough idea of the amount of material available for the review. This is probably a good time to decide whether to go for a mini- or a full review. Some journals are now favouring the publication of rather short reviews focusing on the last few years, with a limit on the number of words and citations. A mini-review is not necessarily a minor review: it may well attract more attention from busy readers, although it will inevitably simplify some issues and leave out some relevant material due to space limitations. A full review will have the advantage of more freedom to cover in detail the complexities of a particular scientific development, but may then be left in the pile of the very important papers “to be read” by readers with little time to spare for major monographs.

There is probably a continuum between mini- and full reviews. The same point applies to the dichotomy of descriptive vs. integrative reviews. While descriptive reviews focus on the methodology, findings, and interpretation of each reviewed study, integrative reviews attempt to find common ideas and concepts from the reviewed material [12] . A similar distinction exists between narrative and systematic reviews: while narrative reviews are qualitative, systematic reviews attempt to test a hypothesis based on the published evidence, which is gathered using a predefined protocol to reduce bias [13] , [14] . When systematic reviews analyse quantitative results in a quantitative way, they become meta-analyses. The choice between different review types will have to be made on a case-by-case basis, depending not just on the nature of the material found and the preferences of the target journal(s), but also on the time available to write the review and the number of coauthors [15] .

Rule 5: Keep the Review Focused, but Make It of Broad Interest

Whether your plan is to write a mini- or a full review, it is good advice to keep it focused 16 , 17 . Including material just for the sake of it can easily lead to reviews that are trying to do too many things at once. The need to keep a review focused can be problematic for interdisciplinary reviews, where the aim is to bridge the gap between fields [18] . If you are writing a review on, for example, how epidemiological approaches are used in modelling the spread of ideas, you may be inclined to include material from both parent fields, epidemiology and the study of cultural diffusion. This may be necessary to some extent, but in this case a focused review would only deal in detail with those studies at the interface between epidemiology and the spread of ideas.

While focus is an important feature of a successful review, this requirement has to be balanced with the need to make the review relevant to a broad audience. This square may be circled by discussing the wider implications of the reviewed topic for other disciplines.

Rule 6: Be Critical and Consistent

Reviewing the literature is not stamp collecting. A good review does not just summarize the literature, but discusses it critically, identifies methodological problems, and points out research gaps [19] . After having read a review of the literature, a reader should have a rough idea of:

• the major achievements in the reviewed field,
• the main areas of debate, and
• the outstanding research questions.

It is challenging to achieve a successful review on all these fronts. A solution can be to involve a set of complementary coauthors: some people are excellent at mapping what has been achieved, some others are very good at identifying dark clouds on the horizon, and some have instead a knack at predicting where solutions are going to come from. If your journal club has exactly this sort of team, then you should definitely write a review of the literature! In addition to critical thinking, a literature review needs consistency, for example in the choice of passive vs. active voice and present vs. past tense.

Rule 7: Find a Logical Structure

Like a well-baked cake, a good review has a number of telling features: it is worth the reader's time, timely, systematic, well written, focused, and critical. It also needs a good structure. With reviews, the usual subdivision of research papers into introduction, methods, results, and discussion does not work or is rarely used. However, a general introduction of the context and, toward the end, a recapitulation of the main points covered and take-home messages make sense also in the case of reviews. For systematic reviews, there is a trend towards including information about how the literature was searched (database, keywords, time limits) [20] .

How can you organize the flow of the main body of the review so that the reader will be drawn into and guided through it? It is generally helpful to draw a conceptual scheme of the review, e.g., with mind-mapping techniques. Such diagrams can help recognize a logical way to order and link the various sections of a review [21] . This is the case not just at the writing stage, but also for readers if the diagram is included in the review as a figure. A careful selection of diagrams and figures relevant to the reviewed topic can be very helpful to structure the text too [22] .

Rule 8: Make Use of Feedback

Reviews of the literature are normally peer-reviewed in the same way as research papers, and rightly so [23] . As a rule, incorporating feedback from reviewers greatly helps improve a review draft. Having read the review with a fresh mind, reviewers may spot inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and ambiguities that had not been noticed by the writers due to rereading the typescript too many times. It is however advisable to reread the draft one more time before submission, as a last-minute correction of typos, leaps, and muddled sentences may enable the reviewers to focus on providing advice on the content rather than the form.

Feedback is vital to writing a good review, and should be sought from a variety of colleagues, so as to obtain a diversity of views on the draft. This may lead in some cases to conflicting views on the merits of the paper, and on how to improve it, but such a situation is better than the absence of feedback. A diversity of feedback perspectives on a literature review can help identify where the consensus view stands in the landscape of the current scientific understanding of an issue [24] .

Rule 9: Include Your Own Relevant Research, but Be Objective

In many cases, reviewers of the literature will have published studies relevant to the review they are writing. This could create a conflict of interest: how can reviewers report objectively on their own work [25] ? Some scientists may be overly enthusiastic about what they have published, and thus risk giving too much importance to their own findings in the review. However, bias could also occur in the other direction: some scientists may be unduly dismissive of their own achievements, so that they will tend to downplay their contribution (if any) to a field when reviewing it.

In general, a review of the literature should neither be a public relations brochure nor an exercise in competitive self-denial. If a reviewer is up to the job of producing a well-organized and methodical review, which flows well and provides a service to the readership, then it should be possible to be objective in reviewing one's own relevant findings. In reviews written by multiple authors, this may be achieved by assigning the review of the results of a coauthor to different coauthors.

Rule 10: Be Up-to-Date, but Do Not Forget Older Studies

Given the progressive acceleration in the publication of scientific papers, today's reviews of the literature need awareness not just of the overall direction and achievements of a field of inquiry, but also of the latest studies, so as not to become out-of-date before they have been published. Ideally, a literature review should not identify as a major research gap an issue that has just been addressed in a series of papers in press (the same applies, of course, to older, overlooked studies (“sleeping beauties” [26] )). This implies that literature reviewers would do well to keep an eye on electronic lists of papers in press, given that it can take months before these appear in scientific databases. Some reviews declare that they have scanned the literature up to a certain point in time, but given that peer review can be a rather lengthy process, a full search for newly appeared literature at the revision stage may be worthwhile. Assessing the contribution of papers that have just appeared is particularly challenging, because there is little perspective with which to gauge their significance and impact on further research and society.

Inevitably, new papers on the reviewed topic (including independently written literature reviews) will appear from all quarters after the review has been published, so that there may soon be the need for an updated review. But this is the nature of science [27] – [32] . I wish everybody good luck with writing a review of the literature.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to M. Barbosa, K. Dehnen-Schmutz, T. Döring, D. Fontaneto, M. Garbelotto, O. Holdenrieder, M. Jeger, D. Lonsdale, A. MacLeod, P. Mills, M. Moslonka-Lefebvre, G. Stancanelli, P. Weisberg, and X. Xu for insights and discussions, and to P. Bourne, T. Matoni, and D. Smith for helpful comments on a previous draft.

Funding Statement

This work was funded by the French Foundation for Research on Biodiversity (FRB) through its Centre for Synthesis and Analysis of Biodiversity data (CESAB), as part of the NETSEED research project. The funders had no role in the preparation of the manuscript.

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• Published: 17 May 2024

Towards interdisciplinary integration of electrical engineering and earth science

• Jiaqi Ruan   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2584-0738 1 ,
• Zhao Xu   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4480-7394 1 , 2 &
• Hui Su   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1265-9702 3  

Nature Reviews Electrical Engineering volume  1 ,  pages 278–279 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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The inherent differences in epistemologies and research methods in electrical engineering and earth science hinder interdisciplinary collaboration. In the context of climate change, this divide affects the shift towards long-term sustainability in global energy systems, prompting dialogue between the disciplines to enable effective interdisciplinary collaborations.

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Acknowledgements

Z.X. acknowledges support from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (AoE/P-601/23-N) and the General Research Fund of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (PolyU15209322). H.S. acknowledges support from the General Research Fund of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (project 16300823-CIVL) and Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust (FA123).

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Ruan, J., Xu, Z. & Su, H. Towards interdisciplinary integration of electrical engineering and earth science. Nat Rev Electr Eng 1 , 278–279 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44287-024-00042-9

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