AccessDermatology Access Dermatology

When an author decides to write a scientific article, he or she must create a personalized strategy using the available tools, and must always be aware of the standard procedures briefly described in this course. Some key issues of this personal strategy are: 1) consider whether the findings are relevant enough to be published (from an ethical point of view, negative findings should also be published); 2) choose an adequate journal in terms of scope and audience: this way, there is more probability that the editor will be interested in publishing your results; 3) once you choose a journal, you need to obtain the Instructions for Authors in order to follow the journal's guidelines; 4) read pertinent scientific literature and discuss your ideas with other colleagues that are experts in the area and; 5) carefully work out your ideas, clearly define your hypothesis and know exactly how you are going to develop the study; 6) finally, after writing the first draft, review it as many times as necessary and also ask your team to do the same: we must feel that the draft makes interesting reading and that editors and readers will think the same; and 7) use checklists to help with the structure of the article; some journals include such checklists in their Instructions for Authors. Here is an example.