Why am I writing?

I stumbled upon this guide from Nature Reviews Chemistry on writing review articles. It does address some common queries from authors aspiring to write review articles and then being rejected "at the desk" before their submitted work even gets assigned to a reviewer.

Quite interesting is the bit about "quirky" and "punny" titles, which the guide advises (rather directly too) as not being able to "help in this regard and are usually funnier to the authors than they are to anyone else." I must confess, I will keep this in mind, going forward on my next article.

As an aside and while on this topic, there is a common perception among early-career researchers that any article, as long as it gets accepted "somewhere" is a success. I am of the view that this is a fallacy. The quality of the journal is critically important to maintaining your own standing as an authority on the subject, which is also reinforced by your choice of your audience (readers). A well-written, informative article/review/short communication should be able to stand on its merits and be acceptable to a quality journal. Simply writing to "just get it published" may be acceptable to some, but to the rest of the discerning scientists and quality-conscious researchers, it is often seems like an admission of questionable self-worth.

In 2018, I worked with four emerging researchers, who turned a second-year university writing task into a peer-reviewed work in a quartile 1 journal article. (Quartile 1 refers to the recognized top 25% of works in the subject being published in a particular journal). That this journal was highly-ranked was a positive outcome, and that four students who still had yet to finish university studies were able to make it to this journal was an absolutely resounding measure of success. Since then, my own benchmark on publishing papers was revised upward a notch as well.

We all learn as we go - so why not spread good learning when we can?

Linked Nature Reviews Chemistry article available at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41570-017-0094

Linked Meat Science article available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0309174018308891