I have been told that having a published review article is viewed as an advantage for higher education. The topic of my review article is the impact of information technology on the practice of human resource management.  What are the sequential steps that I have to follow to make my review article acceptable to renowned publishers and university graduate professors?  I have heard that to make a review article acceptable, the first task is to read vastly about the subject related topic of review article. After reading extensively, how can I proceed - I mean how can make linkage of writing in every parts of review article?   Is it necessary to make a comparison, to find a gap or limitations,similarity of the previous primary and review articles on the same topic in writing my review article?  Do I have to present the information about what others authors have done or shown? or do I have to include my own thought, ideas, decisions along with the other scholars?and if I intend take some information,graph from copyrighted books,will I need to take permission from real authors or just paraphrase the information on own my words?
70763
I want to write a survey on one emerging research topic in wireless communications (It can be applied to any field!). There are almost 500 papers on this topic as published or in early access. And the publishing rate in this topic is increasing day by day. So, I want to write a survey on this topic keeping in mind that it will get high citation and it will help new scholar who are in struggle with this topic. I found only one survey written by some reputed authors, however it lacks in many ways, like detailed information related to particular direction, it just assembles the papers in a good manner. I want to pick some directions and discuss  important approaches with good connection between them. However, I find it very difficult to proceed with large number of papers. Is there any good way to handle the survey process in a good efficient and quick way? PS. According to me, many people have already started to write this.
7846
I (an undergrad) and 2 other profs from my department have been working on something and we were thinking of submitting our work to a conference (a pretty well known one) this week. The fact is there is no related work that has been done on the problem we are solving and therefore there is no paper which we can cite as a starting point for our work. The only existing things that we make use of are trivial definitions from mathematics (like Riemann Integral) and also definitions that are pretty well known in my area (CS). So again, we do not think there is a need to cite any particular papers for that.   Now my question as stated was - is it acceptable to have a paper with no references? Or do you think we should just mention some papers (we never had to use them) where those definitions were actually proposed?  PS: I'm sure some of you might suggest me to ask those profs. But quite frankly none of them have much experience as far as publishing papers is concerned. So it would be great if some one could give me a good advice and help me out.   Edit: Thanks everyone for the answers. Of course somewhere a little sarcastic and ridiculing, but I can understand since this is a little weird. Actually yes, I had the notion that a paper wasn't worth citing unless I use some results from it (say an algo or some theorem). But I guess that isn't the only reason why I should be referencing as many seem to suggest here. The fact is we had seen quite a few survey papers before we started this out and I was under the impression that there wasn't a need to cite them since anyone could find them. But now, things are bit more clear and I guess I should cite them and I will :)
75044
As noted in , academics should write research articles. In many fields, these are way more important than books. It's original research that counts for getting a PhD position, a post-doc, a tenure-track position, grants, etcetera. Writing a good textbook about an advanced subject is very difficult and very time-consuming. Its advanced nature means it won't sell many copies, so the money can't be much. Then why is anybody writing advanced scientific textbooks at all? What are the incentives?
112527
Does anyone know a good online source for guidelines for shortening journal articles?  I've just finished a paper that I'm going to submit soon, but I think it is far too long.  Its current length is 30 journal pages.  (I know that because I've obsessively figured out what formatting would get me to have 1 word processed page for each journal page of a specific journal.)  This is in the humanities.  So I just want some good guidelines for things like "get rid of 'the fact that'."  The only such things that I found online were directed at people writing their college-admissions essay, which has to be very short, like 500 words.
105652
Several times my supervisor has asked me for my opinion on papers he is reviewing. I find this helpful as it encourages me to read things I otherwise would not, helps me understand how to review articles, and can lead to interesting discussions. Presumably my supervisor also finds it useful to have a second opinion or sometimes to act as a sanity check.  Recently I was wondering is this entirely appropriate. Not least because all the manuscripts for review have confidential for review only in bold at the top.  So my question is what are the legal/ethical issues with asking a student/colleague/supervisor's (depending on your position) opinion on a paper you are reviewing?  Note I'm not saying that they write the review just that you get them to read the manuscript and ask their opinion on certain points.
120305
Point 1: At my university, it's a practice (not compulsory) to submit our conference/journal paper first to a department where it is checked for plagiarism and quality. Then it's sent to professors in the university to confirm that they don't have any authorship problems with it (ie: that the student didn't copy one of their ideas, unacknowledged). It's only then that the student gets approval to send the paper to a conference (specifically ) or journal.    Point 2: A journal or conference has it's long procedure of reviews and only some papers get accepted. If rejected or un-published, the author can send it to another conference or journal and there's a similar lapse of time.    During both above situations, isn't it possible for someone else to  the idea? Does the academic community have any provisions to prevent a planned scooping? ie: Someone reviewing the paper purposely rejects it and during the time that elapses, publishes the same idea or allows one of his/her other students to publish the idea.    A teacher of mine says that it's because of these fears that she directly submits papers to conferences without going through the university's process. Also, the same reason she submits to conferences instead of journals, because the journal review process is much longer, increasing the scope of the idea being scooped.    So are there any safeguards? If I see my idea scooped somewhere, would it help if I can show proof that I had already submitted the idea at a conference and the paper was rejected? Will the person who supposedly scooped it, get blacklisted?
36540
I have received a manuscript to review for a journal. The interesting thing is, I had already reviewed this article (exact same title, abstract and author list, almost exact same content) for another journal a few weeks ago where I recommended that it be published, but only after major revisions of both form and content. When I first reviewed it, I wrote a two-page review, listing some questions and several “actionable” comments, ranging from some concerns about exactness of the text (some conclusions didn't seem fully backed by the results) all the way down to trivial stuff (grammar, a few typos, graphic issues with the figures, etc.).  Now, the manuscript has come to me for review again, but it is almost unchanged from the first version. None of the serious stuff has been addressed, and even most of the trivial stuff was not fixed (there's at least one remaining typo, and the figures still aren't fully legible). However, I think this behavior from the authors is clearly a bad signal, which should be somehow conveyed to the editor: they're not willing to amend their work, and would rather do some journal-shopping.  What would you suggest me to do? Should I just re-send my earlier review? Add a note to the editor about my knowledge of the “history” of the paper? Or maybe even include it in my review, so the authors are aware that people know of their behavior, and maybe feel bad enough to change their ways?    PS: I wrote it in the present tense, but it's actually a story from my past. I'm not sure I did the right thing at the time, and I think it's better to actually formulate it as an open question…
11208
I am planning to write several papers exploring various aspects of the same scientific question. Each of these papers must have an introduction which motivates it and explains the relationship between the problem and what others have studied in the past. It would be fantastic if I could simply copy-and-paste the same introduction, or, at least, 90% of it.  This seems to me to be ethically unproblematic. After all, I need to say the exact same things every time, and I certainly don't mind the self-plagiarism. Am I hurting the reader in any way? I suppose I might be, if the reader desired an introduction which consists of original material, but that is an odd desire, isn't it? Its the research, the stuff that follows the intro, that is original. Sadly, I have gotten wind that the majority of the research community apparently does not agree with the sentiments expressed in the previous paragraph. This leads me here to ask a series of related questions:  To what extent is self-plagiarism in non-technical bits considered acceptable? I often see authors recycle paragraphs but I have never seen anyone cut-and-paste the entire section outright. I'd be particularly interested in learning whether norms on this vary across different scientific communities.  How often do scholars find themselves trying to same the same thing in different words to avoid self-plagiarism?  Supposing I insert a sentence to the effect of: &quot;The introductory section 1.2 is taken verbatim from the author's earlier paper [1].&quot; How likely are journal editors and reviewers to complain about this?   By the way, I am fairly certain they would be very likely to complain about a sentence to the effect of &quot;We refer the reader to [1] for motivation to study this problem and a discussion of its relation to prior work.&quot;
42339
I am considering to create a wiki/blog for most of my study notes that I have made or taken digitally.  Also, for the handwritten and rough ones I am thinking about storing them in my GitHub repository.  Is this a good idea? How do professionals in academia and PhD students organise their notes?  Also, should I keep my notes publicly available?  Edit: The main purpose of keeping my notes public is to have them readily available and searchable of myself and my immediate peers in college. If that benefits someone else, I will be more than glad to have helped.   Update regarding having a blog/wiki: I was thinking about having stuff regarding my take on a certain topic or similar rather than just straightaway putting mugged up lecture notes. (as I mentioned in a comment)  So basically, as I go along a certain topic whatever interesting I find, I post  it. Also I will put in links to papers, books and other interesting literature on the topic that might be helpful while studying the topic. This seems easier to deal with and also serves as a way to track my current interests and/or workflow.
10640
I managed to successfully publish my old bachelor thesis in a good quality national journal in my country. However, I am thinking of retracting the article due to certain circumstances. First, I felt really embarrassed by the low quality research methodology used in my bachelor thesis. I only used simple correlation in my research. After it was published, I realized that the journal editor team forgot to include a reference in that article because they were rushing me throughout the editing process. I informed them about their mistake and it seems that they have done nothing to fix the problem. I became a bit annoyed because the editor team has never made this problem in the past.  I felt that it would be better for me to simply ask for retraction to solve this issue, but I am a bit afraid of negative consequences in the future. Is it okay to do this? I am really interested of entering the academic world in the future.
32002
First of all, this is about plagiarism in the sense of stealing ideas. Copy-and-paste plagiarism is included but not likely to happen in the cases relevant for this question.  Considering the publication of a paper prior to peer-reviewed publication on the ArXiv (or another preprint server), there are usually two main positions considering a possible theft of the idea (or somebody coming up with the same idea):   If somebody manages to publish your idea in a peer-reviewed journal before you do, you can prove that you came up with the idea first or at least independently if you have published your paper on the ArXiv. Therefore it is a good idea to publish papers on the ArXiv before they have been published in a peer-reviewed journal. If you publish your paper on ArXiv before it is published in a peer-reviewed journal, others may steal your work and publish it peer-reviewed before you do and thus take the scientific credit. It’s difficult to attack those people since the ArXiv is not peer-reviewed. Somebody could make a living of plagiarising ArXiv papers. Therefore it is a bad idea to publish papers on the ArXiv before they have been published in a peer-reviewed journal.   Are there any example cases (or even studies) supporting either of these statements? Such examples would include, but are not limited to:   Has a peer-reviewed journal ever withdrawn a paper because it plagiarised an ArXiv paper? Are there well-known cases of “unpunished” plagiarism of ArXiv papers?  Has anybody ever successfully resolved a priority dispute with a publication on ArXiv? Has anybody ever accused somebody of plagiarising an ArXiv article (with the fact that the plagiarised article was published on ArXiv affecting the outcome).   Note that it is really examples and not a theoretical analysis of the statements, I am looking for. (Neither of the two positions fully reflect my opinion and some of the soft premises¹ are debatable. However, debating about these viewpoints on a theoretical basis or attacking some of the premises is usually futile.)     ¹ e.g., that scientific credit is only decided by peer-reviewed publication
105639
As a student where should he first approach for review of his paper, even more so a first one, before submitting to peer reviewed journal? Teachers tend to be busy with school and personal work, soliciting or emailing a person out of the blue may not be the ideal etiquette, while students in one's class may not have the required background. What to do in this situation?  Do any websites exist (other than arXiv) that allows for a process that critique papers?   Thank you.
79044
I am an undergraduate student with no experience at all.  If you are writing a research paper, that you are planning to submit for publication, how do you state that a particular statement/fact is commonly known to all and it's dicoverer/inventor is not known, and that there exists no research paper that introduced the concept but there do exist various books/websites that discuss the very concepts and a few derivatives of the concept?  I am not able to cite a particular statement/bunch of statements as I am not able to find any research paper related to that at all.  The particular thing in question is:   What should I do?
65941
Being a young researcher myself I received a comment from my colleague that some of the journals are paying reviewers for the reviewing process.  When I gave it a thought, it started to make more sense. In case of high quality, respected journal, an institution may consider itself privileged to have a reviewer of such journal and allow the reviewer to dedicate small proportion of his/her daily activities just on the reviewing process.  The reviewer being paid, has more obligations to provide thorough in depth review.  Does that hold true for some journals or is it just a myth?
35979
Sometimes we may ask questions on stack exchange or online forums wherein the response is helpful or even essential to a piece of work that gets published in an academic journal. If this occurs, how should credit be given to those involved in the exchange? Should they all be included as authors? Should a link to the forum be included as a reference in the paper?  Once something is in a stack exchange or forum, it's "published". Perhaps in the future, the current peer review model will transform into people writing blogs and posting in forums and databases. But for now, how might this issue be dealt with while forums, blogs, etc coexist with journals?
90578
I am in the early stages of my PhD and I am trying to put together a literature review of my topic. My intention is that this review will eventually be included in my thesis, something like "the chapter that describes the state of the art in the domain."  My subject is soft matter physics and a large number of theses have already been written this topic. When looking at the literature reviews included in these other works I've noticed that:    The sequence of ideas is often the same (this makes sense, so why not?) Cited papers are always the same, even though 20 years elapsed between the first and last thesis. Moreover, papers from the 30's are cited but no one in my lab seems to have a copy available?    My hypothesis is that these theses are derived from some sort of a Mother of All Thesis, and that paraphrasing the work of the previous student is OK.   So, what makes a good literature review?  How do you notice that a literature review is sloppy?   PS: I posted this question because I assume many of you have experience with this process either in your own PhD work, or as a supervisor where you have had to deal with paraphrasing of your students.   PS2: I am not asking about making proper citations, LaTeX+BibTeX handles that like a charm.
9254
I'm at the stage in writing my dissertation where most of the substantive aspects are finished and the only tasks left are more or less administrative. However, one thing that I've been avoiding is writing the "Acknowledgements" section. Obviously I will thank my supervisor, committee members, other faculty and staff that have played a meaningful role in my education, other students who have been friends and co-workers, my close friends, and my family (in that order!), but I'm struggling with how to approach it. Does anyone have advice or hot tips about what to do or not do that they'd be willing to share? Is it possible to make it meaningful without sounding contrived or pedantic or disingenuous? Do I go with the standard disclaimer about how any errors that remain after getting all that wonderful help and support are mine alone...? Thanks!