Thread by @Iam_MrPackagin

***Publication 101: Writing academic publication and it’s importance in scholarship applications***

I have received lot of messages from scholarship aspirants in the past days about publishing their academic article and thought I should share some tips. Let me start by saying

the feeling of not knowing how to start or even confident as you set out is normal, so you are not alone. As you may/may not know, the competition for scholarship spots is getting intense by the day and hence, the need to up your game to beat that competition (publications

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will definitely make your application strong and also boost your writing/research profile). Now, let’s talk about how to submit a great article.

1. Start with a Draft: You need to put things down in writing. While it’s important to care about formatting here, you should

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ensure you have two things at this stage (i) all the components of a good paper including abstract, introduction, methodology, results and discussion and conclusion and (ii) the important contents/findings from the research. You can then check already published articles in

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your area of interest as to how to organize and present your ideas. For non-native speakers, I will suggest getting help or using writing aids such as Grammarly.

2. Select a Good Journal: I think a lot of people make mistakes here, you need to be careful in your selection

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and I will give some pointers here, look at the quality of the journal (the importance of having your work in a reputable journal can not be overemphasized, IF), readership (who are the people reading these journals, If say 0.05% of people in your field cares about a journal

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then why not search for another with more audience (you need people to read your work), Cost of publication (you will need to find free journals if you can’t afford the expensive article processing charges for some journals, but I can assure you there are good free journals)

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time of publication (you are the one to make a decision here, I know some takes longer time to publish than others but once you publish, you publish and for your scholarship applications, you can just say “paper under review” for publication or simply go for fast journals

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but be careful of predatory journals; these and more should help in making a great selection of journal.

3. Effective Communication: This comes as the third point but the most important one in academic publications. You should pass your message in a clear and concise manner
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as my advisor will say, assume the position of the reader at some point and see if you like what you have written. I understand how hard it can be for many of us, I was not great at it when I started too BUT improved over time (today, I have 10+ articles with more to come)

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Your article is all about telling a story and you want to tell a great one, so your readers can say”wow, that was a great one”. Think about how best to present your results and avoid repetition, be sure those results have answered the research questions and check the flow

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of your paper (I am sure you want to minimize the comment from reviewers). This stage is crucial to the acceptance/rejection of your paper.

4. Tables and Figures:I will make this a point here so I can add few tips. The presentation of your results is very important and

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you need to pay attention. There are some rules when it comes to presenting your tables and figures, tables should stand alone (meaning the reader can understand it without necessarily looking for meaning in the text), do not include table if you already have the message

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in the text, tables should show a particular trend or tell the reader about significant findings (be sure not to mix things up). Also, make sure to have nice figures in your manuscript, people care about visuals (we all do); you can use some nice statistical softwares (#R)

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to make nice figures. The figures should be well labeled and referenced appropriately in the manuscript (same for tables). Make sure you do everything to make the audience enjoy reading your manuscript.

5. Proofreading and Formatting: This is the last stage in preparing

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your article. Remember I said you do not need to have a perfect draft at first but here is the chance to look over the entire manuscript again for errors, oversights and to make better. You can send to your mentors, friends or professional editors to give nice feedbacks.

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Do not forget to follow the Instruction to authors (for the journal you selected), this is very important as you do not want them to send it back just because you missed out on formatting your paper (it sends a bad signal to them). I am not sure I have covered all points

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but you should be good following all the tips. You can ask if you are not clear about any of the points or need further helps. Wish you all the best in your applications. @Ijesha_canadian @Okpala_IU @yemi_adeyeye @femi_wumi @adetulaolaoluwa @sama_on_point @AcademicChatter

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