Abstract
While writing scientific manuscripts, the focus of attention is often the core content of the article. The covering letter, the abstract, keywords, and references are important sections that might be skimmed over. Similarly, figures and tables might receive less attention than other segments. In this editorial, we discuss these oft-neglected aspects of manuscript writing and provide tips and tricks for young authors.
The Covering Letter
The covering letter is the first opportunity to sell your manuscript to the editor. Authors should use this space to highlight the key findings of their study and their importance. A cover letter should be brief and succinct. Start by addressing the editor of the journal to which you are submitting. Avoid repeating large sections of the results and discussion here! Avoid non-standard abbreviations (or better still, avoid all abbreviations) in the cover letter! Should there be a novel insight or observation in your paper, state it here (e.g., ‘To the best of our knowledge, our observation of the increased mortality rate seen in patients with Takayasu arteritis from India has not been reported previously’). This is also a good place to highlight your research in the context of work previously published by your research group (e.g., ‘This study supplements previous work from our group (Indian J Rheumatol. 2016;6:28–28) regarding the efficacy of adalimumab in the treatment of enthesitis-related arthritis). Journals might require the submitting author to affirm absence of simultaneous submission to other journals, adherence to principles of authorship, and a broad declaration of conflicts of interest (with more specific details provided within the manuscript). The cover letter concludes with the name and contact details of the corresponding author (usually the same as the submitting author). 1
Abstract
Readers of a manuscript (including editors and reviewers) often read through the abstract before deciding to read the rest of the paper or not. Abstracts are published on search platforms such as PubMed or SCOPUS. Abstracts could be structured (per the IMRaD format) or unstructured. Original articles, systematic reviews, and recommendations usually have structured abstracts, whereas narrative reviews or case reports are often preceded by unstructured abstracts. Letters and editorials usually lack abstracts. 2
Authors should refer to the journal instructions while drafting abstracts, as the length may vary from 150 to 400 words. Practices of authors vary while drafting abstracts. Some prefer to draft the abstract first before writing the rest of the manuscript. Others draft the abstract after writing the rest of the manuscript, by which time, they are aware of the key findings that require highlighting in the abstract. This author prefers the latter strategy.
Start the abstract with a brief introduction to the research question, usually in one sentence. The methods and results sections of abstracts require particular attention for original articles, recommendations, and systematic reviews. In the methods, highlight key aspects of methodological rigour relevant to the manuscript (study design, database, important study techniques, statistical considerations, for recommendations—how consensus was arrived at). The systematic review registration ID or the clinical trial registration number should be mentioned in the abstract. Details of ethics approval and informed consent are usually not required in the methods section of an abstract due to limitations of space. The results should form the bulk of the abstract, highlighting important findings related to the research question or study hypothesis. It is important to include quantitative measures here, including effect sizes and statistical significance of comparisons. The conclusion should be brief (up to two sentences), summing up the findings of the study in the context of the research question/ hypothesis, and if space permits, providing context to the findings and recommendations for future research. References within abstracts are usually discouraged.
Keywords
Published literature is useful only if it is read and cited in the correct context. Keywords help readers identify relevant literature once it is published. Keywords, along with the abstract and title, are used by indexing agencies to link a paper to specific searches. Therefore, keywords should complement the abstract and title. The National Library of Medicine (NLM), United States of America, provides Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) terms, which are preferred for use as keywords in medical papers and used by PubMed to link or map articles to specific search terms. Journals vary in the number of keywords allowed per article; check the author instructions for clarity regarding this. 2 It is preferable to avoid overly general keywords, such as ‘Rheumatology’ or ‘research’, unless these concepts are directly relevant to such a wide field (e.g., an article surveying the perspectives of student researchers in Rheumatology).
Tables and Figures
Tables and figures are critical to the presentation of information, particularly for original and review articles. Titles are essential for tables, and legends are required for figures. Legends for figures must stand alone and make sense to a reader, together with the figure, without needing to go back to the text of the manuscript. Footnotes in tables help detail relevant information, such as expansions of abbreviations or details about specific aspects indicated within the table as symbols (e.g., the statistical test used to derive a P value). It is advisable to submit tables as editable Word files rather than as screenshots. All figures and tables must be referred to within the text of the manuscript in their order of appearance. It is preferable to generate original figures and tables for manuscripts. If reproduced from previous publications or elsewhere, it is essential to seek the permission of the copyright holder of these items. Authors should realise they might have handed over the copyright of items published by them earlier to a publisher, to subsequently reproduce, for which they must seek permission.3,4
It is preferable to avoid 3-dimensional graphs (particularly pie charts) to avoid misrepresentation of data. 5 Histograms should be used to depict continuous class intervals, whereas bar diagrams represent distinct categories in each bar. 6 Journals often require figures to be submitted in editable formats, such as PDF or TIFF, to enable post-acceptance processing for consistency of style. Many journals prefer the authors to submit figures of resolution at least 300 dpi to ensure the quality of printed figures is readable. Authors should avoid presenting figures automatically generated from statistical software without editing the titles and legends for clarity. Some journals might have restrictions on printing colour figures or ask for a separate charge to print figures in colour. Journals might also render colour figures in online publications while printing grayscale/ monochrome figures in print. Therefore, authors should ensure that submitted colour figures are still readable even when rendered in grayscale or monochrome.
Increasingly, graphical abstracts are published to provide a visual summary of papers. While large language models (LLMs) can create graphical abstracts, these are prone to inaccuracies. As per prevalent guidance, publishers are likely not to accept outputs from LLMs for publication, as these are not original content from authors. Authors should try to create graphical abstracts themselves using Microsoft PowerPoint, BioRender, Canva, or similar tools. Graphical abstracts should stand alone. They should not duplicate figures from the main paper. 7
References
References are crucial to link the work to what is already known about the subject. Appropriate referencing helps to avoid plagiarism, an academic offence. All references must be cited within the text at the appropriate place. References should preferably be made to original articles citing an idea, describing a tool for disease assessment, or a criterion for disease classification, rather than to a review article that has referred to this original article. It is also preferable to cite recent literature. If the reference list mostly includes articles that are older than 10–15 years, then it is more likely that the research question being discussed is dated. All the references should be relevant to the context of the discussion, including any self-citations.4,8
The style of references varies from journal to journal. Even for standard styles such as the Vancouver format, journals use variations of the same. As an example, some might require journal names in italics. Others might not require the issue number to be mentioned. Some journals do not require references in a specific format at submission, and ask for reference formatting during revised submission. It is a good idea to include digital object identifiers (doi) of an article where available, as this serves as a permanent link to the latest version of an article (e.g., online first or printed version in an issue). The number of references allowed per article varies between journals. The ordering of reference lists varies from journal to journal. Most journals ask for references to be ordered as they are referred to in the text. Some other journals require reference lists to be in alphabetical order. Careful reading of the author instructions and referring to recent articles published in the journal provides clarity about specific journal requirements. Authors often use automated reference managers such as EndNote and Zotero to format references. While such tools are useful, authors must check their output for accuracy and make the necessary corrections before submission. 9 Due attention to these aspects indicates the professionalism of the authors.
Table 1 provides tips and tricks for young authors about aspects related to the cover letter, abstract, keywords, tables, figures, and references of a manuscript.
Do’s and Don’ts: The Covering Letter, Abstract, Keywords, Tables and Figures, and References.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
None.
Author’s Contribution
DPM contributed to the conception and design of the work; acquisition, analysis, and interpretation of data; drafting of the manuscript; critical revision for important intellectual content; final approval of the version to be published; and agrees to be accountable for all aspects of the work.
Data Availability Statement
All analyses performed for this article are included in the main text or supplementary files. Data related to this study are available from the corresponding author (Durga Prasanna Misra;
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared the following potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Durga Prasanna Misra is the Editor-in-Chief of the Indian Journal of Rheumatology and was not involved in the decision-making process for this manuscript.
Ethical Approval
Not applicable.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tools
The author used Grammarly to assist with grammar correction during manuscript preparation. The author takes full responsibility for the content.