General Formatting

• Does the journal have specific formatting requirements? Such as:
  i. Single- vs. double-spaced
  ii. Font type
  iii. Font size
  iv. Margin specifications

• Is your text left-justified (unless required to be something else by your journal)?

• Did you check for consistent formatting? Such as:
  i. Italicizing the p in p-value
  ii. Italicizing species and genus and making sure genus is capitalized
  iii. Appropriate gene, protein, and mutation nomenclature – usually, genes are italicized and proteins are not but are in uppercase; this varies by species, so look up the guidelines for your species
  iv. Method of emphasis (underline, bold, italicize, change in size, etc.) for headers and for subheaders
  v. Same size for superscripts/subscripts
  vi. Spacing between paragraphs and sections
  vii. Formatting of author affiliations

• Clarify if your journal requires line numbers to be incorporated in submissions. Line numbers may sometimes be generated by the journal management system. They can often be helpful in identifying specific reviewer comments or edits.

Editing and Grammar

• Is your tense appropriate and used consistently (unlike this checklist)?

• Issues with abbreviations

• Have you eliminated vague filler words (“some,” etc.)?

• Have you done your best to use active over passive voice?

• Did you use commas correctly? Rules to be mindful of:

• Have you used pronouns and who/whom correctly?

• Have you configured your sentences so that “for” is not the last word in your sentence?

• Did you use that vs. which correctly?

• Did you consider how you used from vs. with and in vs. among?

• Did you use “et al.” in a consistent manner? et al is Latin for “and others” and may be used both in text as well as in the bibliography of a manuscript. It should be written as “et al.” With no capitalization of the e in et and inclusion of the period following al. Note that AutoCorrect typically capitalizes the e in et. While my preference is to uniformly italicize et al. this appears to be field and journal dependent.

• Are “e.g.,” vs. “i.e.,” used properly? Note that each of these need periods after each letter followed by a comma. These translate from Latin into “for example “ and “that is, ”respectively. If your listing multiple illustrative examples and including commas, then you will be using e.g., while a single restatement of the previous would be appropriate for using i.e.

  • Never use either these along with “etc.” at the end as that is redundant.

• Have you checked your spelling multiple times?

• You may want to consider reading the text aloud or having a peer edit it.

Data and Figures (click for additional information)

• Are OR and CI used consistently?

• Do all numbers have consistent units from the appropriate system?

• Are significant digits (especially decimal places) used consistently and appropriately?

• Do all figures have accurate labels? Such as:
  i. Titles
  ii. Axes labels
  iii. Legends

• Did you evaluate all the numbers in the discussion? Are they better in the results?

• Are tables formatted consistently?

• Are figures and tables presented in the correct order?

• Have you added the numbers in the tables for correct sums and explained discrepancies as needed?

• Is it clear where the data came from for each figure?

References

• Did you follow your journal’s required citation style (if applicable)?

• Are the in-text citations formatted consistently?

• Is the citation list formatted consistently?

• Have you properly given attribution where necessary?

• Did you go over your references (regardless of whether you are using a citation manager or putting in the references manually) to make sure they appear in the correct order/location?

Authorship

• Inclusion and ordering of authors on a manuscript should be discussed early in the process of manuscript development, and then adapted based on actual contributions.

• Please refer to the ICMJE criteria for authorship. ​http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html

Obtaining co-author input

• It is preferred to have the full authorship list included in drafts circulated for review. If authorship has not been determined yet, then please explicitly state this and indicate the process for determining authorship inclusion in order at time of circulation.

• A minimum of two weeks for co-author review should be provided. Science takes time, and just because you may have finished your draft, it doesn’t mean that everyone else is ready to drop everything and review your manuscript. Requests for more rapid review should provide a reasonable justification.

Acknowledgments

• Different journals will have varied sections for including acknowledgment of individuals, groups or funding agencies which have supported the work. Please specifically follow the journal instructions.

• Acknowledging funding support is vital for attributing credit and identifying deliverables from funded projects. When requesting co-author comments, please have them confirm their titles, institutions, and funding support.

• Please note that in this new age of reporting requirements for foreign involvement, co-authors listing of international appointments and international funding sources may represent other support that needs to be reported to NIH and / or university through established processes.

Authorship forms and conflict of interest reporting

• Check for journal specific forms for authorship and conflict of interest reporting