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How to Publish a Research Paper – Step by Step Guide

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Publishing a research paper is an important step for researchers to disseminate their findings to a wider audience and contribute to the advancement of knowledge in their field. Whether you are a graduate student, a postdoctoral fellow, or an established researcher, publishing a paper requires careful planning, rigorous research, and clear writing. In this process, you will need to identify a research question , conduct a thorough literature review , design a methodology, analyze data, and draw conclusions. Additionally, you will need to consider the appropriate journals or conferences to submit your work to and adhere to their guidelines for formatting and submission. In this article, we will discuss some ways to publish your Research Paper.

How to Publish a Research Paper

To Publish a Research Paper follow the guide below:

Conduct original research : Conduct thorough research on a specific topic or problem. Collect data, analyze it, and draw conclusions based on your findings.
Write the paper : Write a detailed paper describing your research. It should include an abstract, introduction, literature review, methodology, results, discussion, and conclusion.
Choose a suitable journal or conference : Look for a journal or conference that specializes in your research area. You can check their submission guidelines to ensure your paper meets their requirements.
Prepare your submission: Follow the guidelines and prepare your submission, including the paper, abstract, cover letter, and any other required documents.
Submit the paper: Submit your paper online through the journal or conference website. Make sure you meet the submission deadline.
Peer-review process : Your paper will be reviewed by experts in the field who will provide feedback on the quality of your research, methodology, and conclusions.
Revisions : Based on the feedback you receive, revise your paper and resubmit it.
Acceptance : Once your paper is accepted, you will receive a notification from the journal or conference. You may need to make final revisions before the paper is published.
Publication : Your paper will be published online or in print. You can also promote your work through social media or other channels to increase its visibility.

How to Choose Journal for Research Paper Publication

Here are some steps to follow to help you select an appropriate journal:

Identify your research topic and audience : Your research topic and intended audience should guide your choice of journal. Identify the key journals in your field of research and read the scope and aim of the journal to determine if your paper is a good fit.
Analyze the journal’s impact and reputation : Check the impact factor and ranking of the journal, as well as its acceptance rate and citation frequency. A high-impact journal can give your paper more visibility and credibility.
Consider the journal’s publication policies : Look for the journal’s publication policies such as the word count limit, formatting requirements, open access options, and submission fees. Make sure that you can comply with the requirements and that the journal is in line with your publication goals.
Look at recent publications : Review recent issues of the journal to evaluate whether your paper would fit in with the journal’s current content and style.
Seek advice from colleagues and mentors: Ask for recommendations and suggestions from your colleagues and mentors in your field, especially those who have experience publishing in the same or similar journals.
Be prepared to make changes : Be prepared to revise your paper according to the requirements and guidelines of the chosen journal. It is also important to be open to feedback from the editor and reviewers.

List of Journals for Research Paper Publications

There are thousands of academic journals covering various fields of research. Here are some of the most popular ones, categorized by field:

General/Multidisciplinary

Nature: https://www.nature.com/
Science: https://www.sciencemag.org/
PLOS ONE: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS): https://www.pnas.org/
The Lancet: https://www.thelancet.com/
JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association): https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama

Social Sciences/Humanities

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/psp
Journal of Consumer Research: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/journals/jcr
Journal of Educational Psychology: https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/edu
Journal of Applied Psychology: https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/apl
Journal of Communication: https://academic.oup.com/joc
American Journal of Political Science: https://ajps.org/
Journal of International Business Studies: https://www.jibs.net/
Journal of Marketing Research: https://www.ama.org/journal-of-marketing-research/

Natural Sciences

Journal of Biological Chemistry: https://www.jbc.org/
Cell: https://www.cell.com/
Science Advances: https://advances.sciencemag.org/
Chemical Reviews: https://pubs.acs.org/journal/chreay
Angewandte Chemie: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/15213765
Physical Review Letters: https://journals.aps.org/prl/
Journal of Geophysical Research: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/2156531X
Journal of High Energy Physics: https://link.springer.com/journal/13130

Engineering/Technology

IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=5962385
IEEE Transactions on Power Systems: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=59
IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=42
IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=87
Journal of Engineering Mechanics: https://ascelibrary.org/journal/jenmdt
Journal of Materials Science: https://www.springer.com/journal/10853
Journal of Chemical Engineering of Japan: https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/browse/jcej
Journal of Mechanical Design: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/mechanicaldesign

Medical/Health Sciences

New England Journal of Medicine: https://www.nejm.org/
The BMJ (formerly British Medical Journal): https://www.bmj.com/
Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA): https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama
Annals of Internal Medicine: https://www.acpjournals.org/journal/aim
American Journal of Epidemiology: https://academic.oup.com/aje
Journal of Clinical Oncology: https://ascopubs.org/journal/jco
Journal of Infectious Diseases: https://academic.oup.com/jid

List of Conferences for Research Paper Publications

There are many conferences that accept research papers for publication. The specific conferences you should consider will depend on your field of research. Here are some suggestions for conferences in a few different fields:

Computer Science and Information Technology:

IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM): https://www.ieee-infocom.org/
ACM SIGCOMM Conference on Data Communication: https://conferences.sigcomm.org/sigcomm/
IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP): https://www.ieee-security.org/TC/SP/
ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS): https://www.sigsac.org/ccs/
ACM Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (CHI): https://chi2022.acm.org/

Engineering:

IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA): https://www.ieee-icra.org/
International Conference on Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (ICMAE): http://www.icmae.org/
International Conference on Civil and Environmental Engineering (ICCEE): http://www.iccee.org/
International Conference on Materials Science and Engineering (ICMSE): http://www.icmse.org/
International Conference on Energy and Power Engineering (ICEPE): http://www.icepe.org/

Natural Sciences:

American Chemical Society National Meeting & Exposition: https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/meetings/national-meeting.html
American Physical Society March Meeting: https://www.aps.org/meetings/march/
International Conference on Environmental Science and Technology (ICEST): http://www.icest.org/
International Conference on Natural Science and Environment (ICNSE): http://www.icnse.org/
International Conference on Life Science and Biological Engineering (LSBE): http://www.lsbe.org/

Social Sciences:

Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA): https://www.asanet.org/annual-meeting-2022
International Conference on Social Science and Humanities (ICSSH): http://www.icssh.org/
International Conference on Psychology and Behavioral Sciences (ICPBS): http://www.icpbs.org/
International Conference on Education and Social Science (ICESS): http://www.icess.org/
International Conference on Management and Information Science (ICMIS): http://www.icmis.org/

How to Publish a Research Paper in Journal

Publishing a research paper in a journal is a crucial step in disseminating scientific knowledge and contributing to the field. Here are the general steps to follow:

Choose a research topic : Select a topic of your interest and identify a research question or problem that you want to investigate. Conduct a literature review to identify the gaps in the existing knowledge that your research will address.
Conduct research : Develop a research plan and methodology to collect data and conduct experiments. Collect and analyze data to draw conclusions that address the research question.
Write a paper: Organize your findings into a well-structured paper with clear and concise language. Your paper should include an introduction, literature review, methodology, results, discussion, and conclusion. Use academic language and provide references for your sources.
Choose a journal: Choose a journal that is relevant to your research topic and audience. Consider factors such as impact factor, acceptance rate, and the reputation of the journal.
Follow journal guidelines : Review the submission guidelines and formatting requirements of the journal. Follow the guidelines carefully to ensure that your paper meets the journal’s requirements.
Submit your paper : Submit your paper to the journal through the online submission system or by email. Include a cover letter that briefly explains the significance of your research and why it is suitable for the journal.
Wait for reviews: Your paper will be reviewed by experts in the field. Be prepared to address their comments and make revisions to your paper.
Revise and resubmit: Make revisions to your paper based on the reviewers’ comments and resubmit it to the journal. If your paper is accepted, congratulations! If not, consider revising and submitting it to another journal.
Address reviewer comments : Reviewers may provide comments and suggestions for revisions to your paper. Address these comments carefully and thoughtfully to improve the quality of your paper.
Submit the final version: Once your revisions are complete, submit the final version of your paper to the journal. Be sure to follow any additional formatting guidelines and requirements provided by the journal.
Publication : If your paper is accepted, it will be published in the journal. Some journals provide online publication while others may publish a print version. Be sure to cite your published paper in future research and communicate your findings to the scientific community.

How to Publish a Research Paper for Students

Here are some steps you can follow to publish a research paper as an Under Graduate or a High School Student:

Select a topic: Choose a topic that is relevant and interesting to you, and that you have a good understanding of.
Conduct research : Gather information and data on your chosen topic through research, experiments, surveys, or other means.
Write the paper : Start with an outline, then write the introduction, methods, results, discussion, and conclusion sections of the paper. Be sure to follow any guidelines provided by your instructor or the journal you plan to submit to.
Edit and revise: Review your paper for errors in spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Ask a peer or mentor to review your paper and provide feedback for improvement.
Choose a journal : Look for journals that publish papers in your field of study and that are appropriate for your level of research. Some popular journals for students include PLOS ONE, Nature, and Science.
Submit the paper: Follow the submission guidelines for the journal you choose, which typically include a cover letter, abstract, and formatting requirements. Be prepared to wait several weeks to months for a response.
Address feedback : If your paper is accepted with revisions, address the feedback from the reviewers and resubmit your paper. If your paper is rejected, review the feedback and consider revising and resubmitting to a different journal.

How to Publish a Research Paper for Free

Publishing a research paper for free can be challenging, but it is possible. Here are some steps you can take to publish your research paper for free:

Choose a suitable open-access journal: Look for open-access journals that are relevant to your research area. Open-access journals allow readers to access your paper without charge, so your work will be more widely available.
Check the journal’s reputation : Before submitting your paper, ensure that the journal is reputable by checking its impact factor, publication history, and editorial board.
Follow the submission guidelines : Every journal has specific guidelines for submitting papers. Make sure to follow these guidelines carefully to increase the chances of acceptance.
Submit your paper : Once you have completed your research paper, submit it to the journal following their submission guidelines.
Wait for the review process: Your paper will undergo a peer-review process, where experts in your field will evaluate your work. Be patient during this process, as it can take several weeks or even months.
Revise your paper : If your paper is rejected, don’t be discouraged. Revise your paper based on the feedback you receive from the reviewers and submit it to another open-access journal.
Promote your research: Once your paper is published, promote it on social media and other online platforms. This will increase the visibility of your work and help it reach a wider audience.

Journals and Conferences for Free Research Paper publications

Here are the websites of the open-access journals and conferences mentioned:

Open-Access Journals:

PLOS ONE – https://journals.plos.org/plosone/
BMC Research Notes – https://bmcresnotes.biomedcentral.com/
Frontiers in… – https://www.frontiersin.org/
Journal of Open Research Software – https://openresearchsoftware.metajnl.com/
PeerJ – https://peerj.com/

Conferences:

IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM) – https://globecom2022.ieee-globecom.org/
IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM) – https://infocom2022.ieee-infocom.org/
IEEE International Conference on Data Mining (ICDM) – https://www.ieee-icdm.org/
ACM SIGCOMM Conference on Data Communication (SIGCOMM) – https://conferences.sigcomm.org/sigcomm/
ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) – https://www.sigsac.org/ccs/CCS2022/

Importance of Research Paper Publication

Research paper publication is important for several reasons, both for individual researchers and for the scientific community as a whole. Here are some reasons why:

Advancing scientific knowledge : Research papers provide a platform for researchers to present their findings and contribute to the body of knowledge in their field. These papers often contain novel ideas, experimental data, and analyses that can help to advance scientific understanding.
Building a research career : Publishing research papers is an essential component of building a successful research career. Researchers are often evaluated based on the number and quality of their publications, and having a strong publication record can increase one’s chances of securing funding, tenure, or a promotion.
Peer review and quality control: Publication in a peer-reviewed journal means that the research has been scrutinized by other experts in the field. This peer review process helps to ensure the quality and validity of the research findings.
Recognition and visibility : Publishing a research paper can bring recognition and visibility to the researchers and their work. It can lead to invitations to speak at conferences, collaborations with other researchers, and media coverage.
Impact on society : Research papers can have a significant impact on society by informing policy decisions, guiding clinical practice, and advancing technological innovation.

Advantages of Research Paper Publication

There are several advantages to publishing a research paper, including:

Recognition: Publishing a research paper allows researchers to gain recognition for their work, both within their field and in the academic community as a whole. This can lead to new collaborations, invitations to conferences, and other opportunities to share their research with a wider audience.
Career advancement : A strong publication record can be an important factor in career advancement, particularly in academia. Publishing research papers can help researchers secure funding, grants, and promotions.
Dissemination of knowledge : Research papers are an important way to share new findings and ideas with the broader scientific community. By publishing their research, scientists can contribute to the collective body of knowledge in their field and help advance scientific understanding.
Feedback and peer review : Publishing a research paper allows other experts in the field to provide feedback on the research, which can help improve the quality of the work and identify potential flaws or limitations. Peer review also helps ensure that research is accurate and reliable.
Citation and impact : Published research papers can be cited by other researchers, which can help increase the impact and visibility of the research. High citation rates can also help establish a researcher’s reputation and credibility within their field.

About the author

Muhammad Hassan

Researcher, Academic Writer, Web developer

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Research Papers

How to Write and Publish Your Research in a Journal

Last Updated: February 26, 2024 Fact Checked

Choosing a Journal

Writing the research paper, editing & revising your paper, submitting your paper, navigating the peer review process, research paper help.

This article was co-authored by Matthew Snipp, PhD and by wikiHow staff writer, Cheyenne Main . C. Matthew Snipp is the Burnet C. and Mildred Finley Wohlford Professor of Humanities and Sciences in the Department of Sociology at Stanford University. He is also the Director for the Institute for Research in the Social Science’s Secure Data Center. He has been a Research Fellow at the U.S. Bureau of the Census and a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He has published 3 books and over 70 articles and book chapters on demography, economic development, poverty and unemployment. He is also currently serving on the National Institute of Child Health and Development’s Population Science Subcommittee. He holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin—Madison. There are 13 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 697,347 times.

Publishing a research paper in a peer-reviewed journal allows you to network with other scholars, get your name and work into circulation, and further refine your ideas and research. Before submitting your paper, make sure it reflects all the work you’ve done and have several people read over it and make comments. Keep reading to learn how you can choose a journal, prepare your work for publication, submit it, and revise it after you get a response back.

Things You Should Know

Create a list of journals you’d like to publish your work in and choose one that best aligns with your topic and your desired audience.
Prepare your manuscript using the journal’s requirements and ask at least 2 professors or supervisors to review your paper.
Write a cover letter that “sells” your manuscript, says how your research adds to your field and explains why you chose the specific journal you’re submitting to.

Step 1 Create a list of journals you’d like to publish your work in.

Ask your professors or supervisors for well-respected journals that they’ve had good experiences publishing with and that they read regularly.
Many journals also only accept specific formats, so by choosing a journal before you start, you can write your article to their specifications and increase your chances of being accepted.
If you’ve already written a paper you’d like to publish, consider whether your research directly relates to a hot topic or area of research in the journals you’re looking into.

Step 2 Look at each journal’s audience, exposure, policies, and procedures.

Review the journal’s peer review policies and submission process to see if you’re comfortable creating or adjusting your work according to their standards.
Open-access journals can increase your readership because anyone can access them.

Step 1 Craft an effective introduction with a thesis statement.

Scientific research papers: Instead of a “thesis,” you might write a “research objective” instead. This is where you state the purpose of your research.
“This paper explores how George Washington’s experiences as a young officer may have shaped his views during difficult circumstances as a commanding officer.”
“This paper contends that George Washington’s experiences as a young officer on the 1750s Pennsylvania frontier directly impacted his relationship with his Continental Army troops during the harsh winter at Valley Forge.”

Step 2 Write the literature review and the body of your paper.

Scientific research papers: Include a “materials and methods” section with the step-by-step process you followed and the materials you used. [5] X Research source
Read other research papers in your field to see how they’re written. Their format, writing style, subject matter, and vocabulary can help guide your own paper. [6] X Research source

Step 3 Write your conclusion that ties back to your thesis or research objective.

If you’re writing about George Washington’s experiences as a young officer, you might emphasize how this research changes our perspective of the first president of the U.S.
Link this section to your thesis or research objective.
If you’re writing a paper about ADHD, you might discuss other applications for your research.

Step 4 Write an abstract that describes what your paper is about.

Scientific research papers: You might include your research and/or analytical methods, your main findings or results, and the significance or implications of your research.
Try to get as many people as you can to read over your abstract and provide feedback before you submit your paper to a journal.

Step 1 Prepare your manuscript according to the journal’s requirements.

They might also provide templates to help you structure your manuscript according to their specific guidelines. [11] X Research source

Step 2 Ask 2 colleagues to review your paper and revise it with their notes.

Not all journal reviewers will be experts on your specific topic, so a non-expert “outsider’s perspective” can be valuable.

Step 1 Check your sources for plagiarism and identify 5 to 6 keywords.

If you have a paper on the purification of wastewater with fungi, you might use both the words “fungi” and “mushrooms.”
Use software like iThenticate, Turnitin, or PlagScan to check for similarities between the submitted article and published material available online. [15] X Research source

Step 2 Write a cover letter explaining why you chose their journal.

Header: Address the editor who will be reviewing your manuscript by their name, include the date of submission, and the journal you are submitting to.
First paragraph: Include the title of your manuscript, the type of paper it is (like review, research, or case study), and the research question you wanted to answer and why.
Second paragraph: Explain what was done in your research, your main findings, and why they are significant to your field.
Third paragraph: Explain why the journal’s readers would be interested in your work and why your results are important to your field.
Conclusion: State the author(s) and any journal requirements that your work complies with (like ethical standards”).
“We confirm that this manuscript has not been published elsewhere and is not under consideration by another journal.”
“All authors have approved the manuscript and agree with its submission to [insert the name of the target journal].”

Step 3 Submit your article according to the journal’s submission guidelines.

Submit your article to only one journal at a time.
When submitting online, use your university email account. This connects you with a scholarly institution, which can add credibility to your work.

Step 1 Try not to panic when you get the journal’s initial response.

Accept: Only minor adjustments are needed, based on the provided feedback by the reviewers. A first submission will rarely be accepted without any changes needed.
Revise and Resubmit: Changes are needed before publication can be considered, but the journal is still very interested in your work.
Reject and Resubmit: Extensive revisions are needed. Your work may not be acceptable for this journal, but they might also accept it if significant changes are made.
Reject: The paper isn’t and won’t be suitable for this publication, but that doesn’t mean it might not work for another journal.

Step 2 Revise your paper based on the reviewers’ feedback.

Try organizing the reviewer comments by how easy it is to address them. That way, you can break your revisions down into more manageable parts.
If you disagree with a comment made by a reviewer, try to provide an evidence-based explanation when you resubmit your paper.

Step 3 Resubmit to the same journal or choose another from your list.

If you’re resubmitting your paper to the same journal, include a point-by-point response paper that talks about how you addressed all of the reviewers’ comments in your revision. [22] X Research source
If you’re not sure which journal to submit to next, you might be able to ask the journal editor which publications they recommend.

Expert Q&A

About This Article

To publish a research paper, ask a colleague or professor to review your paper and give you feedback. Once you've revised your work, familiarize yourself with different academic journals so that you can choose the publication that best suits your paper. Make sure to look at the "Author's Guide" so you can format your paper according to the guidelines for that publication. Then, submit your paper and don't get discouraged if it is not accepted right away. You may need to revise your paper and try again. To learn about the different responses you might get from journals, see our reviewer's explanation below. Did this summary help you? Yes No

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Understanding the Publishing Process

What’s happening with my paper? The publication process explained

The path to publication can be unsettling when you’re unsure what’s happening with your paper. Learn about staple journal workflows to see the detailed steps required for ensuring a rigorous and ethical publication.

Your team has prepared the paper, written a cover letter and completed the submission form. From here, it can sometimes feel like a waiting game while the journal has your paper. It can be unclear exactly who is currently handling your paper as most individuals are only involved in a few steps of the overall process. Journals are responsible for overseeing the peer review, publication and archival process: editors, reviewers, technical editors, production staff and other internal staff all have their roles in ensuring submissions meet rigorous scientific and ethical reporting standards.

Read on for an inside look at how a conventional peer-reviewed journal helps authors transform their initial submission to a certified publication.

Note that the description below is based on the process at PLOS journals. It is likely that at other journals, various roles (e.g. technical editor) may in fact also be played by the editor, and some journals may not have journal staff at all, with all roles played by volunteer academics. As such, please consider the processes and waypoints, rather than who performs them, as the key information.

Internal Checks on New Submissions

Estimated time: 10 days.

When a journal first receives your submission, there are typically two separate checks to confirm that the paper is appropriate and ready for peer review:

Technical check. Performed by a technical editor to ensure that the submission has been properly completed and is ready for further assessment. Blurry figures, missing ethical statements, and incomplete author affiliations are common issues that are addressed at this initial stage. Typically, there are three technical checks: upon initial submission, alongside the first decision letter, and upon acceptance.
Editorial screening . Once a paper passes the first check, an editor with subject expertise assesses the paper and determines whether it is within the journal’s scope and if it could potentially meet the required publication criteria. While there may be requests for further information and minor edits from the author as needed, the paper will either be desk rejected by the editor or allowed to proceed to peer review.

Both editors at this point will additionally make notes for items to be followed-up on at later stages. The publication process involves finding a careful balance for when each check occurs. Early checks need to be thorough so that editors with relevant expertise can focus on the scientific content and more advanced reporting standards, but no one wants to be asked to reformat references only to have their paper desk rejected a few days later.

Peer Review

Estimated time: 1 month.

Depending on the journal’s editorial structure, the editor who performed the initial assessment may also oversee peer review or another editor with more specific expertise may be assigned. Regardless of the journal’s specific process, the various roles and responsibilities during peer review include:

When you have questions or are unsure who your manuscripts is currently with, reach out to the journal staff for help (eg. [email protected]). They will be your lifeline, connecting you to all the other contributors working to assess the manuscript.

Whether an editor needs a reminder that all reviews are complete or a reviewer has asked for an extension, the journal acts as a central hub of communication for those involved with the publication process. As editors and reviewers are used to hearing from journal staff about their duties, any messages you send to the journal can be forwarded to them with proper context and instructions on how to proceed appropriately. Additionally, journal staff will be able to inform you of any delays, such as reviewer availability during summer and holiday periods.

Revision Decision

Estimated time: 1 day.

Editors evaluate peer reviewer feedback and their own expert assessment of the manuscript to reach a decision. After your editor submits a decision on your manuscript, the journal may review it before formally processing the decision and sending it on to you.

A technical editor may scan the manuscript and the review comments to ensure that journal standards have been followed. At this stage, the technical editor will also add requests to ensure the paper, if published, will adhere to journal requirements for data sharing, copyright, ethical reporting and the like.

Performing the second technical check at this stage and adding the journal requirements to the decision letter ultimately saves time by allowing authors to resolve the journal’s queries while making revisions based on comments from the reviewers.

Revised Submission Received

Estimated time: 3 days.

Upon receiving your revised submission, a technical editor will assess the revisions to confirm that the requests from the journal have been properly addressed. Before the paper is returned to the editor for their consideration, the journal needs to be confident that the paper won’t have any issues related to the metadata and reporting standards that could prevent publication. The editor may contact you to resolve any serious issues, though minor items can wait until the paper is accepted.

Subsequent Peer Review

Estimated time: 2 weeks, highly variable.

When your resubmitted paper has passed the required checks, it’ll be assigned back to the same editor who handled it during the first round of peer review. At this point, your paper has gone through two sets of journal checks and one round of peer review. If all has gone well so far, the paper should feel quite solid both in terms of scientific content and proper reporting standards.

When the editor receives your revised paper, they are asked to check if all reviewer comments have been adequately addressed and if the paper now adheres to the journal’s publication criteria. Depending on the situation, some editors may feel confident making this decision based on their own expertise while others may re-invite the previous reviewers for their opinions.

Individual responsibilities are the same as the initial round of peer review, but it is generally expected that later stages of peer review proceed quicker unless new concerns have been introduced as part of the revision.

Preliminary Acceptance

Estimated time: 1 week.

Your editor is satisfied with the scientific quality of your work and has chosen to accept it in principle. Before it can proceed to production and typesetting, the journal office will perform it’s third and final technical check, requesting any formatting changes or additional details that may be required.

When fulfilling these final journal requests, double check the final files to confirm all information is correct. If you need to make changes beyond those specifically required in the decision letter, inform the journal and explain why you made the unrequested changes. Any change that could affect the scientific meaning of the work will need to be approved by the handling editor. While including your rationale for the changes will help avoid delays, if there are extensive changes made at this point the paper may need to go through another round of formal review.

Formal Acceptance and Publication

Estimated time: 2 weeks.

After a technical editor has confirmed that all requests from the provisional acceptance letter have been addressed, you will receive your formal acceptance letter. This letter indicates that your paper is being passed from the Editorial department to the production department—that all information has been editorially approved. The scientific content has been approved through peer review, and the journal’s publication requirements have been met.

Congratulations to you and your co-authors! Your article will be available as soon as the journal transforms the submission into a typeset, consistently structured scientific manuscript, ready to be read and cited by your peers.

The contents of the Peer Review Center are also available as a live, interactive training session, complete with slides, talking points, and activities. …

The contents of the Writing Center are also available as a live, interactive training session, complete with slides, talking points, and activities. …

There’s a lot to consider when deciding where to submit your work. Learn how to choose a journal that will help your study reach its audience, while reflecting your values as a researcher…

How to Write and Publish a Research Paper for a Peer-Reviewed Journal

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Published: 30 April 2020
Volume 36 , pages 909–913, ( 2021 )

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Clara Busse ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0178-1000 1 &
Ella August ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-5151-1036 1 , 2

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Communicating research findings is an essential step in the research process. Often, peer-reviewed journals are the forum for such communication, yet many researchers are never taught how to write a publishable scientific paper. In this article, we explain the basic structure of a scientific paper and describe the information that should be included in each section. We also identify common pitfalls for each section and recommend strategies to avoid them. Further, we give advice about target journal selection and authorship. In the online resource 1 , we provide an example of a high-quality scientific paper, with annotations identifying the elements we describe in this article.

How to Choose the Right Journal

The Point Is…to Publish?

Some Opinions on the Review Process of Research Papers Destined for Publication

Ehsan Roohi & Omid Mahian

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

Introduction

Writing a scientific paper is an important component of the research process, yet researchers often receive little formal training in scientific writing. This is especially true in low-resource settings. In this article, we explain why choosing a target journal is important, give advice about authorship, provide a basic structure for writing each section of a scientific paper, and describe common pitfalls and recommendations for each section. In the online resource 1 , we also include an annotated journal article that identifies the key elements and writing approaches that we detail here. Before you begin your research, make sure you have ethical clearance from all relevant ethical review boards.

Select a Target Journal Early in the Writing Process

We recommend that you select a “target journal” early in the writing process; a “target journal” is the journal to which you plan to submit your paper. Each journal has a set of core readers and you should tailor your writing to this readership. For example, if you plan to submit a manuscript about vaping during pregnancy to a pregnancy-focused journal, you will need to explain what vaping is because readers of this journal may not have a background in this topic. However, if you were to submit that same article to a tobacco journal, you would not need to provide as much background information about vaping.

Information about a journal’s core readership can be found on its website, usually in a section called “About this journal” or something similar. For example, the Journal of Cancer Education presents such information on the “Aims and Scope” page of its website, which can be found here: https://www.springer.com/journal/13187/aims-and-scope .

Peer reviewer guidelines from your target journal are an additional resource that can help you tailor your writing to the journal and provide additional advice about crafting an effective article [ 1 ]. These are not always available, but it is worth a quick web search to find out.

Identify Author Roles Early in the Process

Early in the writing process, identify authors, determine the order of authors, and discuss the responsibilities of each author. Standard author responsibilities have been identified by The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) [ 2 ]. To set clear expectations about each team member’s responsibilities and prevent errors in communication, we also suggest outlining more detailed roles, such as who will draft each section of the manuscript, write the abstract, submit the paper electronically, serve as corresponding author, and write the cover letter. It is best to formalize this agreement in writing after discussing it, circulating the document to the author team for approval. We suggest creating a title page on which all authors are listed in the agreed-upon order. It may be necessary to adjust authorship roles and order during the development of the paper. If a new author order is agreed upon, be sure to update the title page in the manuscript draft.

In the case where multiple papers will result from a single study, authors should discuss who will author each paper. Additionally, authors should agree on a deadline for each paper and the lead author should take responsibility for producing an initial draft by this deadline.

Structure of the Introduction Section

The introduction section should be approximately three to five paragraphs in length. Look at examples from your target journal to decide the appropriate length. This section should include the elements shown in Fig. 1 . Begin with a general context, narrowing to the specific focus of the paper. Include five main elements: why your research is important, what is already known about the topic, the “gap” or what is not yet known about the topic, why it is important to learn the new information that your research adds, and the specific research aim(s) that your paper addresses. Your research aim should address the gap you identified. Be sure to add enough background information to enable readers to understand your study. Table 1 provides common introduction section pitfalls and recommendations for addressing them.

The main elements of the introduction section of an original research article. Often, the elements overlap

Methods Section

The purpose of the methods section is twofold: to explain how the study was done in enough detail to enable its replication and to provide enough contextual detail to enable readers to understand and interpret the results. In general, the essential elements of a methods section are the following: a description of the setting and participants, the study design and timing, the recruitment and sampling, the data collection process, the dataset, the dependent and independent variables, the covariates, the analytic approach for each research objective, and the ethical approval. The hallmark of an exemplary methods section is the justification of why each method was used. Table 2 provides common methods section pitfalls and recommendations for addressing them.

Results Section

The focus of the results section should be associations, or lack thereof, rather than statistical tests. Two considerations should guide your writing here. First, the results should present answers to each part of the research aim. Second, return to the methods section to ensure that the analysis and variables for each result have been explained.

Begin the results section by describing the number of participants in the final sample and details such as the number who were approached to participate, the proportion who were eligible and who enrolled, and the number of participants who dropped out. The next part of the results should describe the participant characteristics. After that, you may organize your results by the aim or by putting the most exciting results first. Do not forget to report your non-significant associations. These are still findings.

Tables and figures capture the reader’s attention and efficiently communicate your main findings [ 3 ]. Each table and figure should have a clear message and should complement, rather than repeat, the text. Tables and figures should communicate all salient details necessary for a reader to understand the findings without consulting the text. Include information on comparisons and tests, as well as information about the sample and timing of the study in the title, legend, or in a footnote. Note that figures are often more visually interesting than tables, so if it is feasible to make a figure, make a figure. To avoid confusing the reader, either avoid abbreviations in tables and figures, or define them in a footnote. Note that there should not be citations in the results section and you should not interpret results here. Table 3 provides common results section pitfalls and recommendations for addressing them.

Discussion Section

Opposite the introduction section, the discussion should take the form of a right-side-up triangle beginning with interpretation of your results and moving to general implications (Fig. 2 ). This section typically begins with a restatement of the main findings, which can usually be accomplished with a few carefully-crafted sentences.

Major elements of the discussion section of an original research article. Often, the elements overlap

Next, interpret the meaning or explain the significance of your results, lifting the reader’s gaze from the study’s specific findings to more general applications. Then, compare these study findings with other research. Are these findings in agreement or disagreement with those from other studies? Does this study impart additional nuance to well-accepted theories? Situate your findings within the broader context of scientific literature, then explain the pathways or mechanisms that might give rise to, or explain, the results.

Journals vary in their approach to strengths and limitations sections: some are embedded paragraphs within the discussion section, while some mandate separate section headings. Keep in mind that every study has strengths and limitations. Candidly reporting yours helps readers to correctly interpret your research findings.

The next element of the discussion is a summary of the potential impacts and applications of the research. Should these results be used to optimally design an intervention? Does the work have implications for clinical protocols or public policy? These considerations will help the reader to further grasp the possible impacts of the presented work.

Finally, the discussion should conclude with specific suggestions for future work. Here, you have an opportunity to illuminate specific gaps in the literature that compel further study. Avoid the phrase “future research is necessary” because the recommendation is too general to be helpful to readers. Instead, provide substantive and specific recommendations for future studies. Table 4 provides common discussion section pitfalls and recommendations for addressing them.

Follow the Journal’s Author Guidelines

After you select a target journal, identify the journal’s author guidelines to guide the formatting of your manuscript and references. Author guidelines will often (but not always) include instructions for titles, cover letters, and other components of a manuscript submission. Read the guidelines carefully. If you do not follow the guidelines, your article will be sent back to you.

Finally, do not submit your paper to more than one journal at a time. Even if this is not explicitly stated in the author guidelines of your target journal, it is considered inappropriate and unprofessional.

Your title should invite readers to continue reading beyond the first page [ 4 , 5 ]. It should be informative and interesting. Consider describing the independent and dependent variables, the population and setting, the study design, the timing, and even the main result in your title. Because the focus of the paper can change as you write and revise, we recommend you wait until you have finished writing your paper before composing the title.

Be sure that the title is useful for potential readers searching for your topic. The keywords you select should complement those in your title to maximize the likelihood that a researcher will find your paper through a database search. Avoid using abbreviations in your title unless they are very well known, such as SNP, because it is more likely that someone will use a complete word rather than an abbreviation as a search term to help readers find your paper.

After you have written a complete draft, use the checklist (Fig. 3 ) below to guide your revisions and editing. Additional resources are available on writing the abstract and citing references [ 5 ]. When you feel that your work is ready, ask a trusted colleague or two to read the work and provide informal feedback. The box below provides a checklist that summarizes the key points offered in this article.

Checklist for manuscript quality

Data Availability

Michalek AM (2014) Down the rabbit hole…advice to reviewers. J Cancer Educ 29:4–5

Article Google Scholar

International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Defining the role of authors and contributors: who is an author? http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authosrs-and-contributors.html . Accessed 15 January, 2020

Vetto JT (2014) Short and sweet: a short course on concise medical writing. J Cancer Educ 29(1):194–195

Brett M, Kording K (2017) Ten simple rules for structuring papers. PLoS ComputBiol. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005619

Lang TA (2017) Writing a better research article. J Public Health Emerg. https://doi.org/10.21037/jphe.2017.11.06

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Acknowledgments

Ella August is grateful to the Sustainable Sciences Institute for mentoring her in training researchers on writing and publishing their research.

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Clara Busse & Ella August

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Busse, C., August, E. How to Write and Publish a Research Paper for a Peer-Reviewed Journal. J Canc Educ 36 , 909–913 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13187-020-01751-z

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Home → Get Published → How to Publish a Research Paper: A Step-by-Step Guide

How to Publish a Research Paper: A Step-by-Step Guide

Jordan Kruszynski

January 4, 2024

You’re in academia.

You’re going steady.

Your research is going well and you begin to wonder: ‘ How exactly do I get a research paper published?’

If this is the question on your lips, then this step-by-step guide is the one for you. We’ll be walking you through the whole process of how to publish a research paper.

Publishing a research paper is a significant milestone for researchers and academics, as it allows you to share your findings, contribute to your field of study, and start to gain serious recognition within the wider academic community. So, want to know how to publish a research paper? By following our guide, you’ll get a firm grasp of the steps involved in this process, giving you the best chance of successfully navigating the publishing process and getting your work out there.

Understanding the Publishing Process

To begin, it’s crucial to understand that getting a research paper published is a multi-step process. From beginning to end, it could take as little as 2 months before you see your paper nestled in the pages of your chosen journal. On the other hand, it could take as long as a year .

Below, we set out the steps before going into more detail on each one. Getting a feel for these steps will help you to visualise what lies ahead, and prepare yourself for each of them in turn. It’s important to remember that you won’t actually have control over every step – in fact, some of them will be decided by people you’ll probably never meet. However, knowing which parts of the process are yours to decide will allow you to adjust your approach and attitude accordingly.

Each of the following stages will play a vital role in the eventual publication of your paper:

Preparing Your Research Paper
Finding the Right Journal
Crafting a Strong Manuscript
Navigating the Peer-Review Process
Submitting Your Paper
Dealing with Rejections and Revising Your Paper

Step 1: Preparing Your Research Paper

It all starts here. The quality and content of your research paper is of fundamental importance if you want to get it published. This step will be different for every researcher depending on the nature of your research, but if you haven’t yet settled on a topic, then consider the following advice:

Choose an interesting and relevant topic that aligns with current trends in your field. If your research touches on the passions and concerns of your academic peers or wider society, it may be more likely to capture attention and get published successfully.
Conduct a comprehensive literature review (link to lit. review article once it’s published) to identify the state of existing research and any knowledge gaps within it. Aiming to fill a clear gap in the knowledge of your field is a great way to increase the practicality of your research and improve its chances of getting published.
Structure your paper in a clear and organised manner, including all the necessary sections such as title, abstract, introduction (link to the ‘how to write a research paper intro’ article once it’s published) , methodology, results, discussion, and conclusion.
Adhere to the formatting guidelines provided by your target journal to ensure that your paper is accepted as viable for publishing. More on this in the next section…

Step 2: Finding the Right Journal

Understanding how to publish a research paper involves selecting the appropriate journal for your work. This step is critical for successful publication, and you should take several factors into account when deciding which journal to apply for:

Conduct thorough research to identify journals that specialise in your field of study and have published similar research. Naturally, if you submit a piece of research in molecular genetics to a journal that specialises in geology, you won’t be likely to get very far.
Consider factors such as the journal’s scope, impact factor, and target audience. Today there is a wide array of journals to choose from, including traditional and respected print journals, as well as numerous online, open-access endeavours. Some, like Nature , even straddle both worlds.
Review the submission guidelines provided by the journal and ensure your paper meets all the formatting requirements and word limits. This step is key. Nature, for example, offers a highly informative series of pages that tells you everything you need to know in order to satisfy their formatting guidelines (plus more on the whole submission process).
Note that these guidelines can differ dramatically from journal to journal, and details really do matter. You might submit an outstanding piece of research, but if it includes, for example, images in the wrong size or format, this could mean a lengthy delay to getting it published. If you get everything right first time, you’ll save yourself a lot of time and trouble, as well as strengthen your publishing chances in the first place.

Step 3: Crafting a Strong Manuscript

Crafting a strong manuscript is crucial to impress journal editors and reviewers. Look at your paper as a complete package, and ensure that all the sections tie together to deliver your findings with clarity and precision.

Begin by creating a clear and concise title that accurately reflects the content of your paper.
Compose an informative abstract that summarises the purpose, methodology, results, and significance of your study.
Craft an engaging introduction (link to the research paper introduction article) that draws your reader in.
Develop a well-structured methodology section, presenting your results effectively using tables and figures.
Write a compelling discussion and conclusion that emphasise the significance of your findings.

Step 4: Navigating the Peer-Review Process

Once you submit your research paper to a journal, it undergoes a rigorous peer-review process to ensure its quality and validity. In peer-review, experts in your field assess your research and provide feedback and suggestions for improvement, ultimately determining whether your paper is eligible for publishing or not. You are likely to encounter several models of peer-review, based on which party – author, reviewer, or both – remains anonymous throughout the process.

When your paper undergoes the peer-review process, be prepared for constructive criticism and address the comments you receive from your reviewer thoughtfully, providing clear and concise responses to their concerns or suggestions. These could make all the difference when it comes to making your next submission.

The peer-review process can seem like a closed book at times. Check out our discussion of the issue with philosopher and academic Amna Whiston in The Research Beat podcast!

Step 5: Submitting Your Paper

As we’ve already pointed out, one of the key elements in how to publish a research paper is ensuring that you meticulously follow the journal’s submission guidelines. Strive to comply with all formatting requirements, including citation styles, font, margins, and reference structure.

Before the final submission, thoroughly proofread your paper for errors, including grammar, spelling, and any inconsistencies in your data or analysis. At this stage, consider seeking feedback from colleagues or mentors to further improve the quality of your paper.

Step 6: Dealing with Rejections and Revising Your Paper

Rejection is a common part of the publishing process, but it shouldn’t discourage you. Analyse reviewer comments objectively and focus on the constructive feedback provided. Make necessary revisions and improvements to your paper to address the concerns raised by reviewers. If needed, consider submitting your paper to a different journal that is a better fit for your research.

For more tips on how to publish your paper out there, check out this thread by Dr. Asad Naveed ( @dr_asadnaveed ) – and if you need a refresher on the basics of how to publish under the Open Access model, watch this 5-minute video from Audemic Academy !

Final Thoughts

Successfully understanding how to publish a research paper requires dedication, attention to detail, and a systematic approach. By following the advice in our guide, you can increase your chances of navigating the publishing process effectively and achieving your goal of publication.

Remember, the journey may involve revisions, peer feedback, and potential rejections, but each step is an opportunity for growth and improvement. Stay persistent, maintain a positive mindset, and continue to refine your research paper until it reaches the standards of your target journal. Your contribution to your wider discipline through published research will not only advance your career, but also add to the growing body of collective knowledge in your field. Embrace the challenges and rewards that come with the publication process, and may your research paper make a significant impact in your area of study!

Looking for inspiration for your next big paper? Head to Audemic , where you can organise and listen to all the best and latest research in your field!

Keep striving, researchers! ✨

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How to Write and Publish a Research Paper in 7 Steps

What comes next after you're done with your research? Publishing the results in a journal of course! We tell you how to present your work in the best way possible.

This post is part of a series, which serves to provide hands-on information and resources for authors and editors.

Things have gotten busy in scholarly publishing: These days, a new article gets published in the 50,000 most important peer-reviewed journals every few seconds, while each one takes on average 40 minutes to read. Hundreds of thousands of papers reach the desks of editors and reviewers worldwide each year and 50% of all submissions end up rejected at some stage.

In a nutshell: there is a lot of competition, and the people who decide upon the fate of your manuscript are short on time and overworked. But there are ways to make their lives a little easier and improve your own chances of getting your work published!

Well, it may seem obvious, but before submitting an academic paper, always make sure that it is an excellent reflection of the research you have done and that you present it in the most professional way possible. Incomplete or poorly presented manuscripts can create a great deal of frustration and annoyance for editors who probably won’t even bother wasting the time of the reviewers!

This post will discuss 7 steps to the successful publication of your research paper:

Check whether your research is publication-ready
Choose an article type
Choose a journal
Construct your paper
Decide the order of authors
Check and double-check
Submit your paper

1. Check Whether Your Research Is Publication-Ready

Should you publish your research at all?

If your work holds academic value – of course – a well-written scholarly article could open doors to your research community. However, if you are not yet sure, whether your research is ready for publication, here are some key questions to ask yourself depending on your field of expertise:

Have you done or found something new and interesting? Something unique?
Is the work directly related to a current hot topic?
Have you checked the latest results or research in the field?
Have you provided solutions to any difficult problems?
Have the findings been verified?
Have the appropriate controls been performed if required?
Are your findings comprehensive?

If the answers to all relevant questions are “yes”, you need to prepare a good, strong manuscript. Remember, a research paper is only useful if it is clearly understood, reproducible and if it is read and used .

2. Choose An Article Type

The first step is to determine which type of paper is most appropriate for your work and what you want to achieve. The following list contains the most important, usually peer-reviewed article types in the natural sciences:

Full original research papers disseminate completed research findings. On average this type of paper is 8-10 pages long, contains five figures, and 25-30 references. Full original research papers are an important part of the process when developing your career.

Review papers present a critical synthesis of a specific research topic. These papers are usually much longer than original papers and will contain numerous references. More often than not, they will be commissioned by journal editors. Reviews present an excellent way to solidify your research career.

Letters, Rapid or Short Communications are often published for the quick and early communication of significant and original advances. They are much shorter than full articles and usually limited in length by the journal. Journals specifically dedicated to short communications or letters are also published in some fields. In these the authors can present short preliminary findings before developing a full-length paper.

3. Choose a Journal

Are you looking for the right place to publish your paper? Find out here whether a De Gruyter journal might be the right fit.

Submit to journals that you already read, that you have a good feel for. If you do so, you will have a better appreciation of both its culture and the requirements of the editors and reviewers.

Other factors to consider are:

The specific subject area
The aims and scope of the journal
The type of manuscript you have written
The significance of your work
The reputation of the journal
The reputation of the editors within the community
The editorial/review and production speeds of the journal
The community served by the journal
The coverage and distribution
The accessibility ( open access vs. closed access)

4. Construct Your Paper

Each element of a paper has its purpose, so you should make these sections easy to index and search.

Don’t forget that requirements can differ highly per publication, so always make sure to apply a journal’s specific instructions – or guide – for authors to your manuscript, even to the first draft (text layout, paper citation, nomenclature, figures and table, etc.) It will save you time, and the editor’s.

Also, even in these days of Internet-based publishing, space is still at a premium, so be as concise as possible. As a good journalist would say: “Never use three words when one will do!”

Let’s look at the typical structure of a full research paper, but bear in mind certain subject disciplines may have their own specific requirements so check the instructions for authors on the journal’s home page.

4.1 The Title

It’s important to use the title to tell the reader what your paper is all about! You want to attract their attention, a bit like a newspaper headline does. Be specific and to the point. Keep it informative and concise, and avoid jargon and abbreviations (unless they are universally recognized like DNA, for example).

4.2 The Abstract

This could be termed as the “advertisement” for your article. Make it interesting and easily understood without the reader having to read the whole article. Be accurate and specific, and keep it as brief and concise as possible. Some journals (particularly in the medical fields) will ask you to structure the abstract in distinct, labeled sections, which makes it even more accessible.

A clear abstract will influence whether or not your work is considered and whether an editor should invest more time on it or send it for review.

4.3 Keywords

Keywords are used by abstracting and indexing services, such as PubMed and Web of Science. They are the labels of your manuscript, which make it “searchable” online by other researchers.

Include words or phrases (usually 4-8) that are closely related to your topic but not “too niche” for anyone to find them. Make sure to only use established abbreviations. Think about what scientific terms and its variations your potential readers are likely to use and search for. You can also do a test run of your selected keywords in one of the common academic search engines. Do similar articles to your own appear? Yes? Then that’s a good sign.

4.4 Introduction

This first part of the main text should introduce the problem, as well as any existing solutions you are aware of and the main limitations. Also, state what you hope to achieve with your research.

Do not confuse the introduction with the results, discussion or conclusion.

4.5 Methods

Every research article should include a detailed Methods section (also referred to as “Materials and Methods”) to provide the reader with enough information to be able to judge whether the study is valid and reproducible.

Include detailed information so that a knowledgeable reader can reproduce the experiment. However, use references and supplementary materials to indicate previously published procedures.

4.6 Results

In this section, you will present the essential or primary results of your study. To display them in a comprehensible way, you should use subheadings as well as illustrations such as figures, graphs, tables and photos, as appropriate.

4.7 Discussion

Here you should tell your readers what the results mean .

Do state how the results relate to the study’s aims and hypotheses and how the findings relate to those of other studies. Explain all possible interpretations of your findings and the study’s limitations.

Do not make “grand statements” that are not supported by the data. Also, do not introduce any new results or terms. Moreover, do not ignore work that conflicts or disagrees with your findings. Instead …

Be brave! Address conflicting study results and convince the reader you are the one who is correct.

4.8 Conclusion

Your conclusion isn’t just a summary of what you’ve already written. It should take your paper one step further and answer any unresolved questions.

Sum up what you have shown in your study and indicate possible applications and extensions. The main question your conclusion should answer is: What do my results mean for the research field and my community?

4.9 Acknowledgments and Ethical Statements

It is extremely important to acknowledge anyone who has helped you with your paper, including researchers who supplied materials or reagents (e.g. vectors or antibodies); and anyone who helped with the writing or English, or offered critical comments about the content.

Learn more about academic integrity in our blog post “Scholarly Publication Ethics: 4 Common Mistakes You Want To Avoid” .

Remember to state why people have been acknowledged and ask their permission . Ensure that you acknowledge sources of funding, including any grant or reference numbers.

Furthermore, if you have worked with animals or humans, you need to include information about the ethical approval of your study and, if applicable, whether informed consent was given. Also, state whether you have any competing interests regarding the study (e.g. because of financial or personal relationships.)

4.10 References

The end is in sight, but don’t relax just yet!

De facto, there are often more mistakes in the references than in any other part of the manuscript. It is also one of the most annoying and time-consuming problems for editors.

Remember to cite the main scientific publications on which your work is based. But do not inflate the manuscript with too many references. Avoid excessive – and especially unnecessary – self-citations. Also, avoid excessive citations of publications from the same institute or region.

5. Decide the Order of Authors

In the sciences, the most common way to order the names of the authors is by relative contribution.

Generally, the first author conducts and/or supervises the data analysis and the proper presentation and interpretation of the results. They put the paper together and usually submit the paper to the journal.

Co-authors make intellectual contributions to the data analysis and contribute to data interpretation. They review each paper draft. All of them must be able to present the paper and its results, as well as to defend the implications and discuss study limitations.

Do not leave out authors who should be included or add “gift authors”, i.e. authors who did not contribute significantly.

6. Check and Double-Check

As a final step before submission, ask colleagues to read your work and be constructively critical .

Make sure that the paper is appropriate for the journal – take a last look at their aims and scope. Check if all of the requirements in the instructions for authors are met.

Ensure that the cited literature is balanced. Are the aims, purpose and significance of the results clear?

Conduct a final check for language, either by a native English speaker or an editing service.

7. Submit Your Paper

When you and your co-authors have double-, triple-, quadruple-checked the manuscript: submit it via e-mail or online submission system. Along with your manuscript, submit a cover letter, which highlights the reasons why your paper would appeal to the journal and which ensures that you have received approval of all authors for submission.

It is up to the editors and the peer-reviewers now to provide you with their (ideally constructive and helpful) comments and feedback. Time to take a breather!

If the paper gets rejected, do not despair – it happens to literally everybody. If the journal suggests major or minor revisions, take the chance to provide a thorough response and make improvements as you see fit. If the paper gets accepted, congrats!

It’s now time to get writing and share your hard work – good luck!

If you are interested, check out this related blog post

[Title Image by Nick Morrison via Unsplash]

David Sleeman

David Sleeman worked as Senior Journals Manager in the field of Physical Sciences at De Gruyter.

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Research paper

How to Write a Research Paper | A Beginner's Guide

A research paper is a piece of academic writing that provides analysis, interpretation, and argument based on in-depth independent research.

Research papers are similar to academic essays , but they are usually longer and more detailed assignments, designed to assess not only your writing skills but also your skills in scholarly research. Writing a research paper requires you to demonstrate a strong knowledge of your topic, engage with a variety of sources, and make an original contribution to the debate.

This step-by-step guide takes you through the entire writing process, from understanding your assignment to proofreading your final draft.

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Understand the assignment, choose a research paper topic, conduct preliminary research, develop a thesis statement, create a research paper outline, write a first draft of the research paper, write the introduction, write a compelling body of text, write the conclusion, the second draft, the revision process, research paper checklist, free lecture slides.

Completing a research paper successfully means accomplishing the specific tasks set out for you. Before you start, make sure you thoroughly understanding the assignment task sheet:

Read it carefully, looking for anything confusing you might need to clarify with your professor.
Identify the assignment goal, deadline, length specifications, formatting, and submission method.
Make a bulleted list of the key points, then go back and cross completed items off as you’re writing.

Carefully consider your timeframe and word limit: be realistic, and plan enough time to research, write, and edit.

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There are many ways to generate an idea for a research paper, from brainstorming with pen and paper to talking it through with a fellow student or professor.

You can try free writing, which involves taking a broad topic and writing continuously for two or three minutes to identify absolutely anything relevant that could be interesting.

You can also gain inspiration from other research. The discussion or recommendations sections of research papers often include ideas for other specific topics that require further examination.

Once you have a broad subject area, narrow it down to choose a topic that interests you, m eets the criteria of your assignment, and i s possible to research. Aim for ideas that are both original and specific:

A paper following the chronology of World War II would not be original or specific enough.
A paper on the experience of Danish citizens living close to the German border during World War II would be specific and could be original enough.

Note any discussions that seem important to the topic, and try to find an issue that you can focus your paper around. Use a variety of sources , including journals, books, and reliable websites, to ensure you do not miss anything glaring.

Do not only verify the ideas you have in mind, but look for sources that contradict your point of view.

Is there anything people seem to overlook in the sources you research?
Are there any heated debates you can address?
Do you have a unique take on your topic?
Have there been some recent developments that build on the extant research?

In this stage, you might find it helpful to formulate some research questions to help guide you. To write research questions, try to finish the following sentence: “I want to know how/what/why…”

A thesis statement is a statement of your central argument — it establishes the purpose and position of your paper. If you started with a research question, the thesis statement should answer it. It should also show what evidence and reasoning you’ll use to support that answer.

The thesis statement should be concise, contentious, and coherent. That means it should briefly summarize your argument in a sentence or two, make a claim that requires further evidence or analysis, and make a coherent point that relates to every part of the paper.

You will probably revise and refine the thesis statement as you do more research, but it can serve as a guide throughout the writing process. Every paragraph should aim to support and develop this central claim.

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A research paper outline is essentially a list of the key topics, arguments, and evidence you want to include, divided into sections with headings so that you know roughly what the paper will look like before you start writing.

A structure outline can help make the writing process much more efficient, so it’s worth dedicating some time to create one.

Your first draft won’t be perfect — you can polish later on. Your priorities at this stage are as follows:

Maintaining forward momentum — write now, perfect later.
Paying attention to clear organization and logical ordering of paragraphs and sentences, which will help when you come to the second draft.
Expressing your ideas as clearly as possible, so you know what you were trying to say when you come back to the text.

You do not need to start by writing the introduction. Begin where it feels most natural for you — some prefer to finish the most difficult sections first, while others choose to start with the easiest part. If you created an outline, use it as a map while you work.

Do not delete large sections of text. If you begin to dislike something you have written or find it doesn’t quite fit, move it to a different document, but don’t lose it completely — you never know if it might come in useful later.

Paragraph structure

Paragraphs are the basic building blocks of research papers. Each one should focus on a single claim or idea that helps to establish the overall argument or purpose of the paper.

Example paragraph

George Orwell’s 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language” has had an enduring impact on thought about the relationship between politics and language. This impact is particularly obvious in light of the various critical review articles that have recently referenced the essay. For example, consider Mark Falcoff’s 2009 article in The National Review Online, “The Perversion of Language; or, Orwell Revisited,” in which he analyzes several common words (“activist,” “civil-rights leader,” “diversity,” and more). Falcoff’s close analysis of the ambiguity built into political language intentionally mirrors Orwell’s own point-by-point analysis of the political language of his day. Even 63 years after its publication, Orwell’s essay is emulated by contemporary thinkers.

Citing sources

It’s also important to keep track of citations at this stage to avoid accidental plagiarism . Each time you use a source, make sure to take note of where the information came from.

You can use our free citation generators to automatically create citations and save your reference list as you go.

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The research paper introduction should address three questions: What, why, and how? After finishing the introduction, the reader should know what the paper is about, why it is worth reading, and how you’ll build your arguments.

What? Be specific about the topic of the paper, introduce the background, and define key terms or concepts.

Why? This is the most important, but also the most difficult, part of the introduction. Try to provide brief answers to the following questions: What new material or insight are you offering? What important issues does your essay help define or answer?

How? To let the reader know what to expect from the rest of the paper, the introduction should include a “map” of what will be discussed, briefly presenting the key elements of the paper in chronological order.

The major struggle faced by most writers is how to organize the information presented in the paper, which is one reason an outline is so useful. However, remember that the outline is only a guide and, when writing, you can be flexible with the order in which the information and arguments are presented.

One way to stay on track is to use your thesis statement and topic sentences . Check:

topic sentences against the thesis statement;
topic sentences against each other, for similarities and logical ordering;
and each sentence against the topic sentence of that paragraph.

Be aware of paragraphs that seem to cover the same things. If two paragraphs discuss something similar, they must approach that topic in different ways. Aim to create smooth transitions between sentences, paragraphs, and sections.

The research paper conclusion is designed to help your reader out of the paper’s argument, giving them a sense of finality.

Trace the course of the paper, emphasizing how it all comes together to prove your thesis statement. Give the paper a sense of finality by making sure the reader understands how you’ve settled the issues raised in the introduction.

You might also discuss the more general consequences of the argument, outline what the paper offers to future students of the topic, and suggest any questions the paper’s argument raises but cannot or does not try to answer.

You should not :

Offer new arguments or essential information
Take up any more space than necessary
Begin with stock phrases that signal you are ending the paper (e.g. “In conclusion”)

There are four main considerations when it comes to the second draft.

Check how your vision of the paper lines up with the first draft and, more importantly, that your paper still answers the assignment.
Identify any assumptions that might require (more substantial) justification, keeping your reader’s perspective foremost in mind. Remove these points if you cannot substantiate them further.
Be open to rearranging your ideas. Check whether any sections feel out of place and whether your ideas could be better organized.
If you find that old ideas do not fit as well as you anticipated, you should cut them out or condense them. You might also find that new and well-suited ideas occurred to you during the writing of the first draft — now is the time to make them part of the paper.

The goal during the revision and proofreading process is to ensure you have completed all the necessary tasks and that the paper is as well-articulated as possible. You can speed up the proofreading process by using the AI proofreader .

Global concerns

Confirm that your paper completes every task specified in your assignment sheet.
Check for logical organization and flow of paragraphs.
Check paragraphs against the introduction and thesis statement.

Fine-grained details

Check the content of each paragraph, making sure that:

each sentence helps support the topic sentence.
no unnecessary or irrelevant information is present.
all technical terms your audience might not know are identified.

Next, think about sentence structure , grammatical errors, and formatting . Check that you have correctly used transition words and phrases to show the connections between your ideas. Look for typos, cut unnecessary words, and check for consistency in aspects such as heading formatting and spellings .

Finally, you need to make sure your paper is correctly formatted according to the rules of the citation style you are using. For example, you might need to include an MLA heading or create an APA title page .

Scribbr’s professional editors can help with the revision process with our award-winning proofreading services.

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Checklist: Research paper

I have followed all instructions in the assignment sheet.

My introduction presents my topic in an engaging way and provides necessary background information.

My introduction presents a clear, focused research problem and/or thesis statement .

My paper is logically organized using paragraphs and (if relevant) section headings .

Each paragraph is clearly focused on one central idea, expressed in a clear topic sentence .

Each paragraph is relevant to my research problem or thesis statement.

I have used appropriate transitions to clarify the connections between sections, paragraphs, and sentences.

My conclusion provides a concise answer to the research question or emphasizes how the thesis has been supported.

My conclusion shows how my research has contributed to knowledge or understanding of my topic.

My conclusion does not present any new points or information essential to my argument.

I have provided an in-text citation every time I refer to ideas or information from a source.

I have included a reference list at the end of my paper, consistently formatted according to a specific citation style .

I have thoroughly revised my paper and addressed any feedback from my professor or supervisor.

I have followed all formatting guidelines (page numbers, headers, spacing, etc.).

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Clinical Reasoning of a Generative Artificial Intelligence Model Compared With Physicians

1 Department of Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, Massachusetts
2 Department of Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston
3 Department of Pulmonary and Critical Care, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts

Large language models (LLMs) have shown promise in clinical reasoning, but their ability to synthesize clinical encounter data into problem representations remains unexplored. 1 - 3 We compared an LLM’s reasoning abilities against human performance using standards developed for physicians.

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‘An epidemic of loneliness’: How the pandemic changed life for aging adults

Stock image of a sign at a park in 2020, calling for social distancing. Four years later, a new study shows many are still keeping to themselves more than they did pre-pandemic.

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Years after the U.S. began to slowly emerge from mandatory COVID-19 lockdowns, more than half of older adults still spend more time at home and less time socializing in public spaces than they did pre-pandemic, according to new CU Boulder research.

Participants cited fear of infection and “more uncomfortable and hostile” social dynamics as key reasons for their retreat from civic life.

“The pandemic is not over for a lot of folks,” said Jessica Finlay, an assistant professor of geography whose findings are revealed in a series of new papers . “Some people feel left behind.”

The study comes amid what the U.S. Surgeon General recently called an “ epidemic of loneliness ” in which older adults—especially those who are immune compromised or have disabilities—are particularly vulnerable.

“We found that the pandemic fundamentally altered neighborhoods, communities and everyday routines among aging Americans, and these changes have long-term consequences for their physical, mental, social and cognitive health,” said Finlay.

‘I just can’t go back’

As a health geographer and environmental gerontologist, Finlay studies how social and built environments impact health as we age.

In March 2020 as restaurants, gyms, grocery stores and other gathering places shuttered amid shelter-in-place orders, she immediately wondered what the lasting impacts would be. Shortly thereafter, she launched the COVID-19 Coping Study with University of Michigan epidemiologist Lindsay Kobayashi. They began their research with a baseline and monthly survey. Since then, nearly 7,000 people over age 55 from all 50 states have participated.

The researchers check in annually, asking open-ended questions about how neighborhoods and relationships have changed, how people spend their time, opinions and experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic, and their physical and mental health.

By the numbers

How aging adults spend their time

59% spend more time at home than before pandemic
41% go to the grocery less often
75% eat out less often
57% exercise indoors less often
62% visit an arts or cultural site less often
53% attend religious services less often
10% exercise outdoors more often

Source: Data from COVID-19 Coping Study survey results from May 2022. A more recent survey found that more than half still had not returned to pre-pandemic social routines.

“We’ve been in the field for some incredibly pivotal moments,” said Finlay, noting that surveys went out shortly after George Floyd was murdered in May 2020 and again after the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Collectively, the results paint a troubling picture in which a substantial portion of the older population remains isolated even after others have moved on.

In one paper published in February in the journal Wellbeing, Space and Society , 60% of respondents said they spend more time in their home while 75% said they dine out less. Some 62% said they visit cultural and arts venues less, and more than half said they attend church or the gym less than before the pandemic.

The most recent survey, taken in spring 2023, showed similar trends, with more than half of respondents still reporting that their socialization and entertainment routines were different than they were pre-pandemic.

In another paper titled “ I just can’t go back ,” 80% of respondents reported there are some places they are reluctant to visit in person anymore.

“The thought of going inside a gym with lots of people breathing heavily and sweating is not something I can see myself ever doing again,” said one 72-year-old male.

Those who said they still go to public places like grocery stores reported that they ducked in and out quickly and skipped casual chitchat.

“It’s been tough,” said one 68-year-old female. “You don’t stop and talk to people anymore.”

Many respondents reported they were afraid of getting infected with a virus or infecting young or immune-compromised loved ones, and said they felt “irresponsible” for being around a lot of people.

Some reported getting dirty looks or rude comments when wearing masks or asking others to keep their distance—interpersonal exchanges that reinforced their inclination to stay home.

Revitalizing human connection

Jessica Finlay, a health geographer and environmental gerontologist, studies how built environments impact aging.

The news is not all bad, stresses Finlay.

At least 10% of older adults report exercising outdoors more frequently since the pandemic. And a small but vocal minority said that their worlds had actually opened up, as more meetings, concerts and classes became available online.

Still, Finlay worries that the loss of spontaneous interactions in what sociologists call “third places” could have serious health consequences.

Previous research shows that a lack of social connection can increase risk of premature death as much as smoking 15 cigarettes a day and exacerbate mental illness and dementia.

“For some older adults who live alone, that brief, unplanned exchange with the butcher or the cashier may be the only friendly smile they see in the day, and they have lost that,” Finlay said.

Societal health is also at risk.

“It is increasingly rare for Americans with differing sociopolitical perspectives to collectively hang out and respectfully converse,” she writes.

Finlay hopes that her work can encourage policymakers to create spaces more amenable to people of all ages who are now more cautious about getting sick—things like outdoor dining spaces, ventilated concert halls or masked or hybrid events.

She also hopes that people will give those still wearing masks or keeping distance some grace.

“It is a privilege to be able to ‘just get over’ the pandemic and many people, for a multitude of reasons, just don’t have that privilege. The world looks different to them now,” she said. “How can we make it easier for them to re-engage?”

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The message below was sent by NPR's President and CEO to all staff:

This has been a long week. I'll apologize in advance for the length of this note, and for it being the first way so many of you hear from me on more substantive issues. Thanks for bearing with me, as there's a lot that should be said.

I joined this organization because public media is essential for an informed public. At its best, our work can help shape and illuminate the very sense of what it means to have a shared public identity as fellow Americans in this sprawling and enduringly complex nation.

NPR's service to this aspirational mission was called in question this week, in two distinct ways. The first was a critique of the quality of our editorial process and the integrity of our journalists. The second was a criticism of our people on the basis of who we are.

Asking a question about whether we're living up to our mission should always be fair game: after all, journalism is nothing if not hard questions. Questioning whether our people are serving our mission with integrity, based on little more than the recognition of their identity, is profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning.

It is deeply simplistic to assert that the diversity of America can be reduced to any particular set of beliefs, and faulty reasoning to infer that identity is determinative of one's thoughts or political leanings. Each of our colleagues are here because they are excellent, accomplished professionals with an intense commitment to our work: we are stronger because of the work we do together, and we owe each other our utmost respect. We fulfill our mission best when we look and sound like the country we serve.

NPR has some of the finest reporters, editors, and producers in journalism. Our reporting and programming is not only consistently recognized and rewarded for its quality, depth, and nuance; but at its best, it makes a profound difference in people's lives. Parents, patients, veterans, students, and so many more have directly benefited from the impact of our journalism. People come to work here because they want to report, and report deeply, in service to an informed public, and to do work that makes a difference.

This is the work of our people, and our people represent America, our irreducibly complex nation. Given the very real challenges of covering the myriad perspectives, motivations, and interests of a nation of more than 330 million very different people, we succeed through our diversity. This is a bedrock institutional commitment, hard-won, and hard-protected.

We recognize that this work is a public trust, one established by Congress more than 50 years ago with the creation of the public broadcasting system. In order to hold that trust, we owe it our continued, rigorous accountability. When we are asked questions about who we serve and how that influences our editorial choices, we should be prepared to respond. It takes great strength to be comfortable with turning the eye of journalistic accountability inwards, but we are a news organization built on a foundation of robust editorial standards and practices, well-constructed to withstand the hardest of gazes.

It is true that our audiences have unquestionably changed over the course of the past two decades. There is much to be proud of here: through difficult, focused work, we have earned new trust from younger, more diverse audiences, particularly in our digital experiences. These audiences constitute new generations of listeners, are more representative of America, and our changing patterns of listening, viewing, and reading.

At the same time, we've seen some concerning changes: the diffusion of drivetime, an audience skewing further away in age from the general population, and significant changes in political affiliations have all been reflected in the changing composition of our broadcast radio audiences. Of course, some of these changes are representative of trends outside our control — but we owe it to our mission and public interest mandate to ask, what levers do we hold?

A common quality of exceptional organizations is humility and the ability to learn. We owe it to our public interest mandate to ask ourselves: could we serve more people, from broader audiences across America? Years ago we began asking this question as part of our North Star work to earn the trust of new audiences. And more recently, this is why the organization has taken up the call of audience data, awareness, and research: so we can better understand who we are serving, and who we are not.

Our initial research has shown that curiosity is the unifying throughline for people who enjoy NPR's journalism and programming. Curiosity to know more, to learn, to experience, to change. This is a compelling insight, as curiosity only further expands the universe of who we might serve. It's a cross-cutting trait, pretty universal to all people, and found in just about every demographic in every part of the nation.

As an organization, we must invest in the resources that will allow us to be as curious as the audiences we serve, and expand our efforts to understand how to serve our nation better. We recently completed in-depth qualitative research with a wide range of listeners across the country, learning in detail what they think about NPR and how they view our journalism. Over the next two years we plan to conduct audience research across our entire portfolio of programming, in order to give ourselves the insight we need to extend the depth and breadth of our service to the American public.

It is also essential that we listen closely to the insights and experiences of our colleagues at our 248 Member organizations. Their presence across America is foundational to our mission: serving and engaging audiences that are as diverse as our nation: urban and rural, liberal and conservative, rich and poor, often together in one community.

We will begin by implementing an idea that has been proposed for some time: establishing quarterly NPR Network-wide editorial planning and review meetings, as a complement to our other channels for Member station engagement. These will serve as a venue for NPR newsroom leadership to hear directly from Member organization editorial leaders on how our journalism serves the needs of audiences in their communities, and a coordination mechanism for Network-wide editorial planning and newsgathering. We're starting right away: next week we plan to invite Members to join us for an initial scoping conversation.

And in the spirit of learning from our own work, we will introduce regular opportunities to connect what our research is telling us about our audiences to the practical application of how we're serving them. As part of the ongoing unification of our Content division, Interim Chief Content Officer, Edith Chapin, will establish a broad-based, rotating group that will meet monthly to review our coverage across all platforms. Some professions call this a retro, a braintrust, a 'crit,' or tuning session — this is an opportunity to take a break from the relentless pressure of the clock in order to reflect on how we're meeting our mandate, what we're catching and what we're missing, and learn from our colleagues in a climate of respectful, open-minded discussion.

The spirit of our founding newsroom and network was one of experimentation, creativity, and direct connection with our listeners across America. Our values are a direct outgrowth of this moment: the independence of a public trust, the responsibility to capture the voice and spirit of a nation, a willingness to push boundaries to tell the stories that matter. We're no strangers to change, continuously evolving as our network has grown, our programming has expanded, and our audiences have diversified — and as we look to a strategy that captures these values and opportunities, the future holds more change yet.

Two final thoughts on our mission:

I once heard missions like ours described as asymptotic — we can see our destination and we strive for it, but may never fully meet it. The value is in the continued effort: the challenge stretches on toward infinity and we follow, ever closer. Some people might find that exhausting. I suspect they don't work here. I suspect that you do because you find that challenge a means to constantly renew your work, and to reinfuse our mission with meaning as our audiences and world continues to change.

The strongest, most effective, and enduring missions are those that are owned far beyond the walls of their institution. Our staff, our Member stations, our donors, our listeners and readers, our ardent fans, even our loyal opposition all have a part to play: each of us come to the work because we believe in it, even as we each may have different perspectives on how we succeed. Every person I have met so far in my three weeks here has shown me how they live our mission every day, in their work and in their contributions to the community.

Continuing to uphold our excellence with confidence, having inclusive conversations that bridge perspectives, and learning more about the audiences we serve in order to continue to grow and thrive, adding more light to the illumination of who we are as a shared body public: I look forward to how we will do this work together.

AI Index: State of AI in 13 Charts

In the new report, foundation models dominate, benchmarks fall, prices skyrocket, and on the global stage, the U.S. overshadows.

Illustration of bright lines intersecting on a dark background

This year’s AI Index — a 500-page report tracking 2023’s worldwide trends in AI — is out.

The index is an independent initiative at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI), led by the AI Index Steering Committee, an interdisciplinary group of experts from across academia and industry. This year’s report covers the rise of multimodal foundation models, major cash investments into generative AI, new performance benchmarks, shifting global opinions, and new major regulations.

Don’t have an afternoon to pore through the findings? Check out the high level here.

Pie chart showing 98 models were open-sourced in 2023

A Move Toward Open-Sourced

This past year, organizations released 149 foundation models, more than double the number released in 2022. Of these newly released models, 65.7% were open-source (meaning they can be freely used and modified by anyone), compared with only 44.4% in 2022 and 33.3% in 2021.

bar chart showing that closed models outperformed open models across tasks

But At a Cost of Performance?

Closed-source models still outperform their open-sourced counterparts. On 10 selected benchmarks, closed models achieved a median performance advantage of 24.2%, with differences ranging from as little as 4.0% on mathematical tasks like GSM8K to as much as 317.7% on agentic tasks like AgentBench.

Bar chart showing Google has more foundation models than any other company

Biggest Players

Industry dominates AI, especially in building and releasing foundation models. This past year Google edged out other industry players in releasing the most models, including Gemini and RT-2. In fact, since 2019, Google has led in releasing the most foundation models, with a total of 40, followed by OpenAI with 20. Academia trails industry: This past year, UC Berkeley released three models and Stanford two.

Line chart showing industry far outpaces academia and government in creating foundation models over the decade

Industry Dwarfs All

If you needed more striking evidence that corporate AI is the only player in the room right now, this should do it. In 2023, industry accounted for 72% of all new foundation models.

Chart showing the growing costs of training AI models

Prices Skyrocket

One of the reasons academia and government have been edged out of the AI race: the exponential increase in cost of training these giant models. Google’s Gemini Ultra cost an estimated $191 million worth of compute to train, while OpenAI’s GPT-4 cost an estimated $78 million. In comparison, in 2017, the original Transformer model, which introduced the architecture that underpins virtually every modern LLM, cost around $900.

Bar chart showing the united states produces by far the largest number of foundation models

What AI Race?

At least in terms of notable machine learning models, the United States vastly outpaced other countries in 2023, developing a total of 61 models in 2023. Since 2019, the U.S. has consistently led in originating the majority of notable models, followed by China and the UK.

Line chart showing that across many intellectual task categories, AI has exceeded human performance

Move Over, Human

As of 2023, AI has hit human-level performance on many significant AI benchmarks, from those testing reading comprehension to visual reasoning. Still, it falls just short on some benchmarks like competition-level math. Because AI has been blasting past so many standard benchmarks, AI scholars have had to create new and more difficult challenges. This year’s index also tracked several of these new benchmarks, including those for tasks in coding, advanced reasoning, and agentic behavior.

Bar chart showing a dip in overall private investment in AI, but a surge in generative AI investment

Private Investment Drops (But We See You, GenAI)

While AI private investment has steadily dropped since 2021, generative AI is gaining steam. In 2023, the sector attracted $25.2 billion, nearly ninefold the investment of 2022 and about 30 times the amount from 2019 (call it the ChatGPT effect). Generative AI accounted for over a quarter of all AI-related private investments in 2023.

Bar chart showing the united states overwhelming dwarfs other countries in private investment in AI

U.S. Wins $$ Race

And again, in 2023 the United States dominates in AI private investment. In 2023, the $67.2 billion invested in the U.S. was roughly 8.7 times greater than the amount invested in the next highest country, China, and 17.8 times the amount invested in the United Kingdom. That lineup looks the same when zooming out: Cumulatively since 2013, the United States leads investments at $335.2 billion, followed by China with $103.7 billion, and the United Kingdom at $22.3 billion.

Infographic showing 26% of businesses use AI for contact-center automation, and 23% use it for personalization

Where is Corporate Adoption?

More companies are implementing AI in some part of their business: In surveys, 55% of organizations said they were using AI in 2023, up from 50% in 2022 and 20% in 2017. Businesses report using AI to automate contact centers, personalize content, and acquire new customers.

Bar chart showing 57% of people believe AI will change how they do their job in 5 years, and 36% believe AI will replace their jobs.

Younger and Wealthier People Worry About Jobs

Globally, most people expect AI to change their jobs, and more than a third expect AI to replace them. Younger generations — Gen Z and millennials — anticipate more substantial effects from AI compared with older generations like Gen X and baby boomers. Specifically, 66% of Gen Z compared with 46% of boomer respondents believe AI will significantly affect their current jobs. Meanwhile, individuals with higher incomes, more education, and decision-making roles foresee AI having a great impact on their employment.

Bar chart depicting the countries most nervous about AI; Australia at 69%, Great Britain at 65%, and Canada at 63% top the list

While the Commonwealth Worries About AI Products

When asked in a survey about whether AI products and services make you nervous, 69% of Aussies and 65% of Brits said yes. Japan is the least worried about their AI products at 23%.

Line graph showing uptick in AI regulation in the united states since 2016; 25 policies passed in 2023

Regulation Rallies

More American regulatory agencies are passing regulations to protect citizens and govern the use of AI tools and data. For example, the Copyright Office and the Library of Congress passed copyright registration guidance concerning works that contained material generated by AI, while the Securities and Exchange Commission developed a cybersecurity risk management strategy, governance, and incident disclosure plan. The agencies to pass the most regulation were the Executive Office of the President and the Commerce Department.

The AI Index was first created to track AI development. The index collaborates with such organizations as LinkedIn, Quid, McKinsey, Studyportals, the Schwartz Reisman Institute, and the International Federation of Robotics to gather the most current research and feature important insights on the AI ecosystem.

Published a research paper? What next??

Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at College of Medicine and Health Sciences, National University of Science and Technology, Sohar, Sultanate of Oman

In our earlier editorials, we have already discussed the importance of conducting good-quality medical research, composing an original research paper, and getting the paper published successfully.[ 1 , 2 , 3 ] We have also given a roadmap for reviewing an original research paper.[ 4 ] The current editorial deals with some important post-publication issues that every author should be acquainted with.

Replying to Letters to Editor Received on the Published Manuscript

After the publication of the research paper, the editors may receive one or more “letters to editors,” supporting or criticizing or commenting on the published research paper. If the contents of such letters arouse genuine concerns/issues, the editor will ask for a rebuttal/reply to the same, from the authors of the original paper and publish both of these in a subsequent issue of the journal. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author of the original paper to contact the co-authors and provide a reply that has been drafted and approved by all the authors.[ 5 ] Such correspondence indicates that the paper has aroused sufficient interest in the readers. Replying to such letters gives the authors an opportunity to explain their research findings anew and also address issues that may not have been addressed in their research paper (published earlier).

Editorial Commentaries

The editor may invite an editorial commentary on the accepted research paper, which is usually published in the same issue as the original paper. The commentary is usually written by an expert in the concerned field (who would probably also have reviewed the article and recommended its publication). The purpose of the commentary is to provide a balanced view for interpreting the results of the study and give insights into the clinical applicability/relevance of the study findings. Such commentaries also reflect the experience and the opinion of the expert who is writing the commentary.

MEDLINE and Other indexation

The prestige of a publication rests in its representation in an “indexed journal” of a highly rated database such as MEDLINE, PubMed, Scopus, Embase, and Web of Science. Such indexation not only increases the prestige of a journal but also provides wider access to its content. MEDLINE, of the US National Library of Medicine (NLM), is one of the most widely used biomedical journal citation databases, containing more than 26 million articles (from 1946 to the present) published in more than 5,200 journals. It is available through PubMed free of charge and by subscription via database vendors (Ovid and EBSCO).[ 6 , 7 ] Publishers submit journals to the National Institutes of Health (NIH)-chartered advisory committee, the Literature Selection Technical Review Committee (LSTRC), which reviews and recommends journals for indexation in MEDLINE based on the scientific policy and scientific quality.[ 6 ] PubMed ( www.pubmed.gov ), developed by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at the US NLM, is a free search engine for retrieval of the literature, having more than 30 million citations and abstracts on biomedical and life sciences across several NLM literature resources.[ 6 , 7 ] It provides access to all of MEDLINE, journals/manuscripts deposited in PubMed Central (PMC), and NCBI Bookshelf. The update occurs daily with reference data supplied directly by publishers, often before a journal issue is released. To be indexed in PubMed, a journal should be selected as a MEDLINE journal or be deposited to the PMC.[ 6 ]

Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) terms—a controlled and hierarchically organized vocabulary thesaurus—are used by the NLM to index and search biomedical literature. They provide an overview of an article's content through a set of terms pertaining to main headings (descriptors) and subheadings (qualifiers), with yearly updates. Indexers (generally librarians trained to read MEDLINE published articles) assign relevant MeSH indexing terms based on the content/concept of an article, using words from an official MeSH list.[ 8 ] The manual assignment of MeSH terms is laborious, subjective, time-consuming, and expensive, which has led to the development of the Medical Text Indexer (MTI), a MeSH prediction tool that assists NLM indexers by providing recommendations for MeSH terms.[ 9 ]

Scopus ( www.scopus.com ) is another subscription-based citation database produced by Elsevier Co. and maintained by independent subject matter experts. It indexes about 4,600 health science titles including 100% of MEDLINE and Embase coverage.[ 10 ]

Embase (Excerpta Medica Database) ( www.embase.com ) is a biomedical as well as a pharmacological bibliographic database. This subscription-based Elsevier database (32 million records of over 8,500 currently published journals since 1947) assists information managers and pharmacovigilance in licensed drugs. Emtree is the Embase thesaurus, and all journals listed in MEDLINE are also registered in Embase, with additional 2,900 journals unique to it.[ 11 ]

The Web of Science (Thomson Reuters) is an interdisciplinary subscription-based database with records (from 1900 onward) of multiple bibliographic databases. It includes Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), a medical database, and helps in article recovery and citation search.[ 7 ]

Publons ( http://publons.com/ ), a free commercial website, combines publications, citation metrics, peer-reviews, and journal editorial work, all in one place. It serves as a platform for publishers to seek and connect to peer-reviewers, reports global peer-review activity, and provides peer-review training for early-career researchers.[ 12 ]

Google Scholar ( http://scholar.google.com/ ), a mainstream free academic crawler-based search engine, has content across academic disciplines, countries, and languages, and over 380 million records. Indexing in Google Scholar enhances accessibility, sharing, and online citation worldwide, particularly for open-access (OA) journals. Google Scholar offers free alerts (via email) of citations to the authors of their publications indexed with it, once the authors register for such alerts. A Google Scholar search also focuses on individual articles and not journals, improves article retrieval (including unpublished conference material), shows more frequently cited works higher in search, and lists the papers citing original papers (via “Cited by”).[ 13 ]

Posting of the Pdf of the Final Published Article on Websites/Servers

Posting of the complete paper or the portable document format (“pdf”) of the final published paper on websites/servers (self-archiving) may be done only if the paper has been published in an OA journal and if the journal policy allows such a posting (this precaution is to be taken to prevent copyright infringement). Some journals allow the revised accepted (pre-print) version of the manuscript to be shared but not the final printed pdf version. These details of the necessary permissions required are usually given on the website of the journal/publisher. It is the responsibility of the author who is posting such a pre-print version to check whether the journal policy allows him/her to do so. Usually, the journal editors/publishers send the final, published pdf copy to the corresponding author. The corresponding author may then share it with the co-authors of the paper. However, it should be remembered that the copyright of the paper is with the publisher (usually) and the publisher provides the pdf to the corresponding author with a rider that mentions that “the pdf is for personal and educational purposes only and should not be distributed or printed commercially or distributed systematically.” This is especially true for the non-OA journals.

Getting the Research Noticed by the Medical Fraternity

It is necessary that a research paper gets read by the medical fraternity all over the world. For this, there are various avenues such as sharing the title and abstract or their links with professional colleagues on social media (such as Telegram, Whatsapp, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn) or via emails on groups/listserv, displaying the title and abstract on the website of the journal (in the table of contents of the journal) or the website of the institution where the work was carried out, posting the title and abstract on websites such as the Researchgate ( www.researchgate.net ) or Mendeley ( www.mendeley.com ), discussion of the paper at journal clubs, and inclusion of the results in subsequent presentations at conferences/seminars by the authors. There may be some limitations on sharing the full text of the paper or the pdf version of the published paper as discussed earlier in this editorial. The journal editor/publisher may also send details to the corresponding author on how to increase the visibility of their paper. The increased visibility is most likely to translate into better citations and research impact for the paper. The visibility of the paper can be enhanced by (after checking the journal's OA policy)

The journal's website and its bibliographic linking.
Institutional open archive repository, where one may post the pdf in the archive with a link to the article on the journal's website.
By depositing the article in a subject-based OAI-PMH (Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting) compliant repository (subject-wise list of repositories is available from http://opcit.eprints.org/explorearchives.shtml#disciplinary ).
Linking the paper from as many websites as possible using citation and social bookmarking tools such as GetCited ( http://www.getcited.org/add/ ), CiteULike ( http://www.citeulike.org/register ), Connotea ( http://www.connotea.org/register ), Zotero ( http://www.zotero.org/ ), and Stumbleupon ( http://www.stumbleupon.com/sign_up.php?pre2 = hp_join ).
Linking the article from an appropriate topic in Wikipedia.
Depositing the paper with the NLM's PubMed Central, if the authors have received an NIH grant ( http://www.nihms.nih.gov/db/sub.cgi ) as NIH insists that publicly funded research should be available to everyone without having to pay.
Linking the paper from the author's personal/institutional web pages.

The Journal of Postgraduate Medicine approves self-archiving of articles (final accepted version) on OAI (Open Archives Initiative)—compliant institutional/subject-based repository.[ 14 ] Self-archiving enables maximum visibility, impact, access, and usage and can be done by the author himself or via digital archivers in the author's institution/library.[ 15 ] Self-archiving can be expedited by the installation of OAI-compliant Eprint Archives in university/research institutions, and self-archiving pre-peer-review preprints (without the embargo period) and post-peer-review post-prints (or corrigenda file) (after the embargo period) on the author's personal website, company/institutional repository or archive, not-for-profit subject-based preprint servers or repositories.[ 15 , 16 ] “Embargo period” refers to the time post-publication (commonly ranging from 12 to 24 months), after which a subscribed article is made freely available/openly accessible to users.

Open Access

Traditionally, publishing an article would incur no charges toward author submission, peer-review, and publication. However, users are often charged a subscription fee for full-article access, which limits free access to the literature. The novel concept of OA has emerged in the last two decades through pioneers such as BioMed Central and Public Library of Science (PLoS) with online-only journals.[ 17 ] Fully-OA journals make all their articles freely and immediately accessible online (without embargo period) under a Creative Commons (CC) or equivalent open copyright license permitting anyone to “read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full-texts of articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose” through two established routes—“gold” and “green”.[ 18 , 19 ] In the “gold” route, the authors pay a fee—an article processing charge (APC)–to facilitate free and immediate access to their published articles. These charges are journal-specific and may range from 500 to 5000 US dollars, which are often prohibitive and unaffordable by Indian authors. If financial support for OA research is provided by the author's institution or organizations, such as the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), and INCLEN Trust (International Clinical Epidemiology Network- INCLEN), then Indian authors may be able to afford these publication charges. In the “green” route, the author publishes the research article in any journal and then archives it in an institutional repository (University, a central repository [e.g. PubMed Central] or an OA website) based on the journal self-archiving policies.[ 17 , 19 ] This balances the researcher's freedom to publish and share work, and the publisher's control on quality. Publishing in a reputable OA journal provides versatility and visibility, and in return the academic researcher receives a higher research impact through citation counts.[ 20 ]

Many OA journals use CC licenses, an easy alternative to standard copyrights, permitting authors to determine the use of their work broadly, minus the need to look into individual permission requests. A CC license allows copying and redistribution of material in any medium/format (sharing) and remixing, transforming, and building upon the material (adapting). Restrictive elements such as “Attribution” require users to cite the creator of the work, “Non-Commercial” prohibits users from making commercial use of the work, “No Derivates” prohibit users from making modifications to the work, and “Share Alike” require users to apply the same licenses to a new work they create with the original work. These clauses limit the re-use, but provide useful protection to scholars, research subjects, and the OA nature of the publication. The elements can be combined, as is the Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license, or CC-BY-NC-SA, or the Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivatives or CC-BY-NC-ND.[ 21 ]

The increase in the number of OA journals has often led to questions about their quality. This and the increasing pressure on researchers to “publish” or “perish” has fostered an increasing growth in medical journals, hoping to attract eager young academic researchers to publish their work in their journals.[ 5 ] The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a community-curated database that provides comprehensive access and quality control over the content of OA scientific and scholarly journals. DOAJ aims to increase the visibility and ease of use of OA journals, thereby increasing their usage and impact.[ 22 ]

The Journal Impact Factor and Personal Research Impact Factors

Several journal-/author-/article-level metric tools are available via indexing databases (e.g., Scopus and Web of Science) that enable users to track the scholarly impact of a journal, author, or article. One of the most popular ways of assessing a journal's importance is via its journal impact factor (JIF). The 2-year JIF (in any given year) is the ratio between the number of citations received in that year for publications in that journal in the two preceding years and the total number of “citable items” published in that journal during the two previous years. An impact factor could also consider shorter or longer periods of citations and sources.[ 23 ]

Author impact factor (AIF) similarly evaluates the impact of an individual author; however, because the number is generally not large, other citation metrics are used.[ 24 ] One such prominent influence measure is “h-index” (or Hirsch index), which effectively combines papers (indicating quantity/productivity) with citations (indicating quality/impact), thus evaluating an individual author's publication career. It is a count of the largest number of papers (h) from an author that has at least (h) number of citations. It enables a comparison of researchers from the same field with equally long careers, predicts future scientific achievements, and helps in decisions pertaining to tenure positions/grants.[ 25 ] The “i10-index” (introduced by Google), in contrast, is a simple tally of a researcher's publications with at least 10 citations. The “i10-index” is straightforward, easy to calculate (using “My Citations” on Google Scholar), and helps to identify important/influential papers out of an author's publications (those that are cited at least 10 times). However, it is restricted to Google Scholar and does not account for the total number of publications and total citations of an author, thus not giving a clear impression of an author's research productivity.[ 26 ]

Citation analysis involves measuring the number of citations that a particular work has received, indicating the overall quality of that work, whereas citation count is the total number of an individual's citations. Citation counts measure the impact and performance of individual researchers as well as departments, research institutions, universities, books, journals, and nations.[ 27 ]

Citation-based metrics may take years to accumulate and are not always the best indicator of practical impact in fields, such as clinical medicine. Article-level metrics (ALMs) measure the impact/uptake of an individual journal article on the scientific community post-publication and include usage, citations, social bookmarking and dissemination activity, media and blog coverage, discussion activity and ratings.[ 28 ] They thus measure the dissemination and reach of published research articles in practical fields. PLOS uses the category labels of Viewed, Cited, Saved, Discussed, and Recommended.[ 28 ] ALMs are valuable to researchers (track and share the impact of published work), research institutions, funders, and publishers. The PLOS Application Programming Interface (API) for ALMs is freely and publicly available from https://web.archive.org/web/20140408224328/http://api.plos.org/alm/using-the-alm-api/ and allows users with programming skills to extract data for various research purposes.[ 29 ]

The ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) [ https://orcid.org/register ]

ORCID, via its unique 16-digit author identifier, provides a digital name—or an iD—that uniquely and persistently identifies researchers and other contributors to their research effort. By connecting iDs to different research activities (grant proposal submissions, manuscripts to journal publishers, and datasets to data repositories) and affiliations across multiple research information platforms, ORCID enables recognition and reduces the reporting burden for researchers. As a researcher and author, it is important to be recognized and receive full credit for their contributions and research in work. The ORCID provides a unique identifier for the research that is linked to names rather than institutions, thus researchers can maintain the same iD throughout their career, even when their institutional affiliation changes.[ 30 ] It allows researchers to receive full credit for their contributions and eliminates mistaken identity, especially when there are multiple authors with the same name. It also makes the submission process easier by allowing users to sign in to multiple journal submission sites with one username and password. ORCID can be applied to research outputs to identify, validate, and confirm authorship as well as track research output. Some journals now print the ORCID number of an author in the publication. A single click on the displayed ORCID numbers gives the reader the entire list of publications by the author. It also easily integrates with other databases such as Crossref, ResearchID, and SCOPUS.[ 30 , 31 ]

Researcher ID (developed by Thomas Reuters and used in Web of Science) and Scopus Author ID (developed by Elsevier and used in Scopus) are similar identifiers provided by subscription-based proprietary systems. Researcher ID (obtained by creating a Researcher ID account) allows researchers to manage their publication lists, track citations and h-index, and identify potential collaborators. A Scopus Author ID is automatically assigned to an author with a Scopus-indexed publication and enables tracking publications indexed in the Scopus citation database and building metric reports.[ 32 ]

Concluding Remarks

In the current scenario, increasing importance is being given to research and publications—as a measure of individual/institutional progress as well as a benchmark to determine recruitment, promotions, and funding. Thus, it has become mandatory for an individual to keep working on quality research, followed by writing and publishing it successfully.[ 33 ] However, publication is not the end of an author's work but the beginning of another important process. The value of a publication lies in its wide accessibility and impact. Bibliographic databases, such as MEDLINE, Embase, and Scopus, compile data from a selection of journals (such documented journals are “indexed” in that database), thus improving the visibility and access on a literature search. The use of database-specific thesaurus/controlled vocabulary such as MeSH (for MEDLINE) and Emtree (for EMBASE) enables precise search outcomes.[ 7 ] An increase in the number of OA journals and processes such as “self-archiving” has opened avenues for the wide dissemination of published information.[ 15 ] Many articles are freely available online immediately after publication (gold OA), whereas many permit the authors to archive in an institutional repository, subject to journal policies.[ 17 ] The use of the CC license and its restrictive elements allows the authors to choose how their work can be used.[ 21 ] Bibliometrics help to measure academic/scholarly activity and scientific impact, but should not be obsessed over.[ 23 ] Their shortcomings in the true measurement of the impact of journals, articles, and authors have necessitated a suitable replacement, one with a more effective and meaningful evaluation of the true influence of research. The availability of free resources such as ORCID has linked an individual's research over various platforms and provided consolidated data of one's research activities. It is important that authors are aware of these post-publication resources and utilize them proactively to disseminate one's research and ensure a meaningful research impact.

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10 April 2024

How to supercharge cancer-fighting cells: give them stem-cell skills

Sara Reardon 0

Sara Reardon is a freelance journalist based in Bozeman, Montana.

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A CAR T cell (orange; artificially coloured) attacks a cancer cell (green). Credit: Eye Of Science/SPL

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Bioengineered immune cells have been shown to attack and even cure cancer , but they tend to get exhausted if the fight goes on for a long time. Now, two separate research teams have found a way to rejuvenate these cells: make them more like stem cells .

Both teams found that the bespoke immune cells called CAR T cells gain new vigour if engineered to have high levels of a particular protein. These boosted CAR T cells have gene activity similar to that of stem cells and a renewed ability to fend off cancer . Both papers were published today in Nature 1 , 2 .

The papers “open a new avenue for engineering therapeutic T cells for cancer patients”, says Tuoqi Wu, an immunologist at the University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas who was not involved in the research.

Reviving exhausted cells

CAR T cells are made from the immune cells called T cells, which are isolated from the blood of person who is going to receive treatment for cancer or another disease. The cells are genetically modified to recognize and attack specific proteins — called chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) — on the surface of disease-causing cells and reinfused into the person being treated.

But keeping the cells active for long enough to eliminate cancer has proved challenging, especially in solid tumours such as those of the breast and lung. (CAR T cells have been more effective in treating leukaemia and other blood cancers.) So scientists are searching for better ways to help CAR T cells to multiply more quickly and last longer in the body.

Cutting-edge CAR-T cancer therapy is now made in India — at one-tenth the cost

With this goal in mind, a team led by immunologist Crystal Mackall at Stanford University in California and cell and gene therapy researcher Evan Weber at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia compared samples of CAR T cells used to treat people with leukaemia 1 . In some of the recipients, the cancer had responded well to treatment; in others, it had not.

The researchers analysed the role of cellular proteins that regulate gene activity and serve as master switches in the T cells. They found a set of 41 genes that were more active in the CAR T cells associated with a good response to treatment than in cells associated with a poor response. All 41 genes seemed to be regulated by a master-switch protein called FOXO1.

The researchers then altered CAR T cells to make them produce more FOXO1 than usual. Gene activity in these cells began to look like that of T memory stem cells, which recognize cancer and respond to it quickly.

The researchers then injected the engineered cells into mice with various types of cancer. Extra FOXO1 made the CAR T cells better at reducing both solid tumours and blood cancers. The stem-cell-like cells shrank a mouse’s tumour more completely and lasted longer in the body than did standard CAR T cells.

Master-switch molecule

A separate team led by immunologists Phillip Darcy, Junyun Lai and Paul Beavis at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne, Australia, reached the same conclusion with different methods 2 . Their team was examining the effect of IL-15, an immune-signalling molecule that is administered alongside CAR T cells in some clinical trials. IL-15 helps to switch T cells to a stem-like state, but the cells can get stuck there instead of maturing to fight cancer.

The team analysed gene activity in CAR T cells and found that IL-15 turned on genes associated with FOXO1. The researchers engineered CAR T cells to produce extra-high levels of FOXO1 and showed that they became more stem-like, but also reached maturity and fought cancer without becoming exhausted. “It’s the ideal situation,” Darcy says.

Stem-cell and genetic therapies make a healthy marriage

The team also found that extra-high levels of FOXO1 improved the CAR T cells’ metabolism, allowing them to last much longer when infused into mice. “We were surprised by the magnitude of the effect,” says Beavis.

Mackall says she was excited to see that FOXO1 worked the same way in mice and humans. “It means this is pretty fundamental,” she says.

Engineering CAR T cells that overexpress FOXO1 might be fairly simple to test in people with cancer, although Mackall says researchers will need to determine which people and types of cancer are most likely to respond well to rejuvenated cells. Darcy says that his team is already speaking to clinical researchers about testing FOXO1 in CAR T cells — trials that could start within two years.

And Weber points to an ongoing clinical trial in which people with leukaemia are receiving CAR T cells genetically engineered to produce unusually high levels of another master-switch protein called c-Jun, which also helps T cells avoid exhaustion. The trial’s results have not been released yet, but Mackall says she suspects the same system could be applied to FOXO1 and that overexpressing both proteins might make the cells even more powerful.

Nature 628 , 486 (2024)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-01043-2

Doan, A. et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07300-8 (2024).

Article Google Scholar

Chan, J. D. et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07242-1 (2024).

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