Monthly Archives: April 2018

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How to Optimize your Medical Research Manuscript for Search Engine
Categories Scientific Communication

Medical Manuscript Writing – How to Write Search Engine Friendly Article?

Author krishna kumar 0 Comments Posted on

Many journals now publish their articles online to increase their reach amongst the masses. A major part of their traffic comes from Google and other search engines. In such a scenario, you don’t have to write a medical manuscript favourable to the journal, but also to the search engines. The journals that publish the articles ensure their research content is visible and ranks high in the search results of Google and other engines. However, you can play your role by optimizing your medical research paper for the search engines, by helping people to find, read, and cite your work.

So, here are five tips to increase the discoverability of your medical article in the search engines.

1) Create a search engine friendly title

Till now, we have recommended writing a title that immediately tells the readers what your study is about. However, you should also optimise the title for search engines.

  • Include 1-2 keywords related to your topic. Place your keywords within the first 65 characters of your title.
  • Keep your title short, not exceeding 65 characters including spaces
  • Avoid using stop words in the title like a, an, the, am, is, can, and, but, or, if, then, etc.

2) Optimize the abstract of the manuscript

A good abstract is 150-200 words long, is well-structured, has a simple language, and reflects the key points and findings of your research. But, what if you have to write an abstract for the search engines as well?

  • Search engines normally display the first two sentences of your abstract. So, place all your important findings and keywords in the first two sentences of the abstract.
  • Use the keywords in your abstract, but don’t stuff them to make things complex. After all, the purpose of your abstract is to express the key points of your research in a clear and concise manner.

3) Use the keywords throughout your article

Besides the title and the abstract, use your keywords in the entire article as:

  • In your headings: Headings signal the search engines about the structure and content of your medical article, thus, increasing your rankings
  • Use keyword search tools like Google Trends and Google Adwords to search for the specific keywords
  • Check the keywords which other authors in your field use in their paper. Incorporate such keywords in your article
  • Use your keywords with caution. Let them flow naturally in your writing. Search engines hate too much keyword repetition or keyword stuffing and may penalize your article. This makes it difficult for the readers to find your article online

4) Be consistent

Maintain consistency throughout your paper regarding the spellings, language used, references, or author names.

5) Build links to your article

  • Promote your research on your social media channels and institutional sites by linking to your article. More the number of inbound links to your article, higher its value amongst the search engines.
  • Ask your colleagues to link to your article. Higher the number of links your article gets from the respected individuals/trusted sites, the more powerful will be its effect. However, don’t forget to return their favour by doing the same for their medical articles.

To increase the search engine visibility of your research paper, contact our medical article writing service expert.

Histology Services
Categories Histology Services

Are you wasting your Time and Money on Substandard Histology Services?

Author krishna kumar 2 Comments on Are you wasting your Time and Money on Substandard Histology Services? Posted on

You know the benefits of outsourcing your histology services. But, are you wasting your time and money on substandard histology services?

Probably Yes! Let’s look at the 4 signs of substandard histology services:

1) Limited training of histology technicians

Many laboratories train their technicians in only one area of histology. However, to ensure quality histology services, you need technicians trained in multiple domains.

2) Lack of a specific study protocol

If you give the histology lab a protocol that doesn’t address the specific areas of slide preparation, you may waste a lot of time in answering their questions.  Plus, the lack of key information will affect the study results.   So, provide the details of the tissues to process, stains to use and any specific areas to test in your histology lab.

3) Histology lab has no experience of GLP regulations

If the histology technicians aren’t well versed with GLP regulations, you may spend double the time and money on their services. So, check this before outsourcing your histology services.

4) Poor communication between lab personnel and the management

Ideally, the lab manager should lead the technical team and ensure the slides are prepared correctly and efficiently. However, poor communication between the two can delay your project. So, make sure there’s open communication and proper management before you hire your histology services.

Keep these things in mind to ensure your histology studies are on time and on the budget!

Toxicology Studies
Categories Toxicity Testing

Toxicology Studies: 5 Top Challenges for Animals in 2018

Author krishna kumar 0 Comments Posted on

The number of animals used in toxicology studies is continuously increasing. Every year millions of experimental animals are sacrificed in the name of scientific research. Scientists across the world discuss about the pain, distress and death experienced by the animals during scientific experiments.

To save the decreasing number of animals on this earth, many alternatives to animal testing are proposed. However, much needs to be done in this aspect and save animals from the clutches of scientific experiments.

In this section, we discuss the 5 challenges which the animal models are bound to face in the upcoming years.

1) The killing of animals in military and medical training

There have been constant efforts to stop the Defence Services from using goats and pigs in training their medical personnel, but the brutal killing of these animals is still prevalent. The animals are shot with firearms, stabbed and crippled during such training. And all this is happening when alternatives to animal testing exist.

2) FDA Regulations still mandate animal testing

U.S. law now bans the use of animals in the chemical industry. It mandates the use and development of alternatives to animal testing. But, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) lags on this. Current FDA regulations are age-old and haven’t been changed to support modern science. Many regulations still mandate animal testing before the clinical trials in humans. Though FDA and other federal agencies now acknowledge that animal tests fail to predict human outcomes in 95 percent cases, they haven’t updated their regulations yet.

3) Animal Research Organisations decrease protection for animals in labs

Organisations representing animal experimenters and their institutions aim to cut down protection for animals in laboratories. They seem to create an oversight system that will allow the laboratories to self-regulate. When federal laws and government enforcement are already weak, such a step from the organisations will further aggravate the problem of increased animal testing.

4) Limited funds for Human-based research

The government proposes to cut down the funds for EPA (Environmental Protection Agency). Lack of funds will inhibit EPA to develop modern safety assessment methods; methods which do not use animals. This will put human-based research at stake and encourage the use of animals.

5) Difficulty in procuring High-Quality Human Cells and Tissues For Research 

Though people understand the reasons for human-based research or why to use human cells and tissues, few know how these tissues are obtained for research.  The by-products of surgery are one source of human cells and tissues. Second, you can donate your tissue after death for research which otherwise would be discarded. However, many people are not aware of the second option. Thus, there’s a need to educate the public and begin a discussion on the best practices for tissue procurement.

Therefore, to save the future of human-based research and decrease animal testing in toxicology studies, the stakeholders of the drug development process must come together and look into these challenges seriously.

Constructing Figures in your Scientific Paper
Categories Scientific Communication

Dos and Don’ts for Constructing Figures in your Scientific Paper

Author krishna kumar 0 Comments Posted on

Figures are an essential part of your scientific paper writing. However, they may lose their significance if not constructed properly.

Even one ill-constructed figure can lead to the rejection of your paper by the journal editor. So, besides the written text, figures demand an equal attention from you.

Here is the list of dos and don’ts for constructing effective figures in your scientific paper:

Do’s

  • Include a succinct legend to describe the figure. The legend should be written below the figure to provide sufficient information to the reader so that he doesn’t have to refer the text for it
  • Provide each axis of the graph with a brief and informative title including the units of measurement
  • Construct the figure with a reasonable space on all its four sides

Don’ts

  • Don’t include figures that are not referred to in the text
  • Don’t use figures to demonstrate information that can be written in a sentence or two
  • Don’t extend the axes of the graph very far beyond the range of the data
  • Don’t use color in the figures unless absolutely necessary

Following these tips while constructing your figures in the scientific paper will raise your chances of acceptance.

Rejection of a Manuscript
Categories Scientific Communication

5 Common Errors that Lead to the Rejection of a Manuscript

Author krishna kumar 0 Comments Posted on

You have written your research manuscript with diligence, and now, you are ready to submit it for publication. You are worried if it gets rejected.

This is common with novice research scientists. However, if you know what makes the journal editors reject your manuscript, you can take care of such errors before submission.

So, here’s a glimpse of the common errors that can lead to the rejection of your manuscript:

1) Selection of a wrong journal

The foremost reason your manuscript gets rejected is that your research study doesn’t fit the scope of your selected journal. So, you will waste your valuable time if you select a journal out of your paper’s scope.

To avoid any mistake in selecting the right journal for your paper:

  • Carefully read the scope of the journal on its Homepage and also the section on “Instructions to Authors”.
  • Search for the similar articles in the journal.

 2) Plagiarism

Plagiarism is an act of presenting other’s work as your own. It is a serious offence in the research paper writing. Journal editors are not fools. With a plethora of plagiarism detectors, it’s easy to recognise plagiarised content in your paper.

Even self-plagiarism or reproducing your own work in another journal without citing the original can lead to the rejection of your manuscript.

Therefore, you should:

  • Always acknowledge your sources of reference
  • Not submit the results of a published literature even in a lower-ranked journal
  • Change the text copied from another source to make it different and also acknowledge the source.

3) Insignificant or false findings in the research results

The journals accept only those manuscripts that present an original research study, those which report high-quality and novel work and make significant contributions to their desired field.

Thus, if your manuscript fails to meet this criterion, or it reports a routine or trivial or false finding which doesn’t contribute significantly to the progress of Science, it will be outwardly rejected.

To avoid rejection:

  • Search the published literature related to your research topic and see their results.
  • Publish only those findings which are new or significant to your field of research.
  • Highlight the novel properties of your research study
  • Compare your article with the previous work in the field and justify your improvements with a clear statement

4) Technical errors

With one or two technical flaws, you will receive a request for revision. However, rejection occurs if it contains many technical flaws such as:

  • Discrepancy between the Abstract and the remaining manuscript
  • Study of the wrong groups
  • Wrong statistics
  • Clinically insignificant results
  • Absence of a relation between the results and their discussion
  • Contradictory/false data
  • If the conclusion doesn’t answer the research question
  • Poor use of language with grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors

There lies the importance of proofreading and editing your manuscript before you submit it to the journal.

5) Failure to follow “Instructions for Authors”

If you do not follow the “Instructions for Authors” prescribed by a specific journal, it will either delay the peer review process or lead to your manuscript rejection. So, you should always:

  • Carefully read the instructions a number of times. Best, take a print out of the journal guidelines and highlight the key instructions you have to follow.
  • Before submission, check whether you have incorporated all the instructions in your writing.
  • If you do not understand the instructions or are short of time, take help from a professional scientific editor.

Last, but not the least. Do not hurry to submit your paper to the journal publication. Take time and carefully check if you have fulfilled all the requirements as an author.

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