We’re constantly taught to be confident and to stop comparing ourselves to others, and yet, we still do. It’s human nature to benchmark our own performance against what’s around us, whether it’s for personal reasons or at work. Who hasn’t been at a group meeting, heard news about a colleague who’s just published in a high-impact journal and been hit by a pang of disappointment? Our immediate thought is:

Why haven’t I published yet?

Here are a few suggestions to manage these thoughts and develop a more helpful mindset.

In academic writing, when you talk about the findings of your research, you should be careful and make claims of ‘appropriate strength’. This language, which softens claims, is called hedging.

Imposter syndrome may sound like a medical condition, but is more of an experience of your work and workplace, which can leave you feeling insecure and unhappy. The experience is often described as a distinct feeling of being a fraud or feeling as though your achievements are illegitimate. It is a common occurrence and affects many in academia, mainly due to the high-pressure environment academics operate in.

Do you know that as an author, you can benefit from the OA model in numerous ways? A publication is considered open access (OA) when anyone can read, download, copy, distribute, print, search for specific elements of content within it and use it in other ways within the scope of a legal agreement.

Within the new world of OA, there are different models, including 'Green', 'Gold', ‘Bronze’, and ‘Platinum/Diamond’. Perhaps the least-known among these are the last two models, which we will discuss in this article.

Academics are increasingly writing outside their specific discipline and for much broader readership. This change can be attractive as it enables academics to expand their readership and to have an impact beyond the narrow confines of their expertise. 

An op-ed is an opinion-based article, though the origin of the name actually lies in its position in print media, where such articles were traditionally placed opposite the editorial. These short articles, around 400–800 words long, express an opinion on a highly topical issue with the aim of suggesting how this issue can be improved. 

In many disciplines, there is an obvious need to bring in data and discuss what this data means. Non-verbal data are shown in tables or figures that are placed either within the text or in an appendix. Figures include graphs, illustrations, maps, diagrams, pictures and other non-verbal information. There are many issues to consider when contemplating the best form that this information can take.

The research landscape is currently at its most competitive: funding is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain, while post-doctoral positions are dwindling. This creates a pressure pot, where researchers feel forced to perform way past their capacity. A common result of this is burnt out, tired researchers – an image that is sometimes glorified in certain circles.

Academics are constantly faced with the overwhelming pressure to enter the commonly tread cycle of publish, get grant, publish, get grant… This publish-or-perish mentality perpetuates the idea that to continue doing research, you need to keep publishing, preferably in high-impact journals.

Working in academia comes with a lot of freedom. Researchers are afforded opportunities to shape their research project in a way that allows them to explore avenues that truly interest them. This is often the major draw for a career in research: the ability to get ‘sucked into’ the research and just work away at it. 

Referring to the work of other authors is a key aspect of any academic research: the references you cite display your academic credentials and also locate or situate your research to identify the contribution it makes in the context of earlier studies.

Unlike conducting experiments in the semi-controlled environment of a laboratory or collecting literature from a library, field work involves observing and collecting data from natural environments. Field work enables researchers to examine scientific theories in action in the real world. 

Financial bias can be described as “any financial involvement or entanglement between an author, editor, or peer reviewer of an academic article and that of an external entity which has an interest in the article.” 

Although research papers and reports are often taken to be the more tangible products of original research, those are processed, finished, products: the basic, immediate, product is data, which is why “raw data” is the term often used. 

This article will help you understand the difference between authorship and contribution and tackle such issues. Before that, though, let’s consider the importance attached to authorship and the order of authors in academia.

Have you ever received peer review feedback from a leading journal that your work is not ground-breaking or novel? Some journals will flatly refuse to publish negative findings. 

The standard IMRaD format (Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion) sets aside one section of a research paper for the results and another for discussing the results. 

Letters to the Editor (LTEs) (alternately called “Correspondence” or “Reflections”) are brief, focused communications that provide commentary on material recently published in a journal.  Although not peer-reviewed, they are considered contributions that advance the scientific discourse of a topic. As such, they are indexed along with the parent articles they discuss.