After you have done your research work, you have to communicate it. You have to disseminate the results of your research so that other people somewhere else in the world get to know what you have done. And when they do their research, your research results should be available to them so that they do not repeat it, or they build on the result that you have obtained. And by doing so, they will cite your paper: that this result has been obtained in this paper. And that way the impact of your paper or your paper makes its presence felt. It has impact. Now, the way to make your research results known to the others is, there are two avenues of doing that. One is by publishing in a peer reviewed journal, and two, by presenting in a scientific conference. Out of these two, the former is the major channel and conferences are relatively of lesser importance except in a few fields like computer science, where conferences are the major channel. But otherwise, normally one publishes in a research journal. Now, once you publish in a research journal, it becomes becomes available for others to see, read, use, and build on that. So, that is what the purpose of the science is: that you do your own research, make it available to everybody, others build on that, and that is why science progresses. So, the research journals play a very crucial role in this whole enterprise. Now, the way it works is that you submit your paper to a journal, normally through its own website. There is a paper submission link and through you... through that you submit your your paper. And every journal... So, let us talk about the research journals. Every journal has an Editor in Chief. He is normally a very eminent person in the field and there is, for every journal, an Editorial Board. And the editorial board comprises the Associate Editors: they are also important people in the field, but each associate editor will be in responsible for handling papers in a sub-field that is handled by the research journal.

And the research journals normally come in a few different categories. For example, there are some research journals which are general purpose, in which people from diverse disciplines submit papers and read papers. Say Nature, Science or in our country the the Current Science, is such a journal. These are the general purpose journals. In every field like physics, chemistry, biology there are also field specific journals. For example, in our field in physics, we have the Physical Review class of journals: Physical Review Letters, Physical Review A, B, C, D, E and journals published by the American Institute of Physics . There are also journals published by other publishers and also journals published by the academies of our country. So, there are a number of journals in the field physics. Now, within physics, there are certain sub-areas like the statistical physics, gravitational cosmology, there is the particle physics, there is condense matter physics, and so on and so forth. These are sub-areas within physics. Similarly, in chemistry you have the inorganic chemistry, you have physical chemistry, you have organic chemistry, you have biochemistry. So, you have these kind of broad subdivisions within a field, and there are journals dedicated to each subdivision. And within its subdivision there are specific areas of research. And sometimes there are also very specialized research journals dedicated to a very specialized area. So, there are various types of journals. And naturally when you submit a paper, you have to decide which journal it you have to submit to. And each journal will have an Editor-in-Chief and a few Associate Editors. So, when you submit the paper, it first goes to the Editor-in-Chief. He looks at the paper, and broadly finds the area of the paper. And accordingly he assigns, he or she assigns some associate editor to handle that paper. Now, the Associate Editor: his or her job is to find appropriate reviewers. And reviewers are normally peers, that is why it is called peer review, ‘peer review process’.

Why? Peers are those who work in, who are researchers in related areas, similar areas or maybe in the same area. So, they are people who will be able to comment on the scientificity of your paper, whether you have done the experiment satisfying the requirements of scientific research, whether you have... if if it is a theoretical work, whether you have done the derivation correctly or... I mean all these are checked and commented on by the reviewer. So, the Associate Editor finds a few prospective reviewers and requests them to review. Now, when you have to choose, the Associate Editors has to find a few prospective appropriate reviewers for a paper, how does he do that? Normally, there are two ways. One is that, from the paper you find what the the the area of the paper, what kind of issues the paper deals with. Accordingly he or she finds a few appropriate keywords, and then searches the net to find out who else have published papers in the same area, where the keywords match. Thereby he or she the the Associate Editor finds a few possible reviewers. The other way is that, in your paper itself you have included a literature survey, you have talked about what is already known in that field, and you have also cited a few peoples’ work in that. And it is reasonable to assume that those people know the background of your of the particular field. So, that is another pool from which the Associate Editor chooses. So, either he or she directly searches the net to find out ah which papers are there, which are related to your paper and request the the authors of those papers, or does it by by using your own citation list references. Then the reviewers received the request. They either agree, or maybe, if the reviewer feels that it is not really in my area of expertise, then he might say that please send it to somebody else. But in any case the Associate Editor finds at least three reviewers and then requests them to submit a report within say a month or 45 days or whatever.

And then within that time, the reports are submitted and the Associate Editor then looks at the reports and then takes a decision as to whether to reject the paper outright, whether to accept the paper outright, or whether to request the author to make some changes: either major revisions or minor revisions. Major revisions are those in which you have to make some major change in the presentation of the paper. The reviewers might also ask you to re-do some experiment or do some experiment additionally, all these are components of a major revision. Either your writing has to be changed in a major way or the result itself has to be improved in a major way. Minor revisions are those which are relatively minor as the word suggests, linguistic changes, cosmetic changes, and things like that. So, if an author receives request for minor revision, it is more or less understood that the paper will be accepted if those minor revisions are made. But, if there is a request for a major revision, then after you have made the major revision, then also it might not be accepted because the reviewers might not feel that you have done a good job at that. So, finally, when you make the changes, then you resubmit it to the journal. The Associate Editor sends the report back to the reviewers. And at that stage you, the the author, has to include a separate file outlining how you have addressed each comment made by the reviewers, each comment. So, a comment, this is how I have addressed it. Either I have made the appropriate, requested, suggested changes in the paper, or I have done an additional experiment. Or maybe I have a different point to make. I contradict your point. That is also possible. I mean you might feel that the comment meant by the reviewer is inappropriate and therefore, you you defend your point. That is also possible. But whatever it is, you write it up, send it, the Associate Editor sends it back to the reviewer.

If the reviewer is satisfied with the changes made or the comments that you have made, then the reviewer say that okay, now the paper is acceptable for publication. And then the Associate Editor accepts the paper. In the earlier times, it took a reasonably long time from the acceptance to the publication. But nowadays printed publications are rather rare. All papers are available on the net and it takes very long, very short time for a paper to be released online after it is accepted. So, this is more or less the the process of process that goes on after you are submitted the paper. When the paper is published, people all around the globe—whoever is working in a similar field or maybe a research student is starting to work in that field—they would like to know what is already known in that field and they would search and they they would like to find your paper and read the paper. So, the writing of the paper has to be, has to take into account the fact that I have to write in such a way so that the prospective reviewer would find my paper and read my paper. And I will come to how to to do that. So, this is the first thing, that how you actually that the process that goes in making a publication. Now, we come to the matter of writing the paper. So, before you start writing a paper, there are a few things to be done. So, before you start writing a paper. Before writing a paper, I am assuming that you have done a piece of work and according to your own judgement, the work is mature enough to communicate a paper. So, at that stage you have to do a few things. So, you have to, you have to judge exactly what information do I wish to convey. This means that, every research work is actually the answer to a question. You had a question in mind, you have done some research in order to answer the question, and the results obtained through the research actually answer the question. So, take a look at the question, write down the question that you had and then take a look at the results in the form of very concrete shape.

Not the raw data, but filtered data in the form of graphs, charts, tables, and figure out how that answers the question that was initially asked. Or maybe derivations: whatever whatever is your method of answering the question you take a look and try to formulate a wholesome story, because at the end of the day what you are trying to do is to tell: you had a question, you have done some work and it it answers the question and that completes a whole story line. So, you have to have to have the story clear in your head, before you start writing. Okay? So, that is the, that is the first step. The second step is, as I said that journals come in various shapes and sizes and different orientations. Some are general some are very specialized. So, naturally depending on the journal, you have to figure out for what specific group specific group am I writing? So, this and the next question, a related question, is what background can I expect, information can I expect the reader to have? Accordingly, I have to write and I have to provide the necessary information. And so, these two are actually related questions depends on the journal to which I am submitting. So, there would be some journals where the expected reader will be a specific group who know the background of my field. Or if it is in a general purpose journal, then I have to provide the necessary information for a nonspecialized reader to understand this paper. And fourthly, what is the, what is the most logical sequence of presentation? This means that, sometimes you have developed a theory, the theory has some logical consequence or or expectations from the theory. The theory in order to be tested, some experiment needs to be performed. And you perform the experiment to validate the theory. Or I mean, if the experiment negates the theory, you definitely in that case you have to admit in the paper that the the experiment negated the theory.

But normally we do not write papers like that. We if it is a theory we have developed, we try to find at least some support in the experiment. In that case, the presentation should be the first, the theory first and the experiment next. There are also situations where you performed an experiment, which has indicated some kind of a functional relationship between variables and then you have also developed a theory to explain that functional relationship. In that case the theory first and the the the experiment first and the theory next. So, there are and if it is a entirely a theoretical paper, then also there are parts of the paper and you have to decide which sequence I present so that the reader can follow in a particular development of thought. It is so similarly in experimental work, internally experimental work also. So, you have to decide what logical sequence of presentation should we use in the paper. Now, once you have decided this, the most important thing is a title. So, let us go to the title. The title. It is the most important part of the paper. The reason is that the title, in a span of about 10 words, has to convey what is there in the paper. If the title is incorrectly formulated, then most people will not even read the paper. Or from the title will develop some expectation as to what comes in the paper. And then finds something else, will be deserted. And it is a disaster. So, one has to formulate the title most appropriately representing the content of the paper, but in a span of about 10 words. So, about 10 words. Writing the the title even though it is only a few words, is actually the most difficult part. Now, because it has to represent the paper in such a short collection of words. And there is another issue to it. Imagine after you have publish the paper, a reader sitting in another part of the globe—maybe in Brazil or in China or in say, Poland, working in similar areas—find the inform, tries to find the information background information in his or her field and he needs to know the content of your work.

But if the title is incorrectly formulated, he or she will not find it. He will no... he or she will not even be even even come to know that this material is there. So, the title has to be, has to appropriately reflect. But how does he actually try to find? The person who is at the other end, the reader, normally tries to find a paper by Google search, normally by scholar Google search and using certain keywords. I am interested in this; accordingly he or she formulates the keywords by which he or she will search, and whatever papers are found by Google, those are the ones they focus on. So, the writer, the author, has to take this factor in consideration that there will be people out there who will search my paper using some keywords. And therefore, he or she has to guess the keywords by which one might search and a a normal way of writing the title is that, first guess the keywords, write the keywords and then ensure that these keywords appear in the title. So, formulate a few alternative titles including those keywords, because if these keywords are included in the title, then it has a higher probability of appearing at the top of the search list. If these keywords appear somewhere in the body of the paper, then it will be found by Google, but it will be somewhere in the 34th or 35th in the in the search list and people will most probably not even look at that paper. So, the way I normally do it is, that I guess the the keywords by which one might search, write them, formulate 3-4 alternative titles and then keep it like that. After having completed the rest of the paper I go back and choose the most appropriate of them, which reflects appropriately the content of the paper. The information that I try to convey, the title tells the reader that this information is contained in this paper. So, this is how the title has to be written. And since it has to be very short, very precise, therefore, any imprecise words, any unnecessary words that do not really contribute to the substance of the title, they need to be avoided.

For example, avoid ‘a study of’ something something. This actually adds nothing to the substance of the title and therefore, drop it. Or maybe ‘thoughts on’ or maybe ‘investigations of’, you notice that they do not really mean much. So always avoid them. And words adjective words like say ‘novel’, like ‘powerful’, like ‘excellent’, ‘a powerful technique to do the ...’. You do not say that it is powerful, let the reader say that. You do not say that what you have done is novel, let the reader say that. So, avoid this kind of unnecessary words in the title. The title should be should have the least number of words that are necessary to express what is there in the paper. Now, there are some the conventions. You notice that if you read a paper, its title follows the convention that all the words, the first letters are capitalized. The first letters would be capitalize. The first letters, first letters, in say nouns, verbs and ah all that ah... or similar words, first letter will be always capitalized. There are some letters which are normally written in written in in lower case. For example, ac , dc : these should be in the capital letter. Okay? So, this should be in the capital letter. The articles like a, an, the these are in small letters. And the short prepositions also should be small letters, excepting the case where those appear in the first word or the last word of a of a of a title. So, these are in small letters. But if any such word has more than three letters. For example... more than three letters, then it is recapitalized. For example, ‘against’, ‘without’, ‘versus’, ‘among’, ‘under’, like that. These words are to be, you know, the first letter has to be capitalized. Even though the character, grammatical character are like this. Even even though that is true, initcap. Remember that we do not write vs in place of versus in the title.

Write the full word ‘versus’ with the capital V. Okay? So, these are these are the usual conventions, these are conventions, not any instruction or anything like that. That is what is normally followed in writing the title. If you do not do that then the the Editorial Board will do that, will have to do that. So, it is better to avoid that process.