academic-writing

IMRaD organizes papers into Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion. The introduction funnels from broad context to a specific research question, methods must allow replication, results report findings without interpretation, and the discussion interprets findings, limitations, and future directions.

Write a point-by-point response letter quoting each reviewer comment, explaining your response, and citing specific changes with page and line numbers. Agree where valid, partially accommodate negotiable points, and respectfully push back on out-of-scope requests.

Plan S requires immediate Gold or Diamond OA, or Green OA with no embargo and a CC-BY license; hybrid journals are not compliant. The Nelson Memo requires immediate public access to federally-funded US research at publication, in effect since end of 2025.

No. ICMJE, COPE, and major publishers prohibit LLM authorship because LLMs cannot meet accountability and approval criteria. Disclose substantial LLM use in the acknowledgments or methods section using the journal's preferred language, and verify every citation manually.

Watch for aggressive email solicitation, suspiciously fast peer review, unclear editorial boards, and missing indexing in major databases. Vet journals using Think. Check. Submit., the DOAJ, Cabells Predatory Reports, and the Retraction Watch Database.

Zotero is recommended as open-source software with cross-device sync; Paperpile suits web-first Google Docs workflows. Mendeley Desktop is legacy software with no further feature development, so new users are better served by Zotero or Paperpile.