Before you click submit: Double check your manuscript

Abstract

Numerous books and articles have been published about scientific writing. Largely missing in this discussion is the mechanics of reviewing one’s own writing and its suitability for a journal—that critical step before authors click the “submit” button in their online manuscript submission. Although individual authors may have developed their own prescriptive checklists for self-editing, such tools have not been widely available for broad distribution. We intend to address this need. To avoid the potential pitfalls of scientific writing, we present a checklist to help writers in the critical step between drafting the manuscript and sending the manuscript to a journal.