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Writing and Publishing Scientific Articles
Do my results overturn current thought; that is, do they prove or disprove what is generally accepted in the field? Who is my target audience?
“I continually place my work in the context of the evolving literature on the subject of my research.”
—William Plunkett, PhD, Experimental Therapeutics
Identifying Your Audience An important consideration in choosing a journal is identifying your audience. Realistically, who is your audience? Who will need to know the answer to your research question? For example, if your research is about the X gene in mice, who would your audience be? All molecular biologists studying the X gene in mice? All molecular biologists studying the X gene? All molecular biologists? All clinicians studying the disease produced by the X gene? All clinicians? In other words, should you target a general circulation (wide audience) journal or a specialty (narrow audience) journal? “I never start anything without thinking of the audience. Who is going to read this document? I think inexperienced people… are very experimentally oriented: ‘Here are my experiments. Here’s what I want to say.…’ I tend to look at [my papers] as something that I’m providing to the community.” —William H. Klein, PhD, Biochemistry & Molecular Biology Choosing a Journal Type Knowing your target audience will help you choose a journal. There are 2 main categories of medical/science journals: General circulation journals Specialty and subspecialty journals
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