Writing and Publishing Scientific Articles
11-4
Following is a sample submission letter illustrating many of these points:
Dear Dr. Watson:
On behalf of my co-authors John Reed and Elihu Smith, I am submitting the enclosed manuscript titled “The XYZ Gene: Can It Identify the Alphabet Syndrome?” as a research article to Journal of Syndromes . There are several things that distinguish our article. First, we studied the expression of the gene in a large kinship. We also looked closely at the different effects of environmental influences. In particular, we examined the difference in phenotype between family members living on the East Coast and the West Coast. A third feature of this study was our emphasis on early treatment and the ways in which it appears to reduce the more severe effects of the syndrome. We note these distinctions in the article, and we believe they make our findings of particular interest to readers of the journal. These features also distinguish our article from that of Harrison et al. published in the January issue of the journal, which was on an outwardly similar topic. Dr. Smith has stock ownership in the company that manufactures the XYZ assay that we used, but I do not believe that this would be perceived as biasing our study results or their interpretation. Nonetheless, I did want to bring this to your attention. If you feel acknowledgment of this potential conflict of interest is necessary, we will be glad to add a footnote to the article. I would like to suggest Benjamin Ritters (at Rutgers), Donald Adams (at UPenn), and Albert Lindt (at Princeton) as reviewers. All are quite knowledgeable about the topic. Dr. Lindt is especially knowledgeable about the gene penetrance issues. I would also like to request that Dr. Harrison and his co-workers not be asked to review the manuscript because of the obvious competing nature of their work in this area.
If you have any questions, please be in touch with me. Thank you for your consideration of our article.
Most sincerely, John Author, M.D., Ph.D.
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