Scientific Style and Format: The CSE Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers, Eighth Edition / Edition 8

by Council of Science Editors

Overview

For more than fifty years, authors, editors, and publishers in the scientific community have turned to Scientific Style and Format for authoritative recommendations on all matters of writing style and citation. Developed by the Council of Science Editors (CSE), the leading professional association in science publishing, this indispensable guide encompasses all areas of the sciences. Now in its eighth edition, it has been fully revised to reflect today’s best practices in scientific publishing.
 
Scientific Style and Format citation style has been comprehensively reorganized, and its style recommendations have been updated to align with the advice of authoritative international bodies. Also new to the eighth edition are guidelines and examples for citing online images and information graphics, podcasts and webcasts, online videos, blogs, social networking sites, and e-books. Style instructions for physics, chemistry, genetics, biological sciences, and astronomy have been adjusted to reflect developments in each field. The coverage of numbers, units, mathematical expressions, and statistics has been revised and now includes more information on managing tables, figures, and indexes. Additionally, a full discussion of plagiarism and other aspects of academic integrity is incorporated, along with a complete treatment of developments in copyright law, including Creative Commons.
 
For the first time in its history, Scientific Style and Format will be available simultaneously in print and online at www.scientificstyleandformat.org. Online subscribers will receive access to full-text searches of the new edition and other online tools, as well as the popular Chicago Manual of Style Online Forum, a community discussion board for editors and authors. Whether online or in print, the eighth edition of Scientific Style and Format remains the essential resource for those writing, editing, and publishing in the scientific community.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226116495
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	05/07/2014
Edition description:	Eighth Edition
Pages:	840
Product dimensions:	7.20(w) x 10.10(h) x 2.00(d)

About the Author

The Council of Science Editors is a nonprofit community of editorial professionals dedicated to the responsible and effective communication of science.

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Scientific Style and Format

The CSE Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers

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By Council of Science Editors

University of Chicago Press

Copyright © 2014 Council of Science Editors
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-11649-5

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CHAPTER 1

Elements of a Scientific Publication

1.1 Types of Scientific Publications
1.2 Components of Scientific Publications
1.2.1 Abstract
1.2.2 Text
1.2.3 Other Requirements
1.3 Structure and XML Tagging

1.1 TYPES OF SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS

Scientific publications take myriad forms, typically that of a scholarly journal or book. The basis for the development of knowledge in the sciences is the original research report, describing observational or experimental investigations of some phenomenon of interest. A review article attempts to answer a particular question by analyzing in aggregate the results of previously published research. A systematic approach to the review helps to ensure that the conclusions reached are supported by the data; hence, systematic reviews may include meta-analysis, "a set of statistical techniques that combine quantitative results from independent studies". Methodological articles describe new methodological approaches or modifications of existing ones but do not report original data. Journal editorials offer a forum for expert opinion, usually on a narrow topic (e.g., providing additional context or interpretation for an article appearing in the same issue). The letters to the editor section of a journal affords readers the opportunity to respond to articles that have been published. Like journal articles, scholarly books may report original research or review the literature, but the subject of a book will be broader or treated in more depth than is possible in an article. See Section 27.7.5 for additional description of research articles, reviews, and editorials.

The editor, associate or assistant editors, and/or editorial board of a journal determine the scope of the journal's content and the categories of articles that will be considered for publication. This information is usually made available to prospective authors in the instructions for authors section of the journal, on the journal's website, or in the publisher's style manual. Authors should use such statements of scope to select the target journal for their publications and thereby avoid delay that may result from submission to an inappropriate journal.

1.2 COMPONENTS OF SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS

The basic components of an original research article (introduction, methods, results, and discussion [IMRAD]) have become well established, but just as journal editors specify the scope of content and types of articles that will appear in their journals, they may also outline how each type of article should be organized. This information forms an important part of a journal's instructions for authors. Therefore, once the target journal has been identified, authors should consult and follow the journal's instructions, again to avoid unnecessary delay. Such guidelines impose structure within a document, and this structure has important benefits for readers, including other researchers.

1.2.1 Abstract

As noted in Section 27.7.1.4, both the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) stipulate that an abstract should be published with every journal article, essay, and discussion. An abstract helps readers to decide whether the article is of interest; as such, its content must reflect the content of the article as closely as possible, within the length available. Most journals specify in their instructions for authors how an abstract is to be organized. The use of a structured format (with formal headings) is one way to ensure that all pertinent information from the article appears in the abstract. The American Medical Association Manual of Style provides detailed information on abstracts for medical articles, including structured abstracts.

The presence and quality of an abstract has become increasingly important in scientific publications. Abstracting and indexing databases such as Thomson Reuters' BIOSIS, Elsevier's Scopus (http://www .scopus .com), PubMed (http://www .ncbi.nlm.nih .gov /pubmed /), and EBSCO (http://www .ebsco .com) are a few of the common services available to publishers wanting to expand the reach of a publication within the scientifi c community. Registration with an abstracting service can increase a publication's exposure and citation by making abstracts easily searchable and available to the public.

1.2.2 Text

The text of an article should follow the outline specified in the journal's instructions for authors. For research articles, this will usually be some variation on the IMRAD form along with a references section, but authors should note any variations requested by the journal. The organization of other types of articles is much more variable.

The methods section is particularly important for allowing a reader to assess whether the study results are pertinent to his or her own work, either research or application. As such, it must include sufficient detail to allow another researcher to repeat the experiment. The following is a general checklist of the types of information that should be included:

1) for biological studies, unambiguous identification of genus, species, and strain; the source of any organisms (e.g., cell line, animal stock); and the age, sex, weight, and condition of organisms, as appropriate

2) for clinical studies, pertinent details about human subjects, including methods of recruitment and relevant physical characteristics

3) for studies involving fieldwork, the specific location of study sites, with appropriately detailed maps

4) unambiguous identification of nonbiological materials used (e.g., chemicals), including the source of such materials

5) the types of apparatus used, including model number and manufacturer for specialized equipment

6) the experimental procedure (by reference to a previous report using the same procedure or by detailed description), including potential hazards, if applicable

7) the types of tests performed, including statistical tests

More detailed checklists may be provided in the target journal's instructions for authors. For medical research, many medical and health care journals and editorial groups, including the Council of Science Editors, support the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT). Other checklists include that of the BMC Medical Research Methodology and the National Institutes of Health.

Consideration should also be given to the presentation of the data and other information; tables and figures are oft en clear and concise ways to do this. If space is limited, as in a printed publication, supplemental tables and figures that are available only online may be a better option. Depending on a journal's online capabilities, videos and other data formats may also be possible. See Chapter 30 for details about accessories to text.

1.2.3 Other Requirements

Depending on the subject of the article and the journal in which it will be published, there may be other required elements. For example, the medical journals represented by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors now require that clinical trials be registered in an acceptable trial registry before patient enrollment begins. In experimental animal studies, a statement confirming adherence to ethical guidelines for the care and treatment of animals (e.g., that of the American Psychological Association) is usually required. Ethics approval by an institutional review board and consent for participation are required for research involving human subjects. Acknowledgment of the sources of financial and other support and statements of potential conflict of interest help editors and readers to assess whether there might be any bias (see Section 2.5). Signed copyright release forms or license agreements are also common requirements, typically stating that authors agree to transfer all or some rights to the publisher on acceptance of a manuscript (see Section 3.1.3.3).

1.3 STRUCTURE AND XML TAGGING

Ensuring that scientific articles follow an established format appropriate to the article type and that they include all necessary information, as outlined above, is integral to the comparison of data across studies. Such comparisons and other analyses of the literature usually begin with searches of electronic databases, a process made easier by the use of structured tagging.

The Extensible Markup Language (XML), based on the Standardized General Markup Language (SGML), is a metalanguage that is used to "make up and define markup systems" for documents intended for electronic delivery. Like SGML, XML tagging specifies the structure of a document, rather than its appearance. User-defined tags identify various components; these may be parts of the article as a whole, such as the title and author byline, or parts of the content, such as the organism under study or the statistical tests performed. Although not required in XML, the role of each element can be defined in a formal model called the document type definition (DTD). Documents that have been tagged with XML can be searched and analyzed for various types of content, regardless of the terminology used.

The scientific community is taking advantage of the potential offered by XML in a variety of ways. Discipline-specific tagging systems have been or are being developed (e.g., the Mathematical Markup Language). Research groups are defining DTDs to "[facilitate] viewing, sharing and merging ... data from different laboratories". Publishers and publisher groups have developed DTDs and XML tag sets. The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) has developed a DTD that is recommended for journal articles submitted to PubMed Central (a "free full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health's National Library of Medicine" [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/]). Since its inception in 2002, NCBI has expanded the original DTD intended only for article archiving and interchange into a 3-part tag suite (http://jats.nlm.nih.gov/index.html). The full benefit of these tools depends on well-structured scientific publications.

See Section 28.6.3 for a discussion of metadata.

CHAPTER 2

Publication Policies and Practices

2.1 Sources and Scope

2.2 Responsibility to Publish
Research Results
2.2.1 Author's Responsibilities
2.2.2 Editor's Responsibilities
2.2.3 Reviewer's Responsibilities

2.3 Data Fabrication and Falsification,
Data Filtering, and Plagiarism
2.3.1 Author's Responsibilities
2.3.2 Editor's Responsibilities
2.3.3 Reviewer's Responsibilities

2.4 Redundant Publication
2.4.1 Author's Responsibilities
2.4.2 Editor's Responsibilities
2.4.3 Reviewer's Responsibilities

2.5 Conflicts of Interest
2.5.1 Author's Responsibilities
2.5.2 Editor's Responsibilities
2.5.3 Reviewer's Responsibilities

2.6 Review Process and
Privileged Information
2.6.1 Author's Responsibilities
2.6.2 Editor's Responsibilities
2.6.3 Reviewer's Responsibilities

2.7 Withdrawal of Manuscripts
and Duplicate Submissions
2.7.1 Author's Responsibilities
2.7.2 Editor's Responsibilities
2.7.3 Reviewer's Responsibilities

2.8 Authorship Disputes
2.8.1 Author's Responsibilities
2.8.2 Editor's Responsibilities
2.8.3 Reviewer's Responsibilities

2.9 Responsibilities of Publishers,
Journal Owners, and
Sponsoring Societies

2.1 SOURCES AND SCOPE

This chapter is drawn largely from policy statements prepared by the Editorial Policy Committee of the Council of Science Editors, Ethics and Policy in Scientific Publication, and the CSE's White Paper on Promoting Integrity in Scientific Journal Publications, 2012 Update. Further valuable detailed treatment of editorial policy is available in statements by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), and the EQUATOR Network (Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research), as well as in the American Medical Association Manual of Style. Because most professional societies have produced guidelines on ethical publication, discipline-specific guidance may also be available; a sample of these guides is included in the Additional References at the end of this chapter. We suggest that readers seek out information specific to their own subject of study.

Situations involving unethical behavior, such as scientific or publishing misconduct, may arise or be revealed during the editorial review of a manuscript or after its publication. Thus journal editorial offices, editors, and editorial boards oft en become involved in resolving misconduct issues. For specific situations involving misconduct, most professional societies will rely on their internal ethical guidelines or codes of conduct regarding publication issues; these guidelines also inform authors of proper conduct. In some countries, independent bodies exist to arbitrate or investigate certain situations of misconduct—for example, in the United States, the Office of Research Integrity of the Public Health Service and the Office of Inspector General of the National Science Foundation.

2.2 RESPONSIBILITY TO PUBLISH RESEARCH RESULTS

Historically, publication has been the standard method for formally presenting new findings to fellow scientists and the public at large. In recent years, however, concerns have been expressed about the appropriate avenue for publication ("primary" versus "gray" literature), about the "cloistering" of data whereby study findings and materials are purposefully made unavailable to other scientists, and about the suppression of findings that could be used for illicit purposes.

Primary literature is an account of original research that is readily available via library or Internet searches because it appears in print or electronic books or journals. Gray literature is work that is not as readily available because it may be an internal government document, white paper, or in-house literature. Gray literature is an appropriate venue for a wide variety of scientific findings (e.g., data reports, interim progress reports), but sometimes authors and their employers choose to release information in the form of gray literature for reasons of convenience rather than appropriateness: publishing gray literature is easier and faster because, unlike primary literature, it does not require peer review and editorial oversight. This practice impedes ready accessibility to important findings, undermines the credibility of such findings, increases the likelihood that fallacious findings will obfuscate and thereby slow scientific advances, and constrains the credit that authors receive for their contributions.

Suppression of research findings may be related to protecting intellectual property and/or proprietary interests. In some instances, it may be legitimate; however, in its most egregious form, research findings are suppressed that would, if published, act against the financial interests of authors or their employers. Although a certain delay is sometimes warranted, extended delay or total suppression prevents science from advancing because it allows redundant research, which wastes time and limited resources.

Attention has increasingly been focused on sharing of existing data (as opposed to development of new data). This has been at least partially facilitated by improved technologies that enable large data sets to be readily accessed and shared. Recognizing publication and data sharing as wheels moving science forward, in 2001, the US National Research Council appointed an interdisciplinary group, the Committee on Responsibilities of Authorship in the Biological Sciences, to examine publication practices and determine how the upswing of conflicting forces (e.g., time constraints, financial interests, even bioterrorism) might be addressed and incorporated into the traditional fabric of publishing and sharing data. The committee concluded that all scientific investigators, whether from academia, government, or commercial enterprises, are obligated "not only [to] release data and materials to enable others to verify or replicate published findings (as journals already implicitly or explicitly require) but also to provide them in a form on which other scientists can build with further research." Underpinning this conclusion is the understanding that all members of the scientific community derive benefits from an open communication system and, therefore, information should flow in multiple directions. It follows that because all scientists are beneficiaries of this open system, they are likewise obligated to support it with their own information and data. From this basic tenet, the committee developed guiding principles and made explicit recommendations related to making data and materials available.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Scientific Style and Format by Council of Science Editors. Copyright © 2014 Council of Science Editors. Excerpted by permission of University of Chicago Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments

Part 1: Publishing Fundamentals

Chapter 1 Elements of a Scientific Publication
Chapter 2 Publication Policies and Practices
Chapter 3 The Basics of Copyright

Part 2: General Style Conventions

Chapter 4 Alphabets, Symbols, and Signs
Chapter 5 Punctuation and Related Marks
Chapter 6 Spelling, Word Formation and Division, Plurals, and Possessives
Chapter 7 Prose Style and Word Choice
Chapter 8 Names and Personal Designations
Chapter 9 Capitalization
Chapter 10 Type Styles, Excerpts, Quotations, and Ellipses
Chapter 11 Abbreviations
Chapter 12 Numbers, Units, Mathematical Expressions, and Statistics
Chapter 13 Time, Dates, and Age Measurements
Chapter 14 Geographic Designations

Part 3: Special Scientific Conventions

Chapter 15 The Electromagnetic Spectrum
Chapter 16  Subatomic Particles, Chemical Elements, and Related Notations
Chapter 17 Chemical Formulas and Names
Chapter 18 Chemical Kinetics and Thermodynamics
Chapter 19 Analytical Chemistry
Chapter 20 Drugs and Pharmacokinetics
Chapter 21 Genes, Chromosomes, and Related Molecules
Chapter 22 Taxonomy and Nomenclature
Chapter 23 Structure and Function
Chapter 24 Disease Names
Chapter 25 The Earth
Chapter 26 Astronomical Objects and Time Systems

Part 4: Technical Elements of Publications

Chapter 27 Journal Style and Format
Chapter 28 Published Media
Chapter 29 References
Chapter 30 Accessories to Text: Tables, Figures, and Indexes
Chapter 31 Typography and Manuscript Preparation
Chapter 32 Proof Correction

Bibliography
Index

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