Writing an Eye Catching High Impact Factor Paper

1. Writing an Eye Catching High Impact Factor Paper Ajith Abraham Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway http://www.softcomputing.net ajith.abraham@ieee.org

2. http://www.harzing.com

3. "Publish or perish" refers to the pressure to publish work constantly in order to further or sustain one's career in academia. Frequent publication is one of the few methods at a scholar's disposal to improve his visibility, and the attention that successful publications bring to scholars and their sponsoring institutions helps ensure steady progress through the field and continued funding.

4. Academic publishing describes the subfield of publishing which distributes academic research and scholarship. Most academic work is published in journal article, book chapters or conference papers. Much, though not all, academic publishing relies on some form of peer review or editorial refereeing to qualify texts for publication.

5. A paper is an academic work that is usually published in an academic journal. It contains original research results or reviews existing results. Such a paper, also called an article, will only be considered valid if it undergoes a process of peer review by one or more referees (who are academics in the same field) in order to check that the content of the paper is suitable for publication in the journal. A paper may undergo a series of reviews, edits and re-submissions before finally being accepted or rejected for publication. This process typically takes several months. Next there is often a delay of many months (or in some subjects, over a year) before publication, particularly for the most popular journals where the number of acceptable articles outnumbers the space for printing.

6. Peer review is a central concept for most academic publishing; other scholars in a field must find a work sufficiently high in quality for it to merit publication. The process also guards against plagiarism. Failures in peer review, while they are probably common, are sometimes scandalous.

7. The Impact factor was devised by Eugene Garfield, the founder of the Institute for Scientific Information, now part of Thomson, a large worldwide US-based publisher. Impact factors are calculated each year by Thomson Scientific for those journals which it indexes, and the factors and indices are published in Journal Citation Reports.

8. The impact factor for a journal is calculated based on a three-year period, and can be viewed as an approximation of the average number of times published papers are cited in the two calendar years following publication. For example, the 2003 impact factor for a journal would be calculated as follows: A = the number of times articles published in 2001-2 were cited in indexed journals during 2003 B = the number of "citable items" (usually articles, reviews, proceedings or notes; not editorials and letters-to-the-Editor) published in 2001-2 2003 impact factor = A/B

9. Top Journals in Soft Computing Area • European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier Science, Netherlands • Fuzzy Sets and Systems, Elsevier Science, Netherlands • Applied Intelligence • Applied Soft Computing • Artificial Intelligence • Artificial Intelligence in Engineering • Computational Intelligence • Data & Knowledge Engineering • Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery • Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence • Evolutionary Computation • Expert Systems with Applications • Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines • IEEE Intelligent Systems • IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation • IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems

10. Top Journals in Soft Computing Area IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics - A,B,C International Journal of Intelligent Systems International Journal of Neural Systems International Journal of Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence International Journal of Uncertainty, Fuzziness and Knowledge-Based Systems International Journal on Artificial Intelligence Tools Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research Journal of Artificial Intelligence Tools Journal of Intelligent & Fuzzy Systems Journal of Intelligent Information Systems Journal of Intelligent Systems Journal of Machine Learning Research

11. Top Journals in Soft Computing Area Knowledge and Information Systems: an International Journal Knowledge-based Systems Neural Computing and Applications Neural Processing Letters Neurocomputing Soft Computing

12. Writing and describing the work in a clear, concise, but interesting manner, moves a paper from being good to being exceptional. If the same experimental work is described by two different writers, very different levels of manuscripts can result.

13. Great science when written poorly can be a good paper or alternatively, average science when written well can be a good paper. On the other hand, great science when written well can be an excellent paper and average science when written poorly can be the readily rejected paper.

14. Great science when written poorly can be a good paper or alternatively, average science when written well can be a good paper. On the other hand, great science when written well can be an excellent paper and average science when written poorly can be the readily rejected paper.

15. Information given and its descriptions of background, experiments, data, and results conform to the requested standards. There are some useful resources for writers that make creating a good manuscript easier. Carefull reading of the instructions for authors that each journal has, certainly helps. These give broad descriptions of what each journal requires in format and arrangement. Different journals, for example, have specific formats and rules for numbering references.

16. Sometimes when reviewing a manuscript, it seems that authors even skip the basic steps like using the “spell check” features in all word processing programs or confirming text referencing to the numbers in the list of references. It may be difficult to read a manuscript for such errors after writing and rewriting it several times. The brain naturally scans through and reads the content after so many readings of the same sentences.

17. An author or group of co-authors should give the manuscript to someone less familiar to it so that such easily overlooked mistakes can be caught before submission. Reviewers often think an apparently sloppily prepared manuscript must reflect sloppily done science. This may not be the case, but human nature sometimes creates that connection. It is much better to avoid that possibility altogether.

18. The first rule of thumb for authors must always be “write for the readers”. Papers are chronicles of work to be read by others. The writers are intimately familiar with the work and concepts. Efforts must be made to look at the manuscript from a more distant perspective. Readers, even experts in the particular field, may not be as familiar as the writers are. Acronyms and other abbreviations denoting a phrase should always be defined at the first place in the text in which the phrase is used.

19. A well-written introduction also gives the readers practice in reading the paper’s ideas and rhythms. Writers, even in technical papers, have styles. Some write in short sentences. Others write in long ones with many subjunctive clauses. Some use a simple vocabulary. Others use less often heard words to be more precise or expressive. A reader subconsciously gathers these differences as he or she starts reading a paper.

20. The introduction should also contain a section describing why this work was done and its importance. This is often omitted because the authors assume that it must be inherently obvious. Some readers may understand the implied importance, but many will not. It does not hurt a paper to have a few paragraphs on what makes the work noteworthy. These statements may also catch the attention of those who focus more on applications and potential rather than techniques.

21. The descriptions of the experiment must be clear enough so that they can be readily replicated. This is much better if it is done without delving through several other references to get the gist. The results and conclusions must explain the interpretation and applications covered, plus limitations and further work that needs doing. Many papers contain results and tables or graphs of data without much discussion of how good the approach may be over earlier alternatives, repeatability or reproducibility, or interferences and limitation of the method.

22. The selection of illustrations, tables, and graphs are not just to present the data and apparatus described. Too many or too few illustrations can greatly weaken a paper. On one hand, too few leave details as ambiguous. On the other, too many can be redundant, distracting, and divert the attention of the reader to the main points.

23. One area that many authors overlook or give only minor attention to is the acknowledgements. Although the people and organizations included there do not affect the readability of the manuscript, many authors have made grievous errors of omission in their acknowledgements. Leaving out someone who has aided through key ideas, review of the manuscript, etc. etc. can lead to injured feelings. Subsequent assistance may not be so readily forthcoming.

24. Thank You Q & A 24