Before the Reviewer Reads It: What Editors Look for in Scientific Manuscripts

After a year of Scientific Editing at Scribendi, one pattern stands out above all others: the gap between what authors know and what they've written can be bigger than they expect. The research is sound, but somewhere between the lab and the page, something gets lost. The author is too close to their own work to notice this gap, and they rarely know what's missing until someone else reads it.

What We See

Some of what we encounter has challenged writers for a long time, spanning across fields of research, experience levels, and subject matter.

Insufficient citations

It's not uncommon for authors to forget citations where they're needed. Citations should be included for claims and information that aren't general knowledge, although it can be easy for experts who are thoroughly familiar with their subject matter to mistake high-level information for something commonly known. Self-plagiarism—when an author forgets to cite their own earlier work or reuses text from a previous work—is a related problem.

Beyond omission, editors notice errors in citation/reference structure, formatting, and coordination:

• Citation reference mismatch: Missing citations for existing references, or vice versa
• Overcitation: Using a narrative citation (e.g., "Jones (2010) found that...") in the same sentence as a parenthetical citation ("... (Jones, 2010).").
• Inconsistent formatting: Examples include using both "and" and "&" in citations with two authors and inconsistent comma use in author-date citations.

Lack of coordination between authors

Writing is often a joint effort, and we can tell where one author's work ends and another's begins. The most typical issues include:

• Inconsistent formatting:  line spacing, paragraph indentation, heading format, font size, etc.
• Inconsistent verb tense
• Inconsistent terminology and acronym use
• Repeated arguments and definitions

Issues with presentation

Authors frequently present numerical results in a long, hard-to-read paragraph. Tables and plots can often be substituted to provide a clearer, better-organized way to present a significant amount of information. Less commonly, information is tabulated when describing it in the text would serve the reader better.

We asked our editors what problems and patterns they frequently encounter in scientific manuscripts:

"Lack of proper citations, formatting and reference issues, problems with flow and structure, lack of novelty, and insufficient description of the relevance of that research."

"Inconsistency is a big one, especially regarding terminology, abbreviations, numbers, and symbols. Sentence structures in technical documents can also often be confusing, awkward, or unclear, and improvements to flow are often needed. Reference and citation problems are also common."

"When an author has conducted a study, they face the challenge of transporting the information that lives in their notes and memory into a format that's scientifically airtight and replicable. These writers struggle to catch their own writing mistakes because they can't step outside of their experience of the work they completed: they know precisely what they meant, but that doesn't mean they've faithfully and consistently recorded their research. Inconsistency is easy for editors to spot but hard for writers to notice. This includes issues like switching between active and passive voice, inconsistent verb tense, inconsistent significant figures, and misplaced or undefined acronyms. An editor can begin to address these problems and offer a preview of how a reader will interpret a manuscript before it's evaluated by someone who matters to the author."

What Editors Are Looking For

Editors read manuscripts the way a skeptical reviewer will, before it matters. That means we already know what a strong manuscript looks like, and we can see clearly when something falls short of it. Our editors are clear about what that standard looks like in practice:

"In the context of academic papers: a well-defined problem statement, strong positioning within past work, clarity and proper structuring, meaningful conclusions, and an honest discussion of limitations."

 "A well-organized, logical, and precise flow of information that has a clear purpose is key."

"There's a quality of good writing that is subtle and seamless. Talented writers have an ability to anticipate their readers' skepticism and curiosity as they move from sentence to sentence. They provide evidence just as I begin to doubt a claim, define terms before I get confused and start a search, and end a tangent just when it starts to distract from the central argument. These writers are able to put themselves in their readers' shoes. Without making assumptions about prior knowledge, they work to understand and bridge the gap between what they know and what the reader has yet to learn. Their grasp of flow is highly logical and they're able to provide the right information in the precise moment that it's needed. In sum, good writers answer the questions we have right before we think to ask them."

Get a skeptical read before it matters. Explore Scientific Editing.

Good Bones

If a manuscript has a good foundation, an editorial reviewer can develop and refine it so that it accurately expresses what the authors want it to say. This process reveals more than just what's missing—it shows what the manuscript is actually arguing and whether that argument holds. Problems of consistency and precision have always existed in scientific writing, but what's changed is what's causing them.