Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
Today, Brenda Gregoline discusses the final four points on her ‘top ten list’ of most frequent mistakes authors make when submitting manuscripts – including duplicate submissions, failing to protect patient identity, not ‘matching-up data’ and forgetting to read the instructions for authors!
It’s impossible to expect authors to absorb all of the 1000-page ‘AMA Manual of Style’; they’re just trying to get published, and it’s our job to help them. Today, we discuss three of the top-ten most frequent mistakes, including punctuation and style, ‘errors of grandiosity’ and wacky references.
Publishing a new edition of a style manual, particularly a lengthy, detailed manual that covers a ridiculous amount of technical material (Hello, ‘AMA Manual of Style’!), is a gruelling process. In our case, it involved ten people meeting for at least an hour every week for more than a year.