Etica e metodologia di scrittura di un lavoro scientifico

Ethic issues and the structure of manuscripts are two main aspects when writing a research paper in the biomedical field with the aim to submit it to a scientific journal for publication. Considering publication ethics, the integrity of the scientific writing is under the responsibility of authors, reviewers,and editor of the journal and should be maintained across the entire process of publication. The authors’ responsibility includes unequivocal transgression (falsification of data, plagiarism, authorship, conflict of interest), which cannot be tolerated, and undesirable practice (self plagiarism, redundant publication) as well. The reviewers’ responsibility includes conflict of interest and confidentiality. Among the journal editor’s responsibilities, there are conflict of interest, publication bias, willingness of publishing complaints, clarifications and apologies. A scientific article should usually have a definite structure, made up of different sections. Here suggestions are given on how to find an appealing “Title”, how to prepare a comprehensive “Abstract”, how to cope with the “Introduction”, how to improve the description of employed “Methods”, how to present data in the “Results” section, and how to better organize the results “Discussion”. Our experience as editors of this journal suggests that our colleagues should be more aware of both ethical aspects and correct procedures to follow before starting to write a scientific paper in order to prevent the rejection of their work.