HOW TO SET UP, CONDUCT AND REPORT A SCIENTIFIC STUDY
Original Articles
Table 2. Example how results should be presented: Tensile bond strength of ceramics contaminated with saliva after different cleaning procedures.
Ceramic 1 Ceramic 2
Control 55.9 ± 9.2 ab1 52.1 ± 10.9 a1
After contamination cleaned with
Water spray H 3
PO 4 gel
21 ± 13.6 c1 15.8 ± 16.1 c1
40.6 ± 10.7 b1 26.7 ± 11.8 c2 polishing paste 29.7 ± 15.2 c1 21.9 ± 14.2 c1
Cleaner 54.2 ± 8.8 ab1 46.3 ± 7.9 a1
ANOVA, Tukey post hoc test p < 0.01. superscript letters show same statistical groups in rows, superscript numbers show same statistical groups in columns
Table 3. Comments of reviewers, actions taken by authors and comments of authors for the reviewers.
# of samples produced( e. g. 3 materials x 2 shades and 3 treatments = 3x2x3 = 18 cells; if the author reports that 200 samples were made, then 200 / 18 = 11,11 ergo something is wrong, since n can be 11 or 12 only). If the resulting n is not a single number then something is wrong and the paper in the best case goes back to the authors. Many papers get rejected outright, very few are accepted without modifications / revisions. This means they are sent back to the authors with comments and requests for modifications. This causes frustration at first glance and the authors may get emotional, since they had tried to do the best. But remember the objective of the reviewers is to improve the paper, therefore authors should not object to the reviewer’ s comments unless really justified and return the manuscript with minimal revisions only. I have personally experienced many cases where the revised paper was sent the second time to the reviewers and came back with the recommendation“ reject” and the comment that authors did not follow the recommendations for improvement. Therefore the recommendation is that the authors compile all comments of the reviewers into a table with one line per comment. Then they should add two more columns. In the first they should address the comments and let the reviewer know what they did or give reasons why they did NOT do any changes. In the other column the changes can be displayed( Tab. 3). This approach may further speed up the review process, since having very good explanations about the changes the editor may decide based on such a table rather than send it for the second time to the reviewers.
5. Conclusions
• research is exciting
• hard work is often boring
• writing follows standard rules- > boring
• with precision, know how, and the right attitude there is a very high chance for success
Acknowledgments The author reports no conflict of interest and there was no external source of funding for the present study.
100 Stoma Edu J. 2017; 4( 2): 90-101 http:// www. stomaeduj. com