Publishing in the Life Sciences

This guide provides background information and useful tips on publishing in the life sciences, including:

• Using citation software to manage your references, when collecting them as well as adding them to your paper
• General tips on writing a manuscript for publication
• Useful sources of information on deciding on authorship and contributor roles
• Reporting guidelines: Information you should be including in your manuscript, based on the type of study or paper you are writing
• Tools to help you write
• Formatting your paper with a journal venue already in mind
• Tips on choosing a publication
  • Which journal may publish your article
  • Checking the quality of a journal
  • Checking the legitimacy of a journal
  • Consider open access
  • Consider publishing or preregistering your study protocol
  • Is the timing right?
• Publishing open access articles
• Measures of journal impact and prestige

If you are collecting references for a project, looking for information on how to cite within a particular discipline, or interested in using software to collect and automatically format your in-text citations and bibliography in the proper citation style, the following pages may be of use:

• Citation Guides - General information on citation as well as information on what's available at McGill (for example, EndNote, which is free for McGill staff and students, and Zotero, which we support) and how to get more information
• Life Sciences Citation Style - Information on citing in Vancouver (author-number system), APA (author-date style), CSE
• Citation Styles - Useful citation guides for other commonly used citation styles
• Citation Styles by Subject

If you are writing a paper for a course, ask your professors what citation style they recommend. If you are publishing a journal article in the health sciences, consult the instructions for authors in the health sciences database or the journal website to find out what citation style they require your references to be formatted in.