On the elements of an excellent research paper

Abstract

Journal publications play a key role in the dissemination of research findings in the biomedical acoustics community. However, authors are often unsure of how to write a paper that will be considered as excellent by their peers, because the notion of excellence is arguably subjective and ill-defined. To demystify such an issue, this presentation will discuss four major elements (novelty, significance, rigor, writing quality) that are often found in excellent journal papers in biomedical ultrasound. Since 2022, these four elements have been adopted as the peer review criteria by the flagship ultrasonics journal of the IEEE press. Multi-day writing workshops with interactive, hands-on tutorials have been designed to engage prospective authors on how to plan and prepare journal manuscripts with the four elements of excellence. Reviewer training workshops have also been offered to inform journal reviewers about these evaluation criteria and expectations. Through these initiatives, we aim to establish a quality-driven publishing emphasis within the biomedical acoustics community. Achieving so will have long-term benefits on the reputation and growth of this research field.