Cover -- Title Page -- Contents -- Introduction -- Acknowledgements -- Foreword -- 1: Scientific writing -- Reasons to publish -- Rewards for being a good writer -- Making it happen -- Achieving creativity -- Thought, structure, and style -- The thrill of acceptance -- 2: Getting started -- Forming a plan -- Choosing a journal -- Uniform requirements -- Instructions to authors -- Standardised reporting guidelines -- Authorship -- Contributions -- 3: Writing your paper -- Abstract -- Introduction -- Methods -- Results -- Discussion -- Summary guidelines -- 4: Finishing your paper -- Choosing a title -- Title page -- References and citations -- Peer review -- Processing feedback -- Checklists and instructions to authors -- Creating a good impression -- Submitting your paper -- Archiving and documentation -- 5: Review and editorial processes -- Peer-reviewed journals -- Revise and resubmit -- Replying to reviewers' comments -- Handling rejection -- Editorial process -- Page proofs -- Copyright laws -- Releasing results to the press -- Becoming a reviewer -- Writing review comments -- Becoming an editor -- 6: Publishing -- Duplicate publication -- Reporting results from large studies -- Policies for data sharing -- Fast tracking and early releases -- Electronic journals and eletters -- Netprints -- Citation index -- Impact factors -- 7: Other types of documents -- Letters -- Editorials -- Narrative reviews -- Systematic reviews and Cochrane reviews -- Case reports -- Postgraduate theses -- 8: Writing style -- Plain English -- Topic sentences -- Subjects, verbs, and objects -- Eliminating fog -- Say what you mean -- Word order -- Creating flow -- Tight writing -- Chopping up snakes -- Parallel structures -- Style matters -- 9: Grammar -- Nouns -- Adjectives -- Verbs -- Adverbs -- Pronouns and determiners -- Conjunctions and prepositions -- Phrases.

Clauses -- Which and that -- Grammar matters -- 10: Word choice -- Label consistently -- Participants are people -- Word choice -- Avoid emotive words -- Because -- Levels and concentrations -- Untying the negatives -- Abbreviations -- Spelling -- Words matter -- 11: Punctuation -- Full stops and ellipses -- Colons and semicolons -- Commas -- Apostrophes -- Parentheses and square brackets -- Slashes, dashes, and hyphens -- Punctuation matters -- 12: Support systems -- Searching the internet -- Writers' groups -- Avoiding writer's block -- Mentoring -- Index.