One of the less enjoyable tasks of the Editor is to inform the authors of a substantial proportion of submissions that their manuscripts will not be sent for formal peer review. Possible grounds for editorial rejection include limited potential impact for the readership of Brain, insufficient novelty, and obvious logical or statistical flaws. Some papers that are triaged out address topics that are outside the scope of the journal. There are, of course, many papers that fall in a grey area, and judging what is important and novel is inevitably subjective. Authors of some such manuscripts can now be offered an alternative route to publication under the Brain brand with the recent launch of Brain Communications, which is editorially independent. Nevertheless, given the large number of submissions to Brain (over 2000 each year), achieving a fair and consistent editorial evaluation of manuscripts requires sustained attention. Authors sometimes do themselves no favours in how they present their work, so here are some dos and don’ts to avoid making the Editor unnecessarily grumpy.
Do use the cover letter to explain the importance and novelty of the work, and what was done, but keep it short. The longer the cover letter the greater suspicion that the work is incremental.
Do read the Instructions to Authors and ensure that the formatting and referencing at least vaguely conform to Brain style.
Don’t exaggerate the claims. There are no proofs in empirical science, and so the appropriate verb to indicate inference from experimental evidence will usually fall somewhere along a spectrum from ‘demonstrates’ (the strongest), through ‘implies’, ‘argues [for/that]’ and ‘suggests’, to ‘is consistent with’ (the weakest). ‘Proves’ should not be used outside mathematics and logic.
Don’t use ‘significant’ except when referring to statistical tests.
Don’t conflate statistical significance with effect size. The misuse of P-values deserves an editorial in its own right, but some helpful tips on statistics are available in the Instructions to Authors.
Do try to tell a story. Each piece of evidence should be followed up by considering all pitfalls and ruling out explanations other than the one that supports the ultimate conclusion. The best papers start and end with a bang.
Do ensure that figures are legible and make use of schematics to indicate the experimental design.
Do ensure that colours are used sparingly, and if they are required to indicate categories do ensure that they are used consistently.
Don’t use colours that could create difficulty for anomalous deuteranopes such as the current Editor.
Do use the first paragraph of the Discussion to summarize briefly what was found.
Do use declarative titles where possible, not only for the manuscript but also for the figure legends.
Don’t forget to number the pages of the manuscript.
On a lighter note, this issue of Brain commemorates 500 years from the death of Leonardo da Vinci with a Grey Matter article by Marco Catani and Paolo Mazzarello, who put forward the hypothesis that he had ADHD, and that this contributed to his failure to complete many projects. To accompany this anniversary, here are Leonardo da Vinci’s own drawings of the cerebral ventricles of an ox with, barely visible just to the right, perhaps the first ever depiction of the convolutions of the human brain (Fig. 1).
Perhaps influenced by Herophilus of Chalcedon and Galen, who held that the cerebral ventricles are the seat of intelligence, Leonardo da Vinci described how he injected hot wax into the ventricles of an ox to obtain a faithful representation of their shape. Just to the right of the main image is a faint sketch of the convolutions of the human brain. Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2019.
