Preparing an outline - How to write a review paper - Doing other writing for publication

How to write and publish a scientific paper - Barbara Gastel, Robert A. Day 2022

Preparing an outline
How to write a review paper
Doing other writing for publication

Unlike research papers, there is no prescribed organization for conventional review papers. Therefore, you will have to develop your own. A cardinal rule for writing a review paper is to prepare an outline.

The outline must be prepared carefully. It will assist you in organizing your paper, which is all-important. If your review is organized properly, its overall scope will be well defined and the integral parts will fit together in a logical order.

Obviously, you must prepare the outline before you start writing (although you may end up revising it as you write). Moreover, before you start writing, it is wise to determine whether a journal (either a review journal or a primary journal that includes review articles) would be interested in considering a review article that you submit on the topic. Possibly, the editor will want to limit or expand the scope of your proposed review or add or delete specific subtopics. Or perhaps the journal is already publishing a review on the subject, in which case you should direct your efforts elsewhere.

Not only is the outline essential for the preparer of the review, it is also very useful to potential readers of the review. Therefore, many review journals print the outline at the beginning of the article, where it serves as a convenient table of contents for prospective readers.

Also to guide readers, review papers make considerable use of subheadings (which, if an outline is published, correspond to the subjects that it lists). For example, the review paper “Mechanics of Cytokinesis in Eukaryotes,” by Thomas D. Pollard (2010), contains the following subheadings:

Introduction

Origins of cytokinesis genes

Mechanisms specifying the position of the division plane

Fission yeast

Budding yeast

Animal cells

Mechanism of contractile ring assembly

Fission yeast

Animal cells

Architecture of the ring

Mechanism of constriction and disassembly of the contractile ring

Actin filaments

Myosin-II

Mechanism of constriction

Sources of drag

Modeling

Conclusions

In 2015, Pollard, the author of this review paper, received the National Academy of Sciences Award for Scientific Reviewing “for his many review articles describing the molecular mechanisms of the protein actin in cell motility and cell division”; it was noted that these articles “have been cited hundreds and even thousands of times.” This award, given in different years to authors in different fields, was presented from 1979 through 2020. Information on its recipients appears on the U.S. National Academy of Sciences website (nasonline.org/programs/awards/scientific-reviewing.html). To see some review papers by masters, look on this site to identify recipients in your field, and then search the literature to find their reviews.