Manuscript editing as a way of teaching academic writing: Experience from a small scientific journal

Medical writing and manuscript preparation are rarely taught in the context of undergraduate, graduate, or continuing medical education. As editors of a "small" medical scientific journal published in English in a non-native English-speaking (NNES) country. we hold that the knowledge of scientific methodology and specificities of scientific reporting is a necessary precondition for a successful scientific publication. Our experience shows that language professionals and translators whose services NNES authors use should be acquainted with the basic rules of scientific reporting. In this article we describe how each of the four layers of a manuscript - the study quality, the narrative, the scientific reporting style, and finally the language per se - can be improved, (c) 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.